Dissertation

i
Language Interaction in Children with Autism: the Effect of
Mother’s Speech on Conversational Development
Amy L. Duff
PS6001: Research Dissertation
Department of Psychology, University of Chester
Supervisor: Dr. Julian Lloyd
Word Count: 7668
Key Words: Mother, Child, Dyad, Interaction, Conversation, Autism, ASD,
Neurotypical, Typically Developing

ii
Declaration
I have read and understood the University of Chester’s plagiarism policy; I
hereby declare that this is my own original work and has not been submitted in
relation to any other degree or qualification.
Signed __________________________
Printed __________________________
Date __________________________

iii
Meeting Log
Name: Amy Duff
Supervisor: Dr. Julian Lloyd
Date Discussion Topics Actions Agreed
09.10.13  Use of CHILDES database
to find transcripts (autism,
down syndrome, typically
developing)
 Possibly using ALICC to
code transcript data
 Read through three papers
provided
 Decide whether ALICC will be
used
 Look into similar research
 Explore and become familiar
with the CHILDES database
16.10.13
Julian on sick leave
23.10.13
12.11.13  ALICC will be used to code
transcripts
 Query for proposal, will
stats be used at all?
 How to structure the
method section (qualitative
archival data)
 Complete and print ethics form
on blue paper
 Get draft proposal finished and
checked
 Removal of down syndrome
sample
31.01.13 Proposal deadline
01.11.13 Ethics form deadline
28.11.13  Received mark of 58 for
proposal
 Feedback on this and
points for improvement
 Ethical approval granted
 Julian emailed transcripts
and pilot transcripts
 Try to get pilot transcripts
completely coded
 Note anything that was
complicated or that I noticed
might be concerning
03.12.13  Discussion of proposal in
more detail
 Julian provided a guideline
to use for structuring my
introduction
 Attempt to re-write my proposal
based on this in order to base
dissertation introduction on
07.01.14  Coding program found
 Files cleaned up and
prepared for coding
 Piloting of coding complete
 Begin coding of transcripts
 Work on introduction/method
section

iv
15.01.14  Organisation of a meeting
plan
 Decide on work plan, dates and
deadlines
04.02.14  Run through of dissertation
presentations
 Make suggested amendments
25.03.14  Discussion of dissertation
deferral and the impact on
the timeline/deadline
 Focus main attention on exams
– after this can concentrate on
dissertation
03.04.13 Dissertation deferral accepted, new deadline: 18.08.14 12pm
19.05.14
Exams
03.06.14
24.06.14  Completion of transcript
coding
 Continuation of writing
introduction
 Keep reading background
material for use in introduction
28.06.14  Guidance for results
section
 How to compile, calculate
and report data
 Suggested reading
 Put raw data into Excel files,
one for each participant
 Work out utterance proportions
 Read suggested papers
 Create graphs/tables to analyse
patterns
02.08.14  Extra guidance for
results/discussion
 Narration for draft feedback
suggested by Julian
 Work on finalising the report
 Draft deadline set
11.08.14 Dissertation draft deadline
13.08.14  Feedback given on draft
 Take feedback on board and
make any necessary
changes/improvements for
final submission
18.08.14 Dissertation final deadline
Supervisor Signature: ___________________________
Student Signature: ___________________________

v
Acknowledgements
I would like to personally acknowledge my dissertation supervisor, Dr. Julian
Lloyd for going above and beyond all expectations. His ongoing support, patient
guidance and unwavering commitment, especially during times of great
pressure are highly appreciated. Julian’s expert knowledge and valuable advice
was indispensable during the planning and development of this project.
Additionally, his regular contact and encouragement have enabled me to remain
confident and focused during periods when the project became particularly
challenging.
I would also like to thank Mr. Brian MacWhinney who currently directs and
maintains the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) database.
Without this system, it would not have been possible to access the archival
transcripts used in this project.
Sincere thanks to Siân Duffin for her unwavering assurance and constructive
criticism during the draft stages of development.

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Table of Contents
Title Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i
Declaration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii
Meeting Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Table of Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi
List of Tables/Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii
Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Apparatus/Materials/Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Design and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Results and Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

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Conversational Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Syntactical Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Summary of Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Implications, Applications and Future Research . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Appendix A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Appendix B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Appendix C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Appendix D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Appendix E . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Appendix F . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

viii
List of Tables/Figures
Table 1: Stages of infant language development 3
Table 2: Utterance codes and examples 21
Table 3: Mean proportions of utterance type 25
Table 4: Conversational styles of each participant 30
Table 5: Number of utterances and discourse participation 32
Figure 1: Diagnostic criteria for autism 14
Figure 2: Pie charts for child with autism utterance proportions 26
Figure 3: Pie charts for mother of child with autism utterance proportions 27
Figure 4: Pie charts for control child utterance proportions 28
Figure 5: Pie charts for control mother utterance proportions 29
Figure 6: Number of utterances for each participant 33
Figure 7: Mean length of utterance for both children 35

1
Abstract
Maternal input during the early stages of development is important to the
language and conversational development of children and can cause increases
in linguistic ability (Furrow, Nelson & Benedict, 1979; Barnes, Gutfreund,
Satterly & Wells, 1983). Children with autism experience problems with social
interaction and so it can be inferred that the linguistic environment for them
would be very different to that of typically developing children. The present
study examined transcripts of two children’s conversations with their mothers
over a 13 month period. The aim of the study was to investigate whether
maternal conversational style had an impact on children’s conversational
development over time. Adam was typically developing, and Roger had a
diagnosis of autism. The mother of the child with autism used an interrogative
and imperative conversational style which appeared to encourage interaction
and engagement; this could therefore be described as an adaptive
communication strategy in response to the child’s autism. This suggests that
maternal conversational style does influence children; utilising a responsive,
interrogative and imperative speech style may benefit children with autism by
encouraging interaction, thus allowing conversational ability to develop over
time. This research might be implicated into communicative interventions, i.e. if
certain maternal responses improve the abilities of children with autism then
these behaviours can be targeted. Applications to parenting and education are
also discussed. Future research should aim to add more recent research to the
field and should examine larger samples over a longer developmental period in
order to collect more reliable evidence.

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Language Interaction in Children with Autism: the Effect of Mother’s
Speech on Conversational Development
Children’s conversational interactions with their mothers, particularly during
early developmental stages, may be a fundamental element that influences the
child’s conversational and linguistic development. Individuals with autism have
impairments of social interaction and so it can be inferred that experiences of
conversation would be different to typically developing children. The present
paper purposed to examine conversations between two children (one with
autism and one typically developing) and their mothers. With the aim of
determining the impact of autism and whether experiences with maternal
interaction affect conversational style (type of utterances used e.g. questions,
clarifications...) or conversational development over time (discourse
participation and mean length of utterance).
There is very little recent research in terms of conversational development and
so the ultimate aim of the current study was to enhance understanding of the
significance of social interaction to conversational development over time. This
understanding could be especially beneficial to parenting, education and
intervention for children with autism.
Typically developing individuals, also referred to as ‘Neurotypical’ are regarded
as “exhibiting ordinary, as opposed to autistic, thinking and behaviour”
(“Neurotypical”, 1994). For these children, language development begins early
in life; there are many studies supporting the notion that newborns recognise

3
and prefer the voice of their mother as they can hear her in the uterus
(Kisilevsky et al., 2009; Moon, Lagercrantz & Kuhl, 2013; May, Byers-Heinlein,
Gervain & Werker, 2011). Typically developing children tend to follow a specific
pattern of acquiring and developing language as detailed in Table 1 below:
Table 1: Stages of infant language development, age and examples – adapted
from http://emedia.leeward.hawaii.edu/hurley/Ling102web/mod5_Llearning/5mod5.3_acquisition.htm
Pre-linguistic
 Vocal tract not fully developed
 Laughter emerges: 4 months
~ 0-6 months Reflexive crying and
vegetative sounds
(coughing, sneezing)
Babbling
 Vowel + consonant pair sounds
 Vocal play: 4-7 months (squeals, growls,
snorts, yelling, whispering, “raspberries”)
~6-8 months “Mamama”,
“dadada”, “bababa”
Holophrastic
 Single words used
 Over-extension (everything on four legs is
a dog)
 Under-extension (only daisies are called
flowers)
~9-18 months “More”, “up!”,
“doggie”
Two-word
 Begin pairing two words to convey needs
 Massive vocabulary growth, learning 1-3
words per week
~18-24 months “More juice”, “go
play”, “daddy work”
Telegraphic
 Simple sentences
 Lack grammar and other complex
structures
~24-30 months “Doggie go bye-bye”,
“no mummy, not
night-night!”
Multiword
 Grammatical and functional structures
emerge
~30+ months
“I would like to go to
the park today”

