Understanding How Parent Pragmatics Influence Child Language

Background: Quantity and quality of parents’ child-directed language influence children’s language development. Previous work has demonstrated that early language development is boosted by parents’ use of certain strategies related to responsiveness. The delivery of verbal responses that are both temporally and topically contingent to a child’s utterances facilitates language development. Since these response strategies are functionally similar to typical adult pragmatic norms, it is important to examine whether differences in parent pragmatic styles may affect the language input a child receives. As pragmatic differences have been identified in unaffected family members of individuals with autism, it is critical to understand how parental pragmatic differences might influence language learning in young children with ASD.

Objectives: The focus of this project was to determine how parent pragmatic profiles relate to early child language profiles of children with ASD. This project also aimed to assess whether pragmatic profiles of parents predict parent use of language support strategies prior to participation in a parent-implemented language intervention. We explore the hypothesis that for parents of children with ASD, pragmatic profiles characterized by higher rates of pragmatic violations are negatively associated both with child language standard scores and parental use of language support strategies.

Methods: We adapted the Pragmatic Rating Scale (PRS; Landa et al., 1992) to assess the pragmatic quality of parent language during a semi-structured interview that was conducted prior to initiation of a parent-mediated language intervention. These conversations were coded for frequency and severity of pragmatic violations. A total of 20 parents of children between 24-42 months, were included in analyses (10 parents of children with ASD, 10 parents of children with a non-ASD language delay). The Preschool Language Scales (PLS-4) was conducted with each child to assess pre-treatment receptive and expressive language levels.

Results: An independent samples t-test revealed that parents of children with ASD scored significantly higher on the PRS (indicating more pragmatic violations), as compared to parents of children with a non-ASD language delay, t(18) = -2.301, p < .001. Partial correlations revealed that within the group of parents of children with ASD, PRS Totals were negatively correlated with child expressive language level, as measured by PLS-4 expressive language Standard scores, r(7) = -.66, p < .05. Additionally, within this group, PRS Totals were also negatively correlated with parent use of the expansions strategy in a pre-treatment play interaction, r(7) = -.68, p < .05.

Conclusions: Parent pragmatic style may contribute to difficulty with language learning in children with ASD. It may be challenging for parents with different pragmatic styles to naturally respond to child utterances in a topically contingent manner and implement the expansions strategy. This may indirectly influence child language development. The project highlights the responsibility of researchers and clinicians to consider parent language factors during design and implementation of parent-mediated language interventions for children with autism. Consideration of parent language may increase the likelihood that a parent-mediated language intervention will address both the needs of the child with ASD, as well as the parent’s capacities.