The Language Environment ofAutistic and Dysphasic Children

Dennis P. Cantwell, M.D. and Lorian Baker, Ph.D.

Abstract . T his paper examines the language of mothers of language-impaired child ren. Tenmale child ren with a receptive language impairm ent, a nonverbal lQ of at least 70. and noovert signs of neurological disorder or peripheral deafness wen' chosen for study. Thechildren were divided into two groups a(Tlmling 10 their total expressive language: a "high"language group which could form phrases and simple sentences and a " low" language groupwhich had onl y one-word utterances. The language of the mothers of the two groups ofchild ren was compared for grammatical complexity (mean sentence length . mean preverblength. pen'entage of one-word or phrase-only utterances. and percelllage of self­repetitions) and for the amount of "teaching devices" (imitations. expansions. corrections.and prompts) and encouragements to speak. It was found that the mothers of the "high"language child ren had more grammatical complexit y, more orientation to the children'sspeech than the mothers of the "low " language children .

Little is known about the effects of the linguistic environment uponthe language-learning child. Although the theoretical viewpoint ofmodern linguistics (Chomsky, 1965) maintains that language de­velops as a result of an inborn capacity to do so, it is still acceptedthat the specific language acquired by any individual child must bederived from his particular environment. Both the social class ofthe family (Bee et a\., 1969; Bernstein, 1961; Olim, 1970) and thehome atmosphere in which the child grows up (McCarthy, 1954;Marge , 1965; Rubin et aI., 1971) have been linked to the type oflanguage the child eventually acquires. However, more specifically,

Dr. Cantuirll is an Associate Professor. Department of Psychiatry. Division of Mental Retardationand Child Psychiatry, and Dr . Baker iJ Research Associate, Department of Psychiatry, Division ofMental Retardation and Child Psychiatry. N ruropsyrhiatrir lnstitute University of California at LosAngeles Center for Health Sciences (760 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles , CA 90024) , where reprints maybe requested.

This study was supported in part by the f ollowing grants : NIMH Special Fellowship IF03MH52205-01 . MH 08467-13. MCH 927. Scottish. Rite Foundation. and USPHS IROI MH 27919­OIAI.

We would also lik, to thank Dr. Michael Rutter, Ms. Patricia Hmolin, and Rosemary Hemsley , tuhoprovided valuable asSiJtQllce in an earlier phase of this studs .

0002-713RI78/1704-0604 SOO.70 II:> 197R American A('adl'III Yof Child !'sydliall,)·.

604

Language Environment of Autistic Children 605

the most important influencing factors must be the particular lan­guage and linguistic interactions which the child hears, for it isfrom these raw data that the child must "construct" his own gram­mar. The exact nature of these raw data-both the type necessaryand the amount necessary-is not yet known.

Two aspects of the raw data are important: the interactional pat­tern of the language and the grammatical structure of the language.Since it is typically the mother who provides the major input to thelanguage-learning child, her grammatical structure and interactionpatterns are of most interest and concern. The grammatical struc­ture of maternal language has been investigated by a number ofauthors, and there is now a large body of data suggesting thatgrammatical complexity in maternal language is correlated withgrammatical complexity in the child's language (Baldwin andBaldwin, 1973; Broen, 1971; Clarke-Stewart, 1973; Fraser andRoberts, 1975; Longhurst and Stepanich, 1975; Moerk, 1974;Phillips, 1973; Snow, 1972; Snow et al., 1976). With regard tointeractional patterns, there are fewer data available. However, amultitude of "teaching devices" including corrections, directions,modeling, imitations, expansions, and incomplete sentences areapparently all present in maternal speech (Brown and Hanlon,1970; Moerk, 1972, 1976). Norms as to the frequency of usage ofthese devices are not yet available, but early findings suggest thatthese devices in maternal language may also be correlated with thelevel of the child's language (Marshall and Hegrenes, 1973; Moerk,1974). Although it is not known how these devices influence lan­guage acquisition, experimental findings indicate that they do havea positive effect, at least in the controlled or laboratory situation(Cazden, 1965; Feldman and Rodgon, 1970; Malouf and Dodd,1972; Rosenthal et al., 1970; Whitehurst et al., 1972).

It has been proposed by some authors (Goldfarb et al., 1966a,1966b, 1972; Lennard et al., 1965; Meyers and Goldfarb, 1961)that such factors as amount of maternal encouragement to speak,maternal questioning, and maternal grammar may be etiological inthe development of the language disorder found in infantile au­tism. Recent research (Cantwell et al., 1977) indicates that there isno significant difference in the language of mothers of autisticchildren and the mothers of children with developmental receptivedysphasia. However, it is still possible that the language of mothersof children with such language impairments will be different fromthe language of mothers of normal children of a comparable level

606 Dennis P. Cantwell and Lorian Baker

of language. Whether such a difference would contribute to, ormerely be a response to, the child's abnormal language is a ques­tion for further research.

As a first-step approach to understanding the role of maternallanguage for language-impaired children, this paper will reportdata on the language environment of language-impaired children.In particular, the following questions will be examined:

1. What types and amounts of "teaching devices" are present inthe maternal language heard by language-impaired children?

2. Is there any correlation between the level of language acquisi­tion for these children and the degree of complexity of ma­ternal language?

3. Is there any correlation between the level of language ac­quired by these children and the amount of "teachingdevices" present in the maternal language?

4. Is there any correlation between the level of language ac­quired by these children and the amount of "encouragementto speak" in the maternal language?

METHOD

The subjects for this study were selected from a pool of 26language-impaired males, half diagnosed (according to the criteriaof Rutter, 1974) as having infantile autism, and the other halfdiagnosed as having developmental receptive dysphasia (hence­forth "dysphasia"). All children had a nonverbal IQ of at least 70,and had no overt signs of neurological disorder or peripheraldeafness. Further details of this patient group are presented inBartak et al. (1975).

One-hour-long tapes were made in the homes of the children,during a "routine" interaction between the children and theirmothers. The middle half hour of these tapes was then extractedand subjected to detailed analyses of both the mothers' and thechildren's language. The results of these analyses are reportedelsewhere (Cantwell et al., 1977). For the purposes of this paper,we need to state only that we found little difference in the com­munication styles of the two groups of mothers. Because of thisfinding, the two groups were pooled for this study.

From the analyses of the children's language, we estimated thetotal expressive language abilities of each child, using a method ofanalysis which involved totaling the number of morphological

Language Environment of Autistic Children 607

rules, phrase-structure rules, and transformational rules used bythe child. Based on the results of this analysis, the 5 children withthe best language and the 5 children with the worst language wereselected from the pool for this study. The "high" language childrenwere all able to form correct noun phrases, verb phrases, preposi­tional phrases, and noun-phrase plus verb-phrase sentences. Inaddition, they were able to use simple transformations such asquestion and negative, and a range of morphological structuresincluding plural, past, progressive, and pronoun case. The 5 "low"language children were unable to form correct phrases, or to usemorphological or transformational rules. Two of these 5 childrenwere generally mute, forming at best one-word utterances. Theother 3 children generally used one-word, and occasionally two­word utterances.

In both the "high" and "low" groups, 2 children were dysphasicand 3 autistic. The mean age of the "low"-language group was 10;6 years, and the mean age of the "high" language group was 10; 4years.

Maternal language samples (from the half-hour taped extracts)were then analyzed and compared between the "high" and "low"language groups. Maternal language was analyzed both structurallyand functionally so that conclusions about both the structure oflanguage and the use of language in the mothers could be made.The structural analysis consisted of measures of mean sentencelength, mean preverb length, I percentage of utterances that wereonly phrases, percentage of utterances that were only one-wordutterances, and percentage of utterances that were self-repetitions.The functional analysis consisted of a tally of the percentage ofutterances that fell into each of 14 functional language categories(developed by Howlin et al. [1973] for the study of maternal lan­guage). These categories are: questions, answers, imitations of thechild's speech, mitigated echoing of the child's speech, reductionsof the child's speech, expansions of the child's speech, correctionsof the child's speech, directed mimicry, prompts, direct reinforce­ments, directions, statements, affectionate remarks, and criticalremarks.

I Mean preverb length refers to the ratio of the total number of words before the mainverb in all clauses to the total number of clauses. Imperatives are excluded from thesecounts. This is a commonly used measure of sentence complexity.