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From Table 1 it can be seen that children’s language gets progressively more
complex over time as they pass through each stage. Pre-linguistic noises
change to babbled testing of vowels and consonants; holophrastic one-word
phrases are then used until the child can combine two-words; lack of
grammatical understanding leads to telegraphic speech until these rules can be
learnt for proper developed conversational/linguistic skill. This pattern is
reported in all countries for children from various different backgrounds,
cultures, methods of upbringing and mother tongues (Lenneberg, 1967, cited in
Butler, 1974); this suggests that the pattern is universal to all children.
Conversely, Bates and colleagues (1994) argue that there are individual
differences amongst children during the early stages of syntax development
(language rules – particularly grammar); results suggest that the quality of the
conversational style used by the parent is dependent on the rate of the child’s
linguistic growth. A ‘referential style’ incorporates a high percentage of common
nouns (e.g. cat, boy, food), whereas a ‘closed-class’ style involves the use of
grammatical function words such as prepositions, pronouns and conjunctions.
The majority of parents using a referential style had children who had acquired
a vocabulary of 10-50 words; the closed-class style of interaction shows more
grammatical complexity and so this is displayed by parents whose children have
larger vocabularies (Bates et al., 1994).
Despite this variation, Meier (1991) holds that in all languages sentences follow
a hierarchical structure – words form phrases and phrases make up sentences.
He also details a study by Goldin-Meadow and colleagues (1984), wherein deaf

5
children born to hearing parents were not taught or exposed to sign language
and yet still produced gestures in sentence order that was logical in terms of
chronological time (e.g. point to food, mime eating, point to mother –this might
normally mean “food eating you” but in chronological time, food is eaten by
mother). This suggests that even when children do not hear conversation or see
structured signing (to scaffold and support their own language), the
comprehension of word order can still be observed.
Caregivers (mothers, in particular) are a vital element of a child’s conversational
development and tend to use a specific linguistic style when interacting with a
child; this is referred to as child-directed speech. Child-directed speech has
fewer words per utterance (smaller mean length of utterance), is simplified, and
contains more repetitions and expansions (Cooper & Aslin, 1990).
Hoff-Ginsberg (1990) suggested that maternal interaction scaffolds children’s
conversational development by demonstrating linguistic and interactional
structures that the child will eventually acquire. This might mean that children
either imitate the conversational style of their mother and produce simple, short
and perhaps less grammatical utterances than typical adult-adult conversation
(Hoff-Ginsberg, 1985; Hoff-Ginsberg, 1990); or the mother possibly tailors their
conversational style and linguistic devices to the perceived abilities of the child
(Sokolov, 1993).
Language input from parents to children is sensitive to the perceived ability level
of the child (Huttenlocher, Vasilyeva, Cymerman & Levine, 2002); however, a

6
genetic link may be responsible due to the biological relationship between
parent and child. To remedy this, a second study was conducted wherein the
adult interacting with the child was a teacher. Findings suggested that the
child’s level of ability did not cause the teacher to speak differently to them, but
through interacting with the teacher, the children showed linguistic progression.
It is important to understand the two possibilities here: (1) the caregiver adapts
their speech to the ability of the child; (2) the child progresses due to
conversational strategies used. If the former is true, development may be
slower since a mismatch of perceived ability vs. actual ability may occur; if the
latter is true then there are opportunities to provide support and advice to
parents in terms of helping their child develop as a conversationalist.
The two sides of the argument presented above assume one thing: the mother
and child mutually and reciprocally affect each other. If the mother’s
interactional style has such an impact then it can be asserted that children learn
from all speech that they are exposed to, not just child-directed speech. Adult-
directed speech is faster paced, with lower frequency, less variation in pitch,
shorter pauses, less repetitive phrases and more complex structures (Thiessen,
Hill & Saffran, 2005). Adult-adult conversations tend to be less structured and
more spontaneous; spontaneous speech is less grammatically ‘correct’ and
contains abnormal features such as fillers (ah, umm, err), false starts,
hesitations, mispronunciations etc. (Ward, 1989). Although adults tend to use
child-directed speech while directly interacting with young children, they must
also hear adult-adult conversations at some point. If this is true children should

7
technically acquire the ungrammatical features of adult conversation – but this
does not appear to happen.
It is suggested that children unconsciously filter their linguistic environment and
are predisposed to attend to utterances that address the child by name, are
high-pitched or delivered along with pointing, eye contact and other gestures
(Newport, Gleitman & Gleitman, 1977). These utterances are intended for, and
are more salient to, the child; many studies have shown children prefer child-
directed speech in comparison to that of adult-directed speech (Cooper & Aslin,
1990; Pegg, Werker, McLeod, 1992).Newport and colleagues (1977) proposed
that child-directed speech has properties that aid linguistic development and
this suggests that certain aspects of mother-child conversations facilitate more
efficient learning, allowing the child to become a better conversational partner;
this is fundamental to the current study as the aim is to investigate whether
features of mother’s interactions with their children assist in linguistic and
conversational ability.
Snow’s (1977) study involved analysing interactions between two mothers and
their three to seven month-old children at several points, mean length of
utterance was found to be similar throughout and changes in conversational
style were suggested to reflect the child’s developing ability as a conversational
partner (Snow, 1977). In terms of utterance styles, Taiwo (2010) defined four
classes which are declarative (making a statement), imperative (making
commands/requests), exclamatory (expressing emotion) and interrogative

8
(asking questions) – these were used in the current study to examine
conversational style.
Children’s early experiences of language interaction contributes to syntactic
development, however, this relationship is different at different developmental
periods and for different language domains (Hoff-Ginsberg, 1985). For example,
mothers’ utterance lengths and use of pronouns significantly benefit children’s
speech for one to two year olds (Furrow, Nelson & Benedict, 1979). Questions,
instructions and extended utterances are correlated with linguistic development
at two years of age (Barnes, Gutfreund, Satterly & Wells, 1983); also, the
general amount of input from parents was related to the growth in a child’s
mean length of utterance (MLU) which can be used to measure syntactic
development (Huttenlocher, Vasilyeva, Cymerman & Levine, 2002). MLU is
often measured in morphemes which are the individual units of meaning within
a word. For example, an MLU of two might be “gone / home”, but an MLU of
three could be “go/ing / home”, four “puppy / bring/s / it” and so on; each section
(including –ing, -s, -ed etc.) are one morpheme (for more information on
counting morphemes, refer to Brown, 1973).
Most research suggests that typically developing children have the innate
capacity to acquire and develop language (Hoff-Ginsberg & Shatz, 1982). This
is demonstrated by the way language skills develop quickly in terms of
comprehension and expression, also that children hear an incomplete selection
of language in comparison to the extensive linguistic ability acquired later
(Saffran, Aslin & Newport, 1996).

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Extensive research of feral children – those who experience extreme social
isolation and sensory deprivation, usually denied human contact altogether –
has provided social psychologists with the understanding that these children do
not naturally acquire language (Hoff-Ginsberg & Shatz, 1982; Huttenlocher,
Haight, Bryk, Seltzer & Lyons, 1991). The longer and more pervasive the period
of neglect, the more severe the developmental problems for the child (Perry,
2002); this means that if a child isn’t receiving adequate enough input during
early developmental stages, there is a more pronounced language deficit later.
The famous case of Genie, a girl aged 13 years 9 months, is one that
particularly supports this view. Unlike most other feral children, Genie had
suffered a much longer period of neglect, indeed well into puberty (Fromkin,
Krashen, Curtiss, Rigler & Rigler, 1974). She was described as an
“unsocialised, primitive human being, emotionally disturbed, unlearned, and
without language” (Fromkin et al., 1974, p.84). Genie underwent linguistic
testing and training, her initial progress was described as similar (albeit slower)
to typical first-language acquisition; however, with a much larger vocabulary and
with more grammatical difficulty. This case is important as it highlights the
theory that children have an innate capacity for language, but only through
social interaction are they able to fully develop complex linguistic abilities. This
is particularly important as children with autism also have problems with social
interaction and so they may be developmentally similar to feral children, i.e.
having capacity for language but lack of interactional ability causes difficulties.

10
Chapman (2000) describes a model of language learning that shows nature
(brain capacity, an innate predisposition to learn) and nurture (learning
environment, caregiver interaction) shape a dynamic, efficient language system.
When considering this model in relation to Genie, it could be argued that Genie
was born with the innate mechanisms for language learning, as seen by her
post-hospitalisation progression but only through social interaction with
surrounding therapists and researchers was this possible.
The study of feral children has provided valuable insight into how
developmental potential is largely dependent on linguistic nurturing by caregiver
interaction. It also shows how the linguistic relationship between a child and
their caregiver is reciprocal rather than one-way facilitation (Barnes, Gutfreund,
Satterly & Wells, 1983).
Children with developmental disorders may have a similar problem as feral
children – perhaps they have the innate capacity for language but social
interaction deficits cause problems with conversation development. Conversely,
physical differences in terms of brain structure may affect the components that
allow for full linguistic development regardless of interaction with caregivers.
This creates further questions to add to the nature/nurture debate, do these
children have a physical problem that affects their ability to interact socially
(nature) or does the lack of ability for typical conversation overcome the innate
mechanism (nurture).

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It must be noted that some children do not speak until much later than is typical
(late-talkers) whereas others may be more advanced language learners by the
same point (Caselli et al., 1995). For example, vocabulary differences amongst
children – with one child having acquired fewer than 200 words, another had an
extensive vocabulary of over 800 words – was found to be correlated with the
amount that the mother interacted with the child (Huttenlocher, Haight, Bryk,
Seltzer & Lyons, 1991; Huttenlocher, 1998). This suggests that late-talking
children get similar benefits as typically developing children, i.e. through
interacting more with their child mothers are able to facilitate vocabulary growth
and therefore the child would become a better conversationalist.
It is important to understand the development of late-talkers as late language
emergence is believed to be one of the earliest symptoms of children who later
develop more pronounced language impairments (Zubrick, Taylor, Rice, &
Slegers, 2007). Late-talkers are children who experience a delay in early
acquisition of language which may continue into later developmental stages;
children who have reached the age of two without using word combinations, or
do not possess a vocabulary of over 50 words are classed as late-talkers
(D’Odorico & Jacob, 2006).
There appears to be little difference between conversation style of mothers of
late-talkers and those of typically developing children in terms of content,
grammar, meaning and management of conversation topics (Paul & Elwood,
1991). This means that the ‘s input is unlikely to be a cause of the delayed
language development in the child, especially since these interactions were

12
found to be no more complex, negative or directive than the control group. This
means that the language delay could in fact be a ‘nature’ issue concerned with
genetics, brain structure or language centres..
Contradictory to Paul and Elwood’s (1991) study presented above, much other
research suggests late-talking children actually are handled differently by their
mothers in comparison to typically developing children. D’Odorico and Jacob
(2006) for example found that mothers of late-talking children tended to put less
emphasis on certain words in comparison to control mothers. This shows that
even the prosodic features (intonation, stress, rhythm, pitch) vary in
conversations between late-talking children and their mothers. So does this
mean that the parent simplifies their language, even in terms of prosody, to suit
the child’s delayed ability or does the simplified speech in fact contribute to the
problems for the child in terms of ‘catching up’ from their language delay?
A study by Vigil, Hodges and Klee (2005) compared the speech behaviour of
mothers of late-talking and typically developing children. There was a significant
difference in responsivity, mothers of typically developing children tended to
respond more to their children than mothers of late-talkers. This suggests that
mothers of late-talkers interact less with their children which could be
detrimental to development. Since social interaction is linked to better language
and interactional skills, providing less input to a late-talking child would seriously
hinder opportunities to ‘catch up’ from the delay. However, this finding may be
due to the late-talking children producing less speech than the typically
developing children so there would be fewer instances where the mother was

13
able to respond. Therefore, this result may be an artefact of the methodology
used.
Opposing this, it has been found that mothers of late-talking children tend to
produce significantly more utterances than control mothers, meaning that they
actually interact more (Rescorla, Bascome, Lampard & Feeny, 2001). Despite
this, their children still had a lower MLU and syntactic ability in comparison to
typically developing children. This is particularly interesting because it would be
expected that this higher rate of input provided by the late-talking children’s
mothers would provoke the child to communicate more and therefore facilitate
syntactic development (Rescorla, Bascome, Lampard & Feeny, 2001). There
was a correlation between a responsive communication style (i.e. using
imitations, interpreting and expanding speech) and an more efficient language
production (Girolametto, Bonifacio, Visini, Weitzman, Zocconi & Pearce, 2002).
This shows the vital role that the mother plays in terms of aiding development
language and therefore skill as a conversational partner.
Mothers of children with developmental delay have been shown to approach
their children differently to mothers of typically developing children. Autism
might be described as a more problematic disorder since children with autism
tend to experience severe deficits that are pervasive and although many
children experience an improvement in social abilities, it tends to be a life-long
condition (Watson, Baranek, Roberts, David & Perryman, 2010).

14
Autism Spectrum Disorder is a developmental disorder that usually manifests in
early infancy; the symptoms can be incorporated into the ‘triad of impairments’ –
problems in the areas of socialisation, communication and imagination (Wing &
Gould, 1979, cited in Wing, Gould & Gillberg, 2011). Since it is a spectrum
disorder, some children with autism experience more severe deficits than
others. For the purpose of the current study all references to autism are
specifically indicating high-functioning autism; this is because those with low-
functioning autism are often mute or supply very little in terms of verbal
interaction. Autism is defined by the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM-V) as requiring the satisfaction of certain criteria. These criteria
are summarised in Figure 1 below: (for full details see Appendix A, page 55)
A. Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple
contexts, currently or by history:
1. Deficits in social-emotional reciprocity
2. Deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviours
3. Deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships
B. Restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests or activities, as manifested
by at least two of the following, currently or by history:
1. Stereotyped or repetitive motor movements, use of objects, or speech
2. Insistence on sameness, rigid adherence to routine or ritualised patterns
3. Highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus
4. Hyper- or hypo-reactivity to, or unusual interest in, sensory input
C. Symptoms must be present in the early developmental period
D. Symptoms cause clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or
other important areas of current functioning.
E. These disturbances are not better explained by intellectual disability (intellectual
developmental disorder) or global developmental delay.
Figure 1: Diagnostic criteria for autism, DSM-V (APA, 2013); adapted from
http://www.autismspeaks.org/what-autism/diagnosis/dsm-5-diagnostic-criteria

15
Similarly to typically developing children, those with autism tend to “have
intelligence and language within the normal range functioning” (APA, 2000,
cited in Rao, Beidel & Murray, 2008); the problem lies in being unable to interact
socially with others. Due to this, it can be expected that children diagnosed with
autism at an early stage may be found to have a different social language
environment and/or adults may adopt different conversational strategies when
engaging with a child with autism.
For children with autism the actual process of language acquisition follows a
similar pattern as typically developing children, this is not surprising seeing as
the deficit itself is not of language but of interaction (Tager-Flusberg et al.,
1990). Despite this, language development appears to be more delayed in
comparison to typically developing children (Charman, Drew, Baird & Baird,
2003); this suggests that the initial acquisition of language in children with
autism may be similar to that of late-talkers.
It must be noted that in much autism research the positive effects are only seen
in those on the higher end of the spectrum. For example it has been recently
suggested that, despite interactional challenges, those on the higher end of the
spectrum can be taught conversational skills through intensive training. Chin
and Bernard-Opitz (2000) found providing training to children with high-
functioning autism allowed them to initiate conversation, listen to another
without interrupting, maintain topics and coordinate topic changes suitably. This
research shows how children with autism can still be taught these missing skills

