Alternative Receptive Language Assessment Modalities and Stimuli for Children with ASD who are Minimally Verbal

Abstract

There are very few receptive language measures that are appropriate for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) who have minimal verbal skills. The primary aim of this study was to evaluate and compare alternative modalities and stimuli used to measure receptive language skills in children with ASD who are minimally verbal. This study systematically compared participants' outcomes on three different receptive language assessment conditions: a picture-based standardized assessment, a touchscreen assessment, and an assessment that used real-object stimuli. A secondary aim of this study was to examine how individual characteristics such as cognition, maladaptive behavior, autism symptomology, and gesture use impact performance on assessment conditions. A tertiary aim involved the use of an intermodal preferential looking paradigm (IPLP) to determine whether eye gaze data may provide additional, implicit information about word comprehension for children with ASD. Twenty-seven students between the ages of 3 and 12 who had minimal verbal skills and a diagnosis of ASD participated in this study. Results from a crossed-random effects model showed that participants’ scores in the real-object assessment condition were significantly higher than in the standardized condition, and marginally higher than scores in the touchscreen assessment. Together, cognition and fine motor skills accounted for 44% of the variance in participants’ scores. IPLP data revealed that participants spent more time looking at target stimuli rather than foil stimuli in 36% of no-response trials. Clinical implications of these findings are discussed.