608 Dennis P. Cantwell and Lorian Baker

RESULTS

Grammatical Complexity

The data on the grammatical complexity of the maternal languageare presented in table 1. For each of the measures, the mothers ofthe higher-functioning children averaged greater complexity thanthe mothers of the lower-functioning children. Mean sentencelength, mean preverb length, and number of utterances weregreater; and one-word utterances, phrase utterances, and self­repetitions were fewer in the "high" language group. For meansentence length, mean preverb length, and self-repetitions, thedifferences were statistically significant.

Maternal Attention to Child's Speech and Language

All maternal utterances were rated as to whether they wereoriented to the child's speech or not. Utterances that were ques­tions, answers, imitations, mitigated echoes, reductions, expansions,corrections, directed mimicries, prompts, or reinforcements wereclassed as "speech-oriented" utterances. Statements, directions, andapproving or critical remarks were considered "not speech­oriented." The results of this analysis are presented in table 2.Maternal speech was significantly more speech-oriented among themothers of higher-functioning children and significantly lessspeech-oriented among mothers of lower-functioning children.

As a next step, speech-oriented utterances were broken downinto two types: utterances that encouraged the child to speak andutterances that responded to the child's speech. "Encouraging" ut-

Table I

Complex itv o[ :\Iaterllal Lang uag« [or "High" and "Low"Language-Impaired Children

"High" Group:\Ieall S.D.

"Low" GroupMean S.D.

:\Iean scnn-ncc length (in words)":\Iean proverb leng th (in words)"(~ of utterances that were oulv one-word'.; of uucrauccs that were only phrases'; of utterances that were self-repetitions"

Total number of utterances

~,.il

:!.Xfi10.6011.000.60

:!:JHO

O.X:!(1.117."-,7".!I(i0.89

103.71

;l.X:! (l.(;{'

:!.O:! 0.·11IX.:!O 1:1.:!0

1".60 4.;l9!I.60 7.;l7

149.40 59.63

• I' < .01 hI' < .05 (:\Iann-Whitney u-test)

Language Environment of Autistic Children 609

terances included questions, directed mimicries, and prompts; "re­sponding" utterances were answers, imitations, mitigated echoes,reductions, expansions, corrections, and direct reinforcements.The results of this analysis are presented in table 3. The "high"language children had significantly more "encouraging" utterances.They also did more "responding" to children's speech, althoughthis was not significantly different in the two groups.

Table 2

Maternal Focus on Speech

"High" GroupMean S.D.

"Low" GroupMean S.D.

',Y" of total utterancesMaternal speech oriented to child's

speech'Maternal speech not oriented to child's

speech"

"p < .01

55.-10

·12.-10

Table :I

7.50

6.66

27.40

71.20

7.70

6.55

Breakdown of Maternal Speech Focused on Child Speech

"HiKh" Croup~Iean S.I).

"Low" GroupMean S.D.

% of utterancesEncouraging child to speak'Responding to child's speech

'p <.01

39.2016.20

:J.!I:I(j.1O

I!I.HO7.60

1.:18750

"Teaching Devices" and Interaction Pattern

The data on the mothers' use of "teaching devices" and interactionpatterns are presented in table 4. From inspection of this table, it isapparent that there is a general pattern of interaction that allmothers seem to follow, but that there are also differences withinthis general pattern between the high- and low-functioning groups.The 3 most frequently used categories of interaction for allmothers were questions, directions, and statements. However, themothers of the higher-level children had significantly fewer direc­tions and significantly more questions than the mothers of the

610 Dennis P. Cantwell and Lorian Baker

Tahk'i

T ..aching D.. \,i(TS and Inl ....art ion Pat t .... ns m Mal cr nal Sp(ull

"Low" GroupMean S.D.

'.; of utu-raurcs thai ar .. :

QII('st ions',\ nswcrsImitations of dli1<I's sp....chI\lili~al ..d ('dlOes of child's sp('nllR..durt ions of child's sp('ed,Expansions of child's speechCorrert iou« of child's s)",e('11DinTt(,,1 mimirrv

Prompts"Din-ct r<'infOl'Cl'nH'nts of child's speechDinTI ions, demands"Sta 1"II11'lIls

,\ff<on iona I" n-marksCrit iral remarksXouvcrba], orhcr

"High" (;l'OlIpMean S,D.