16
through receiving the appropriate interaction; however this may not be the case
for those with low-functioning autism.
Watson and colleagues (2012) found that children with autism have a higher
arousal level than typically developing individuals, meaning they can become so
overwhelmed by stimuli that they find it difficult to attend to child-directed
speech (Watson, Roberts, Baranek, Mandulak & Dalton, 2012) and as a result
find conversation very demanding. This implies that the reason for social deficits
may be caused by difficulty focusing attention on speech in order to learn
through this social interaction.
Because of this difficulty focusing attention, children with autism may be
perceived as unresponsive or uninterested in conversation – this might be
referred to as ‘social aloofness’. Research suggests that mothers of children
with autism who use a higher percentage of simple questions tend to elicit
responses from their children more often (Curcio & Paccia, 1987). This is most
likely because the nature of a question is to obtain a reply and so even in
children with social deficits, the impulse to respond is still observed. This
interrogative conversational style may be an adaptive strategy used by mothers
of children with autism in order to work against this aloofness and be able to
converse successfully.
As is demonstrated above, there is little existing research that focuses
specifically on conversational development of children with autism and those
that do tend to centre on those with high-functioning autism. Much of the

17
literature detailed above is outdated with many of the studies being published
between 1970 and 2000; it must be taken into consideration that there was little
understanding of developmental disorders during the earlier decades.
Interaction with caregivers has shown to be beneficial to developing
conversational abilities in typically developing children and those with autism.
The current study aimed to investigate interactional features and conversational
patterns of mother-child conversations. Two children were compared, Roger
(Tager-Flusberg et al., 1990) who has autism and Adam (Brown, 1973) who is
typically developing. The overall aim of the study is to attempt to understand
how the experience of linguistic interaction with their mothers might help
facilitate children’s development of conversation in terms of style and
complexity, and also to identify whether there are any differences between
typically developing children and those with autism.
Objectives were as follows:
1. To see whether mothers’ conversational style differed based on the
presence/absence of autism
2. To discover if this would affect the conversational style of the child
3. To investigate whether there was any improvement in syntactic ability in
the child over time
Based on these objectives the following hypotheses were determined:

18
H1. The mother of the child with autism will use a conversation style that
would elicit a response from her child in comparison to the control mother
(based on Curcio & Paccia, 1987).
H2. The mother’s conversation style will be reflected in the child (based on
Hoff-Ginsberg, 1990).
H3. The children’s syntactic ability would improve over time – observed in a
growth of mean length of utterance and more participation in
conversational exchanges.

19
Method
Participants
Archival transcripts of conversations between two children and their mothers
were taken from the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES)
(MacWhinney, 2000); CHILDES is a publically accessible databank where
transcripts of children talking are stored for future educational/research use.
Each set of seven transcripts spans 13 months. Although the children are of
different chronological ages, they were selected because their mean length of
utterance is the same in the instance of the first transcript, and so it can be
inferred that they are at a similar stage of syntactic development.
Adam (sampled from Brown, 1973) is aged 2;3 – 3;4 and is typically developing;
the original paper here was the first to describe language development
systematically and greatly enhanced understanding of mean length of
utterance. Roger (sampled from Tager-Flusberg, 1990) is aged 3;9 – 4;10 and
has a diagnosis of autism; the original research found that children with autism
showed a similar course of lexical and grammatical development as participants
with down syndrome and typically developing children, this supported evidence
that the deficit is not in language but in social interaction. Seven archival
transcripts spanning a 13 month period were taken for each child-mother dyad
in order to analyse any changes over time.
British Psychological Society (2010) ethical guidelines were followed (see
Appendix B, page 57 for ethics form), neither mother was referred to by name

20
and both children were given pseudonyms to protect their identity and ensure
confidentiality. The transcripts are available on a publicly accessible database
and each parent has given consent for them to be used for
educational/research purposes.
Apparatus/Materials/Measures
Catherine Bishop developed her Analysis of Language Impaired Children’s
Conversations (ALICC) (as cited in Adams, Lloyd, Aldred and Baxendale, 2006)
which is used to code and analyse the interactions of children with language
problems, this coding technique was adapted for the purpose of the current
study and was applied to both the neurotypical child-mother dyad and also to
the autism child-mother dyad (see Appendix C, page 74 for coding chart).
OpenCode 4.0.2.3 is described in the manual as “a freely distributable,
copyrighted program, known as "freeware", for handling Qualitative Information”
(About OpenCode 4.02, accessed 27/02/14). Microsoft Excel 2007 was used in
order to compile data and create tables and graphs.
Procedure
The 14 transcripts (7 for Adam, 7 for Roger) were taken from the publically
accessible CHILDES database, utterances were pre-numbered by the initial
researchers, (for more information see Bishop et al., 2000; see Appendix D,
page 75 and E, page 78 for example transcripts) and each was coded using
OpenCode 4.0.2.3 and the developed ALICC coding scheme (cited in Adams,
Lloyd, Aldred and Baxendale, 2006). The codes used are presented in Table 2
below along with examples utterances taken from the original transcripts:

21
Table 2: Examples of utterance types coded in transcripts
Utterance type Example
Question (q) “What’s this, Roger?”
Answer (a) “Dat (that) lunch”
Request for attention (ratt) “Hey, hey”
Attention (att) “Hello, Adam”
Request for clarification (rcl) [Your bag] “In my bag?”
Clarification (cl) [“Right arm”] “Oh it’s right on your arm”
Command (comm) “You do it”
Obey (obey) “Okay”
Deny/correct (dc) “That’s not a ball”
Statement (s) “You gave him one before”
Restatement (re) “One before”
Evaluation (ev) “Good boy”
Summarisation (sum) [A set with living room and kitchen] “That’s furniture”
Exclamation (excl) “Wow, thankyou!”
Other (oth) “Mmm”
Uncodable “xxx”
Each utterance was individually coded based upon the above coding scheme,
any utterances that were unfinished or had been transcribed as unintelligible
were coded under “uncodable”. The data gathered from coding was then

22
transferred into Microsoft Excel 2007 to be compiled and analysed for the
following data.
Discourse participation (DP) is the ratio of child utterances to mother
utterances, it is used to show who talked more within a conversation. DP =
number of child utterances / number of mother utterances; a value of 1 indicates
equal participation, <1 the mother talked more, >1 the child talked more. A table
was created using Microsoft Excel that presented DP values as well as the
number of utterances used by each participant at each of the seven time
frames. A graph was presented to visually show the number of utterances for
each participant over time.
Mean length of utterance (MLU) is used to assess the level of syntactic ability of
children; larger MLUs are typical of more developed children. For example
“more / juice” is made up of two morphemes (MLU = 2) and is typical of lower
levels of development whereas “mummy/’s / sing/ing / the / song/s” is seven
morphemes (MLU = 7) and would be seen in a more advanced child. A graph
was presented to show the changes in MLU for each child over time.
A second table was created to show the proportions of each utterance type
used within the conversation as a whole for both mother and child; time frames
were combined to create Time 1 (combining data from Time 1, 2, 3 and 4;
showing earlier developmental stages) and Time 2 (combining Time 5, 6 and 7;
showing later stages of development) due to the amount of data that would

23
need to be presented here (four participants, seven time frames and 20+
utterance types).
There are four classes of utterance as described in a paper by Taiwo (2010).
They are declarative, imperative, exclamatory and interrogative; a fifth class
was added since the current study was observing interactions, this was termed
‘responsive’ – these categories provide information about conversational style
of the individual. The five categories are detailed below with descriptions of
what they are and which codes from the current study were placed in each:
1) Declarative – makes a statement  clarification, statement, restatement,
summarisation
2) Imperative – makes a command/request  attention request, clarification
request command
3) Exclamatory – expresses emotion  exclamation
4) Interrogative – asks a question  question
5) Responsive – responding to a partner  answer, attention, obey,
deny/correct, evaluation
Design and Analysis
The current case study followed the interactions of two children and their
mothers, utilising an exploratory design. The aim of the study was to look for
any conversational/interactional differences between neurotypical mother-child
dyads and those with autism. Transcripts were coded using ALICC (one method
of content analysis) as described above, the data was then transferred into
Microsoft Office Excel 2007 and was analysed for patterns. Tables, graphs and
charts were created in order to visually represent these patterns.

