Repeat After Me? Both Children With and Without Autism Commonly Align Their Language With That of Their Caregivers.

ABSTRACT: Linguistic repetitions in children are conceptualized as negative in children with autism - echolalia, without communicative purpose - and positive in typically developing (TD) children - linguistic alignment involved in shared engagement, common ground and language acquisition. To investigate this apparent contradiction we analyzed spontaneous speech in 67 parent-child dyads from a longitudinal corpus (30 minutes of play activities at 6 visits over 2 years). We included 32 children with autism and 35 linguistically matched TD children (mean age at recruitment 32.76 and 20.27 months). We found a small number of exact repetitions in both groups (roughly 1% of utterances across visits), which increased over time in children with autism and decreased in the TD group. Partial repetitions were

SUBMITTER: Fusaroli R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11223774 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature