Early detection of developmental disorders: The role of communicative development

Abstract

A number of developmental disorders are usually detected in toddlerhood or beyond, when certain physical features become apparent, developmental milestones are not met (in time), and/or behavioural/neurofunctional deviances reach a certain threshold to allow clinical diagnosis. Deficits in the socio-communicative domain are among the core symptoms of a great proportion of these late recognised developmental disorders. However, the current knowledge on the pre-diagnostic socio-communicative development of children with such developmental disorders is still limited. This thesis aimed to shed light into the early socio-communicative development of children with late recognised developmental disorders by (i) comprehensively analysing the socio-communicative capacities of children with Rett syndrome (RTT), fragile X syndrome (FXS), or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in their first 2 years of life, (ii) comparing these results with those of a control group of typically developing children, and (iii) providing cross-syndrome comparisons. The analysis was based on retrospective audio-video recordings made by the parents of children with RTT (typical or preserved speech variant; n = 7), FXS (n = 9), ASD (n = 10), or typical development (TD; n = 10) when their children were between 9 and 24 months of age. The Inventory of Potential Communicative Acts (IPCA; Sigafoos, Arthur-Kelly and Butterfield, 2006) was applied to identify communicative forms and functions. Developmental peculiarities in the socio-communicative domain of the participants with RTT, FXS, or ASD were found from the end of the first year of life onwards. In particular, participants later diagnosed with a developmental disorder had reduced gestural and (pre-)linguistic vocalisation repertoires and a limited range of communicative functions especially in terms of ‘requesting an object/action/information’ compared to the participants with TD. Socio-communicative capacities increased in the participants with FXS or TD throughout the observation period although those of the FXS group were lower compared to those of the TD group. Socio-communicative capacities of the participants with ASD initially increased and then seemed to decrease indicating a potential regression of communicative abilities. The evidence of (a) early socio-communicative deviances in children with RTT, FXS, or ASD, and (b) specific socio-communicative profiles for different developmental disorders is conceptually appealing, but needs further research taking into account certain methodological difficulties. Still, our data advance the understanding of the pre-diagnostic socio-communicative development of children with RTT, FXS, or ASD, and might prove useful with respect to the earlier detection of children with late recognised developmental disorders.

Date of Award	2019
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Medical University Graz
Supervisor	Christa Einspieler (Supervisor), Peter Marschik (Supervisor) & Erwin Petek (Supervisor)