24
Results and Discussion
Results and discussion will be presented in five parts, (1) examination of the
conversational style used by mother and child by analysing the functions of
utterances and any changes over time, (2) exploration of the syntactical
development over time in terms of number of utterance, discourse participation
and mean length of utterance; (3) summary of study findings; (4) discussion of
methodology and the impact of this on the current study; (5) implications of this
study, applications to the wider field and suggestions for future research.
Conversational style
As detailed in the method section of this report there are four classes of
utterance but for the purpose of the current study a fifth has been identified.
Declarative utterances are descriptive statements; imperatives provide
commands or requests; exclamatory utterances express emotions;
interrogatives ask questions; finally, responsive utterances are where a
conversational partner is responding to the other i.e. (interrogative, question)
“what did you have to drink?” – (responsive, answer) “I had juice”.
Learning the utterance types for each participant will help determine the
conversational style that they use. So for example if they use a majority of
statements, restatements and summarisations then their conversational style
would be mostly declarative. Table 3 below presents the mean proportions of
utterance types used within conversations for all participants.

25
Table 3: Mean proportions (%) of the utterance types in conversation at Time 1
(T1) and Time 2 (T2) for each participant
Autism Control
Child Mother Child Mother
T1 T2 T1 T2 T1 T2 T1 T2
Questions 5.26 8.04 26.60 30.44 20.18 24.40 50.48 38.61
Answers 15.52 19.12 1.15 2.48 16.81 13.06 8.25 17.56
Attention request 1.25 0.56 8.00 3.20 0.39 0.65 0.14 0.20
Attention 0.00 0.08 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.03 0.00 0.32
Clarification request 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.07
Clarification 0.00 0.00 0.20 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.37 0.00
Command 5.39 9.49 24.76 27.44 6.60 7.14 4.82 6.26
Obey 0.05 1.67 0.00 0.00 0.08 0.07 0.25 0.19
Deny/Correct 0.26 0.07 2.86 4.47 0.13 0.42 5.80 3.70
Statement 45.09 37.63 26.18 18.90
0.1
45.26 48.26 16.83 19.95
Restatement 18.02 13.43 2.00 1.76 7.56 2.41 10.88 10.50
Evaluation 0.80 1.21 4.42 8.58 0.00 0.10 0.24 0.73
Summarisation 0.00 0.00 0.13 0.00 0.00 0.03 0.36 0.26
Exclamation 1.01 2.61 1.57 0.10 0.23 0.86 0.44 0.37
Other 0.88 3.02 0.85 2.33 0.68 0.90 0.97 0.77
Uncodable 6.48 3.06 0.28 0.29 2.09 1.66 0.16 0.52
The data presented in Table 3 has been visually represented with the following
pie charts for ease of understanding. However, for details of the numerical
figures, refer to Table 3.
For each participant two pie charts have been created, Time 1 (early stages of
development) and Time 2 (later stages) – this shows conversational style for
two time points and this allows enables the assessment of any changes over

26
Question
Answer
Command
Statement
Restatement
Exclamation
Other
Uncodable
Time 2
time. Figure 2 below shows the proportions of utterance types used by the child
with autism during conversation.
Figure 2: Pie charts showing mean proportions of the utterance types in
conversation at Time 1 and Time 2 for the child with autism
As can be seen in Figure 2, the child with autism’s contribution to conversation
mainly consists of statements, restatements and answers (i.e. declarative) with
a smaller proportion of questions (interrogative) and commands (imperative).
This is similar in both time frames but with the proportion of questions and
commands being slightly higher in the second instance; it can therefore be
inferred that the conversational style of the child did not change radically over
the 13 months. From this data it is determined that the primary conversational
Question
Answer
Command
Statement
Restatement
Uncodable
Time 1
Question Answer Attention request Attention
Clarification request Clarification Command Obey
Deny/Correct Statement Restatement Evaluation
Summarisation Exclamation Other Uncodable

27
style of the child with autism is declarative with a tendency towards imperatives
and interrogatives which may be increasing slightly with time.
It is also important to analyse the conversation style of the mother; the literature
presented in the first section of this report suggests that conversational input
may nurture conversational development in children.
conversation at Time 1 and Time 2 for the mother of the child with autism
Here it should be noted that the mother of the child with autism uses a very
different conversational style to her child, and again over time there does not
appear to be much change. It can be seen that the majority of conversation
consists of commands, questions and statements with a smaller proportion of
Question
Attention request
Command
Deny/Correct
Statement
Evaluation Time 1
Question
Answer
Attention request
Command
Deny/Correct
Statement
Evaluation
Time 2

28
evaluation and deny/correct that increases slightly over time and attention
requests that decrease over time. Deny/correct and evaluation comes into the
fifth defined category – ‘responsive’, which shows where the mother reacts to
something said by her child. It can be implied that the mother of the child with
autism uses a more varied style consisting of imperative/
interrogative/declarative, with a responsive style developing over time.
It is important to contrast these results with the control dyad for better
comparisons. Figure 4 shows conversational proportions for the control child.
conversation at Time 1 and Time 2 for the control child
In the control child’s conversations it can be observed that, similarly to the child
with autism, the majority of conversation is spent making statements and
answering to questions. However, differently to the child with autism, the control
Question
Answer
Command
Statement
Restatement Time 2
Question
Answer
Command
Statement
Restatement Time 1

29
child asks questions a lot. There is also a smaller tendency towards
restatements and commands with the number of restatements decreasing over
time. Therefore it can be determined that the conversational style here is
generally interrogative and declarative with a tendency towards imperatives.
The final pair of pie charts is presented in Figure 5 below and details the
conversational proportions of the control mother.
conversation at Time 1 and Time 2 for the control mother
Examining the pie charts, again there doesn’t appear to be any prominent
changes over time. Differently to the mother of the child with autism the control
mother uses lots of restatements and answers; similarly, though, is the use of
Question
Answer
Command
Deny/Correct
Statement
Restatement Time 1
Question
Answer
Command
Deny/Correct
Statement
Restatement
Time 2

30
statements and questions. There is also a similar tendency towards
deny/correct but a much smaller propensity towards using commands. The
control mother’s conversational style is therefore mainly declarative and
interrogative with a tendency towards responsive and imperative.
The conversational styles of these two mother-child dyads are presented in
Table 4 below as a summarisation of the general overarching style and the
smaller conversational style tendencies.
Table 4: Conversational styles of each participant; ↑ indicates possible increase
over time
Participant General conversational
style
Tendency towards
Child with autism Declarative Imperative ↑
Interrogative ↑
Mother of child with
autism
Declarative
Interrogative
Imperative
Responsive ↑
Control child Declarative
Interrogative
Imperative
Control mother Declarative
Interrogative
Imperative
Responsive
As is summarised in Table 4, all participants’ conversational styles include use
of declaratives – this is not unusual since everyone uses statements as this is
the most basic class of utterance. As expected, the child with autism has the
most basic speech style which is mostly declarative. The reaction of the mother

31
to this is to use lots of questions, commands and requests, possibly in order to
elicit responses from the child. This is what was predicted in Hypothesis 1 (H1)
– that the mother of the child with autism would use more interrogatives and
imperatives in order to encourage interaction.
The speech of the control mother was declarative and interrogative, which
appears to be mirrored in the conversational style of the control child; this is
also not a surprising result as children learn language through interactions with
their caregivers and so it is plausible that they would acquire a similar style
(Huttenlocher, 1990). Therefore this satisfies Hypothesis 2 (H2) in that mother
and child will have similar conversational styles. Both mothers were seen to
have a tendency towards a responsive conversational style; this was also to be
expected since they are more highly skilled in conversational abilities and so
would know how to interact appropriately by responding to the other person.
Discourse participation provides information about which individual participated
more during conversation. This is important because it gives us information
about the conversational ability of the child wherein a more capable child would
be able to participate more in social interactions. Discourse participation is
determined the following calculation:
DP = Number of child utterances / number of mother utterances
If the value is 1, this means that both participants were equally involved in the
conversation, a DP of less than 1 means that the mother participated more and
more than one means the child participated more. Table 5 below shows the
number of utterances for each participant and the discourse participation for the