:I:I.XI) 1.1 ".:I.XI) 7.,1:;:!.I)O 1.11IUIO lUll)I).:!I) 1),1,·,

~.~() L't:!:!.OO 1,1111

IUlO IUlO~•. 1() ,1.1)1

s.oo ~.!j:i

I:UO !I.:11:!li.1Il II.".!I

I.XO 1.lilO.XO 1.:1Il:!.:!O :!,I!I

IH.:!O0.1)1):!,1Il(UIOn.oo(UiO

1.00(UiO:!,HO

:H.OO:!H.'1Il

7.:!1)1.10I.I~.

:I.!II)1).1)0:!,:lIl(UlOIU)()

1.:11:!.O(i1.i:1O.X!I:1.11

J:!.1tIIli.:!O(i.7:!

O.X!'1.11

"p<,I),., "1'<.01

lower-level children. The mothers of the higher-level children alsohad significantly more prompts than the mothers of the lower-levelchildren.

DISCUSSION

The grammatical complexity of the language of mothers of age­matched language-impaired children differed according to thelevel of the children's language. These findings are in keeping withthose of Spradlin and Rosenberg (1964) and Siegel and Donovan(1964) that adults speak differently to high- and low-level retardedchildren, and with those of Marshall and Hegrenes (1973) thatmothers speak differently to normal and retarded children. Thefindings are also compatible with those reported by Snow (1972),Phillips (1973), and others that with normal children mothers ad­just the complexity of their language to the level of the child'slanguage. Apparently, mothers make an adjustment of their lan­guage based on their children's language and independent of theirchildren's age. Although only few data regarding norms for mater­nal language are published, it does not appear that the mothers of

Language Environment of Autistic Children 611

these language-impaired children adjusted their language furtherdown than would mothers of normals of a comparable languagelevel. Snow (1972) reported on the language of mothers of 2-year­olds. She found that approximately 16% of utterances were phrases,and that repetitions varied from 3 to 8% (depending on task). Thesefigures are close to those presently reported for low-level (esti­mated mean language age 18 months) children. Unfortunately,comparisons of Snow's mean sentence lengths and the present onesare not possible since she used different definitions of utterances.(She considered "run-on" sentences to be one utterance, whereaswe considered them to be two or more). When more data areavailable on maternal language, it will be possible to determinewhether mothers of language-impaired children oversimplify theirlanguage for their children. However, this does not appear to bethe case from our data.

Salzinger et al. (1975) reported that in normal nursery school­age children, child language was a function of the extent to whichmothers tended to elicit responses during conversations. This alsoappears to be the case in our data where both more maternalattention to child speech and more maternal encouragements tospeak occurred in the "high" language group than in the "low"language group. Whether the children's better language was a re­sult of this maternal attention and encouragement or whether themothers were simply responding themselves to already superiorlanguage in the children remains to be seen. However, some re­search indicates that child language can be controlled by ma­nipulating the amount of maternal prompts and focus on childlanguage (Rosenthal et aI., 1970; Whitehurst et aI., 1972). The de­tailed pictures of maternal language presented here suggest thatquestions and prompts may be the categories of maternal speechmost in need of increase among mothers of low-level children.Despite the fact that the mothers of low-level children used signifi­cantly fewer prompts and questions than the mothers of high-levelchildren, there is no evidence that their usage is abnormally low.Again, data are scarce in this area, but Moerk (1972) has reportedon the language use of the mother of a normal 2-year-old. Prompts(labeled "prodding" by Moerk) constituted approximately 1% ofutterances, and questions constituted approximately 5% of utter­ances. These figures are actually lower than the ones reported herefor the low-level mothers.

612 Dennis P. Cantwell and Lorian Baker

In conclusion, the language of mothers of language-impairedchildren did differ in relation to the amount of language the childhad acquired. Although the maternal language was much simplerthan the language of mothers of normal children of the samechronological age, it did not appear that the language was moresimple than that of mothers of normal children of the same lan­guage level. Therefore, there was no evidence that oversimplifica­tion of maternal language contributed to the children's poor lan­guage. It is possible, however, that manipulation of the maternallanguage could promote improvement in the children's language.This remains a question for further research.

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