32
child-mother dyads, items in BLUE indicate conversations where the child
participated more:
Table 5: Number of utterances and discourse participation (DP) over a 13
month period for the autism and control mother-child dyads
Time 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Autism Adult utterances 153 333 373 385 389 340 517
Child utterances 117 282 274 536 419 410 349
DP 0.76 0.85 0.73 1.39 1.08 1.21 0.76
Control Adult utterances 645 390 498 338 500 267 476
Child utterances 1294 865 886 549 979 991 901
DP 2.01 2.22 1.18 1.62 1.96 3.74 1.89
The results in Table 5 show that in all seven control conversations, the child
participated in conversation more than the mother, as indicated by a DP of >1
and identified in BLUE. However, looking to the autism dyad, the mother
actually participated more than the child at time 1, 2, 3 and 7. This shows that
the control child may be more conversationally developed than the child with
autism because they are able to dominate conversation with an experienced
linguist. This supports all previous research detailing how children with autism
have difficulties, not in language, but in interaction. Despite this, it must be
noted that at Time 1, 2 and 3 the mother dominates conversation but then at
Time 4, 5 and 6 the child participates more – this might provide evidence that
the child with autism may have developed over time; however, with the revert

33
back to the mother taking over again at Time 7, it is difficult to establish this for
certain.
Syntactical development
An utterance is generally defined as a unit of speech where the pause before
and after is 2 seconds or more, or where a different person speaks (Dore &
McDermott, 1982). The number of utterances for both of the mother-child dyads
over the seven time frames is displayed in Figure 6 below:
Figure 6: Number of utterances for each participant over a 13 month time period
As Figure 6 above shows, the mother of the child with autism and her child
tended to have very similar numbers of utterances; this may suggest perhaps
that because this child contributed less to the conversation, the mother had
fewer utterances to respond to and this could therefore account for this. On the
other hand, the mother may not produce a large amount of utterances in
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
Time 1 Time 2 Time 3 Time 4 Time 5 Time 6 Time 7
NumberofUtterances
Time Frame
Autism Mother Autism Child Control Mother Control Child

34
general and the child has learned from this and adopted this less talkative
conversational style. Another alternate explanation is that the mother has
contributed less than usual to allow the researchers to hear her child’s range of
language.
In comparison to this, the control child produced many more utterances than the
child with autism and around double the amount of utterances than the control
mother in many cases. Despite this considerable difference in number of child
to mother utterances the pattern over time follows the same line; this suggests
that the control child may have produced lots of utterances that did not require a
response, i.e. more rhetorical utterances – possibly talking to self. The number
of utterances for the control mother-child dyad follows an erratic pattern of
increasing and then decreasing between each time point; this more-less-more-
less utterance pattern continues throughout the seven conversations; this
variable pattern may suggest that conversation here is less stable over time
Mean length of utterance (MLU) is another measure of syntactic ability, as
described in more detail in the first section of this report. In this case, the mean
length of utterance of the children was investigated; the mean length of
utterance of adults is generally not important as the interest for the current study
lies in any difference in ability of the children and any changes over time. Figure
7 below is a graph depicting the mean length of utterances of both children over
the seven time frames. Note that at Time 1 both children’s MLUs are the same
and at one time point the lines cross, indicating one child surpassing the other.

35
Figure 7: Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) for the child with autism and the
control child over a 13 month time period
At Time 1 it can be seen that both children had the same mean length of
utterance (MLU) and this suggests that they are at a similar level of syntactical
development. The graph above shows that for both children, the MLU generally
increases over time and up until Time 5 the MLU of the child with autism is
actually longer than the control child; this is particularly unusual as it would be
expected that the control child’s MLU would be longer than the child with
autism. Despite this, it must be noted that even though the child with autism
does have a longer MLU than the control child, up until Time 5 both children are
generally producing utterances that have an MLU of between two and three.
After Time 5 the control child’s MLU surpasses that of the child with autism and
continues to increase for the final two transcripts to just over 4.5 with the child
with autism’s MLU remaining at less than 3.5.
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
4.5
5
Time 1 Time 2 Time 3 Time 4 Time 5 Time 6 Time 7
MeanLengthofUtterance(MLU)
Time Frame
Autism Child Control Child

36
Summary of results
 The mother of the child with autism used lots of questions, commands and
requests (satisfies Hypothesis 1)
 The speech of the control mother was declarative and interrogative, and this
was mirrored in her child (satisfies Hypothesis 2)
 Both mothers had a tendency towards a responsive conversational style
 The control child participated in conversation more than their mother in all
instances; the child with autism participated more at Times 4, 5 and 6
 The autism dyad had a similar numbers of utterances (possibly contributes
to Hypothesis 2)
 The control child produced many more utterances than the child with autism
and double that of their mother in many cases
 The MLU of both children generally increased over time but the MLU of the
child with autism was longer than the control child up until Time 5
(development over time satisfies Hypothesis 3, however the child with
autism having a larger MLU for the first five time points was unexpected)
Methodology
The current study has advantages as well as limitations, both of which are
equally important to discuss. One advantage of the study is that longitudinal and
naturalistic data was used. Longitudinal data is essential in terms of measuring
change (Singer & Willett, 2003), since this study was concerned with
determining the conversational changes, using longitudinal data by using seven

37
time frames provides a relatively accurate portrayal of each child’s
development.
A naturalistic setting enables participants to use more natural behaviour and so
this might suggest that the conversations were a reliable example of typical
conversation without the presence of a researcher (Hintze, Volpe & Shapiro,
2002). Ethical guidelines were all properly adhered to through the entire
research project meaning that both participants and sensitive data were
protected at all times. The Analysis of Language Impaired Children’s
Conversations is also a very detailed and robust coding system that has been
used in many pieces of research (Adams, Lloyd, Aldred & Baxendale, 2006;
Adams & Lloyd, 2005; Adams, 2001).
Despite these positive points, all research has limitations; the current study is
no exception, therefore it is important to take note of the ways in which this
study could be improved upon in the most ideal of circumstances.
During the coding of transcripts the author alone was responsible for deciding
upon which code would be assigned to each utterance; although this may mean
that coding decisions were constant over time, using two individuals to code
and then testing for inter-rater reliability would be able to definitively establish
the status of the reliability of the coding data and the consistency of the coding
process (Barbour, 2001). Using one person to code thousands of utterances
could cause fatigue effects wherein less used codes may have been forgotten

38
and some of the coding process could have been affected by unconsciously
becoming inattentive to this. (Wolfe, 2004)
The data used in this study was obtained from pre-written transcripts which only
accounted for spoken language. Because of this, it is impossible to ascertain
whether body language could have provided more information about these
interactions. For example, nods and shakes of the head, shrugs and other such
behaviours may have demonstrated non-verbal interactions between mother
and child. (Jokinen, 2009; Zoric, Smid & Pandzic, 2007) This might have been
overcome by being able to use video recordings of the original research settings
and also take into account non-verbal interactions.
In addition to this, some of the utterances were uncodable due to being
unintelligible or unfinished and therefore information of undetermined
importance was lost in the transcription process, this is a difficult situation that
occurs relatively frequently when working with children, due to the nature of
language studies, asking children to repeat unintelligible phrases adds more
data that may skew the data.
Internal validity is concerned with causality and whether changing one variable
caused a difference in the outcome for another. For example in the current
study it would need to be established that changing the time frame of
examination definitely caused syntactical and conversational style changes to
be noticeable. Due to the nature of the data being archival, it is impossible to
ascertain that this is true. Information about the linguistic environment outside of

39
the original research setting is not provided and so it is possible that any
changes observed could be a result of outside influences. The child may have
been put in a special English program at school for example, or the mother
could have spent more time doing reading activities at home. This could easily
be overcome by not collecting original data from new participants and providing
a questionnaire to parents about the external literacy environment, however,
due to the time and ethical constraints this was not possible for the current
study.
The present study is of a case study design and only takes into account two
individual male children and their mothers therefore there is a very small sample
size, and due to individual differences it would be unreasonable to attempt to
apply the results to others. This essentially means that the data obtained from
the case study design is unrepresentative and may mean that conclusions can
be over generalised (Bennett, 2004). Using a larger sample of participants
would make the data much more representative of the wider population and so
future research may wish to address this. The fact that both children are boys is
important, however, it is likely that there will always be this gender bias in
research on autism since the male:female ratio is 4:1 (Kanner, 1943; Ehlers &
Gillberg, 1993).
As noted above, the conversations that have been utilised were originally
recorded for a piece of research and involved the presence of two researchers.
Results cannot be applied to everyday situations because the mothers would
have been highly aware of the researchers and so this may have caused

40
demand characteristics, meaning the mothers would have adapted their
behaviour in order to please them or be helpful to the research (Nichols &
Maner, 2008). An example of this might be a mother talking to the child more
than usual or in a more responsive way in order to show researchers that they
can interact more with their child. This may have been overcome by video/audio
recording the mother-child conversations without the presence of researchers
and then analysing the interactions afterwards – this would reduce the pressure
felt by participants and allow for much more natural behaviour.
The study also only observed conversations taking place over a 13 month
period and so conversational and syntactical development may in fact be
different for much earlier periods, and later periods – the apparent consistency
found here may merely be a representation of one 13 month stage of
conversational development, either side could in fact be much different. To
address this, it would be best to observe these interactions over a much longer
period – initial acquisition to full syntactic/grammatical ability would be best.
Coding of conversation topic as well as topic changes and who initiates these
changes may have been interesting as well as informative in terms of
conversational dominance as switching of topics may be perceived as being
more able to navigate between discussion topics. Also measuring other
conversational features that were not taken into account such as vocabulary
diversity may have provided insight into foundation linguistic/syntactic abilities of
the children.

41
Implications, applications and future research
The conversational style of both children and mothers appears to be relatively
consistent over time; however, measuring development has been useful in
showing that conversational ability of children with autism does increase over
time, just possibly a little slower and less noticeably than typically developing
children.
There are significant implications of this research in terms of clinical
interventions. If it is found that children with autism can develop conversational
skills over time through particular maternal interaction, then parents can be
informed of this and may be able to improve communicative issues for their
children despite the deficit in social interaction.
This research could be particularly important for mothers of children with autism
as it has been shown that particular conversational styles may be learnt by
children and reflected in their own speech. Therefore a mother who utilises a
responsive conversational style could find that their child also becomes more
responsive and this might allow for more equal back-and-forth conversations.
Future research is important, especially as the current research is quite
outdated. It would be interesting to look at conversational development over a
longer developmental period from the initial acquisition of language onwards;
using a larger sample size is definitely needed in order to determine the
reliability of the results found here. This would help to reduce a lot of the
limitations faced in the present study as detailed in the sub-section above.

42
Conclusion
Results suggest that mothers of children with autism use a largely interrogative
(questioning) and imperative (commanding/requesting) conversational style
which may have been used to elicit a response from their child; in the control
condition, the conversational style was similar in both mother and child; and
children’s conversational ability generally advanced over time. In conclusion,
these results suggest that maternal conversational style does influence that of
typically developing children. Utilising a responsive, interrogative and imperative
speech style may benefit children with autism by encouraging interaction, thus
allowing conversational ability to develop over time.

43
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Appendices
Appendix A: DSM-V diagnostic criteria for autism 51
Appendix B: Ethics form approved by ethics board 53
Appendix C: Coding scheme 77
Appendix D: Example of section from typically developing transcript 78
Appendix E: Example of section from autism transcript 81
Appendix F: CD disk containing raw data 84

55
Appendix A
Diagnostic and Statistics Manual of Mental Disorders diagnostic criteria
for autism
A. Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across
multiple contexts, as manifested by the following, currently or by history
(examples are illustrative, not exhaustive, see text):
1. Deficits in social-emotional reciprocity, ranging, for example, from abnormal
social approach and failure of normal back-and-forth conversation; to
reduced sharing of interests, emotions, or affect; to failure to initiate or
respond to social interactions.
2. Deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction,
ranging, for example, from poorly integrated verbal and nonverbal
communication; to abnormalities in eye contact and body language or
deficits in understanding and use of gestures; to a total lack of facial
expressions and nonverbal communication.
3. Deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships,
ranging, for example, from difficulties adjusting behavior to suit various
social contexts; to difficulties in sharing imaginative play or in making
friends; to absence of interest in peers.
B. Restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities, as
manifested by at least two of the following, currently or by history
(examples are illustrative, not exhaustive; see text):

56
1. Stereotyped or repetitive motor movements, use of objects, or speech (e.g.,
simple motor stereotypies, lining up toys or flipping objects, echolalia,
idiosyncratic phrases).
2. Insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, or ritualized
patterns or verbal nonverbal behavior (e.g., extreme distress at small
changes, difficulties with transitions, rigid thinking patterns, greeting rituals,
need to take same route or eat food every day).
3. Highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus
(e.g., strong attachment to or preoccupation with unusual objects,
excessively circumscribed or perseverative interest).
4. Hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input or unusual interests in sensory
aspects of the environment (e.g., apparent indifference to pain/temperature,
adverse response to specific sounds or textures, excessive smelling or
touching of objects, visual fascination with lights or movement).
C. Symptoms must be present in the early developmental period (but may
not become fully manifest until social demands exceed limited capacities,
or may be masked by learned strategies in later life).
D. Symptoms cause clinically significant impairment in social, occupational,
or other important areas of current functioning.
E. These disturbances are not better explained by intellectual disability
(intellectual developmental disorder) or global developmental delay.
Intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder frequently co-occur; to
make comorbid diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder and intellectual
disability, social communication should be below that expected for general
developmental level.
DSM-V (American Psychiatric Association, 2013)

57
Appendix B
Completed ethics form as approved by the University of Chester Ethics
Committee
PROJECT TITLE: Language Development in Children with Autism
Spectrum Disorder (ASD): The Effect of Mothers’ Verbal
Interactions
A. Applicant & Personnel
Applicant: Amy Duff Email: 1101807 @chester.ac.uk Tel: 07807643557
Applicant status: ☐Staff ☐Postgraduate research
☒ Undergraduate Module Number: PS6001 Module title: Research Dissertation
☐Postgraduate taught Module Number: Click here to enter text. Module title: Click here
to enter text.
Supervisor, if applicant is a student: Dr Julian Lloyd Email: Julian.lloyd@chester.ac.uk
Tel: 01244 513483
Additional personnel 1: Click here to enter text. Email: Click here to enter text.
Role: Click here to enter text. Tel: Click here to enter
text.
Additional personnel 2: Click here to enter text. Email: Click here to enter text.
Role: Click here to enter text. Tel: Click here to enter
text.
☐ Are there are more personnel  Attach details of
additional personnel
B. Submission Type
1. What is the submission type?
☒First submission to this or any other committee  Go to Section C
☐First submission to this committee; has been submitted to another committee
UNIVERSITY OF CHESTER, DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY
APPLICATION TO DEPARTMENTAL ETHICS COMMITTEE

58
 Give details of the previous submission to another committee. Include committee name, date of
submission and
outcome of submission. Click here to enter text.  Attach previous submission  Go
to Section C
☐Revised submission intended to replace an application approved by this committee
 When was the previous submission approved by this committee? Click here to enter a date.
Give details of the changes that have been made. Click here to enter text.
☐Resubmission of a rejected application by this committee
 Summarise the changes made to the application since it was last considered by this
committee, with reference to
the committee’s comments: Click here to enter text.
C. Funding
2. Is the project subject to external funding?
☒No  Go to Section D
☐Yes  Is funding secured? ☐No  Provide details: Click here to enter text.
☐Yes Funding body and mailing address:
Grant number, if applicable: Click here to enter text. Named PI Click here to enter text.
D. Nature of Research
3. Are you a member of staff applying for approval for a student related research exercise?
☒No  Go to Section E ☐Yes  Module code and name Click here to enter
text.
i. Will the student/s be collecting data unsupervised and outside of lecture/lab time ☐No 
Go to Section E
☐Yes Provide details of how ethical standards will be maintained Attach necessary
documentation. Click here to enter text.
E. Research plan & methodology
Provide a detailed description of the proposed research. You should expect to write a paragraph
on each section.
4. Rationale/background (theoretical justification for conducting the research): There are many
different theories within the field of language acquisition and much
research has been undertaken in order to understand more about the
development of children’s language over time. Research suggests that
caregiver’s verbal interactions play a role in shaping the language of
the child (Hurtado, Marchman & Fernald, 2008) however little is
known about whether this is also true in cases where children have
language impairments such as autism. This study aims to provide
more information about language development in children with
Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in comparison to neurotypical
children, the children’s mothers’ language will also be analysed in
order to determine whether their verbal style and communicative

59
techniques influence the language development of the child over
time.
5. Aims and objectives (expected and desired outcomes of the research; expected impact of the
research): The overall aim of the study is to look at mothers’ verbal
interactions with children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
and to investigate whether the communicative techniques used by
caregivers have any effect on the language development of children
with autism in comparison to those without.
6. Research questions/hypotheses (what you expect to learn): It is predicted that
mothers’ verbal interactions will positively affect language
development in children and that this effect will be greater in
neurotypical children in comparison to those with autism.
7. Procedure (provide a summary of how you will conduct the research. More detailed responses
should be given in the appropriate sections of the form). Pre-existing transcripts will
be taken from the publicly accessible Child Language Data Exchange
System (CHILDES database), half of these will contain conversations
between a neurotypical child and their mother and the remaining
half will contain conversations between a child with autism and their
mother. The transcripts will be coded using a coding scheme based
on the Analysis of Language Impaired Children’s Conversations
(ALICC) (Bishop et al., 2000), data will then be gathered in Microsoft
Office Excel and any patterns in the data will be determined.
8. Proposed timetable for research (include deadlines for data collection and contingency plans
where appropriate) Data collection should be finished by 30th December,
see Gantt chart attached as Appendix A for a more detailed timetable.
9. Is there any risk of psychological or physical harm to participants in the recruitment process,
during data collection or post data collection?
☒No  Go to Section F
☐Yes  Describe and justify any issues of distress (however minor) and provide details of
how they will be
minimised, monitored and managed: Click here to enter text.
10. Is there any deception involved in the study?
☐No  Go to Section F

60
☐Yes  Justify use of deception and provide debrief details: Click here to enter
text.
F. Participants and Recruitment
11. Who do you intend to recruit for participation in your study?
☒No recruitment (e.g. intention to use pre-existing data, media based research or online forums)
 Provide details: Pre-existing public data will be gathered from the
CHILDES database  Go to Q15
☐Human participants  Go to Q12
☐Non-human animal subjects OR Both non-human animal subjects and human participants
 If during the course of the research the costs to the individual animal/s rose above that
expected, describe the point at which you would remove the animal from the research.
Click here to enter text.
 Once the animal has been removed from the research describe how any distress and harm
caused will be dealt with. Click here to enter text.
 If you are working with both human and non-human animal participants and during the course
of the research the costs to the individual animal/s rose above that expected and were
removed from the research is there any likely distress caused to the human participant?
Explain: Click here to enter text.
12. Number of participants /subjects to be recruited (if you are a student you should discuss this with
your supervisor):
13. Was a statistical/power analysis conducted to determine the adequate sample?
☐Yes  Give details: Click here to enter text.
☐No  Describe how you determined the adequate sample size: Click here to enter
text.
14. Where will the proposed recruitment and data collection take place? Check all that apply
☐A University of Chester campus  Give details: Click here to enter text.
☐Online (including SONA)  Before you continue, consult BPS guidelines for online research and ensure you
have provided appropriate details in relevant sections. E.g. participant information; informed consent; withdrawal
procedures etc.
☐Other site(s)  Give details: Click here to enter text.
15. Have health and safety issues been adequately considered?
☒I am a UG or PGT student using pre-existing data and I have attended the recommended
health and safety briefing.
☒Yes  Office use only: Confirmation of attendance y□ n□ → Go to Q28
☐No  Explain why & provide details of alternative arrangements & specific
considerations Click here to enter text.→ Go to Q28

61
☐I am a UG or PGT student collecting data from non-human animal subjects and/or human
participants and I have attended the recommended Health and Safety briefing.
☐Yes  Office use only: Confirmation of attendance y□ n□
☐No  Explain why and provide details of alternative arrangements and specific
considerations Click here to enter text. → Go to Q16
☐I am a member of staff/PGR student and I have attached a risk assessment form. Attach suitable
documentary evidence of permission. If you have not attached documentary evidence explain why. Click here
to enter text.
16. Is permission to recruit potential participants/subjects required from an organisation other than the
University of Chester?
☐Yes  Explain: Click here to enter text. Attach suitable documentary evidence of permission.
If you have not attached documentary evidence explain why.
☐No  Explain: Click here to enter text.
17. Will participants fall into any of the following special groups?
☐Schoolchildren (under 16 yrs of age)
☐People with learning or communication difficulties
☐Patients/clients
☐People in custody
☐People engaged in illegal activities (e.g. drug-taking)
 If any of the above boxes are checked consult BPS guidelines on the protection of vulnerable persons. If you are
a student, consult with your supervisor before continuing with your application.
☐None of the above  Go to Q18
If you are working with vulnerable persons, ascertain whether it is necessary to obtain satisfactory CRB clearance (or
equivalent for overseas students) for all applicants who will be in contact with vulnerable persons, then check one of
the
following:
☐CRB clearance obtained and shown to supervisor.
☐CRB clearance is not necessary  Explain: Click here to enter text.
Attach suitable documentary evidence. If you have not attached evidence explain why: Click here to enter
text.
18. How will potential participants be identified and recruited? Click here to enter text.
19. Indicate the types of recruitment to be used and attach copies of all materials. If you have not attached
evidence explain why: Click here to enter text. Check all that apply
☐SONA ensure you have the required number of credits
☐Letters/emails to potential participants
☐Social media (twitter/facebook)
☐Flyers/posters/brochures
☐Verbal script (face-to-face or telephone recruitment)
☐Websites
☐Powerpoint presentation
☐Newspaper/magazine advertisements ☐Radio/tv advertisements
☐Other Click here to enter text.

62
Explain how contact information was obtained: Click here to enter text.
 Do you need permission to contact potential participants and/or display material?
☐No ☐Yes Explain and give details: Click here to enter text.
20. Will this research exclude persons from the participation or analysis stage on the basis of:
☐Gender ☐Ethnicity ☐Age ☐Sexual orientation ☐Mental health issues ☐Specific
learning difficulties
☐Physical factors (e.g. physical ability, visual acuity, language/accent, handedness etc)
☐Other Explain Click here to enter text.
i. If you are excluding any participants on the basis of any of the above categories,
please justify their exclusion and discuss how any issues of distress and/or
embarrassment arising from the exclusion will be minimised, monitored and
managed during this process. Click here to enter text.
No exclusions apply ☐
21. Will potential participants be asked any screening questions to determine whether they will be
recruited?
☐No  Go to Q22 ☐Yes  Explain and describe how you will minimise, monitor and
manage any issues
of distress and embarrassment: Click here to
enter text.
22. How will informed consent be sought? Click here to enter text.
23. How will anonymity and confidentiality be maintained during recruitment and data collection?
24. How will participants be able to withdraw from data collection? Click here to enter text.
 Is there a time limit for withdrawal? Explain: Click here to enter text.
 What will happen to any partially collected data? Explain: Click here to enter text.
25. What is the time commitment expected of participants? Click here to enter text.
26. Indicate the type and amount of compensation participants will receive. ☐None  Go to Q27
Amount value: Click here to enter text.. ☐Money: ☐Gift certificate: ☐Travel
Expenses: ☐Other: Explain: Click here to enter text.

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