1. Infant Directed Speech with infants at risk of Autism Spectrum Disorder Jean Quigley School of Psychology Trinity College Dublin Funded by IRCHSS

2. Mother-Infant interaction A co-construction Mother’s vocal style shapes infant vocalisations & responsiveness Infant’s initiating, attending & responding behaviour shapes mothers’ responsiveness Interaction between at-risk infants & mothers?

3. Infant Directed Speech (IDS) Main functions communicates affect harnesses infant preferences engages infant attention facilitates language acquisition Dynamic & adapted to changing needs of infant

4. Participants 18 mothers: Mean age 34 yrs 2nd/3 rd level ed. low-to-mid SES 19 infants: Mean age 1 st visit: 3.7(LR)/5.2 (HR) 10 low-risk (LR), no known risk factors (7m;3f) 9 high-risk (HR), older sib(s) clinical diagnosis of ASD (4m;5f, incl. MZ girls)

5. Methodology Prospective video analysis of naturalistic face-to- face interaction All speech & vocalisations analysed Tests (12, 18, 24, 36 months) Bayley Scales of Infant Development—III Ed. Early Social Communication Scales

6. Grammatical IDS Data for language acquisition HR mothers lower MLU, VOCD, total # word types more zero clause utterances, up to 80% of input more use of infant’s name in isolation sig. associations: positive correlations only with HR 12 month language scores Quigley, J. Mother’s infant directed speech to preverbal infants at-risk for autism. International Meeting For Autism Research, San Diego 2011.

7. Functional IDS Important in shaping infant responsiveness HR mothers more attention devices more clarification requests less contingent /responsive utterances sig. associations: only for LR dyads Quigley, J. & McNally, S. (2013). Maternal communicative style in interaction with infant siblings of children with Autism, Language, Interaction, Acquisition, 4(1).

8. Prosodic IDS Pitch range narrows, utterance intensity decreases with infant age HR mothers (12-18 months) higher pitch range & utterance intensity, increases with age. atypical trajectory of prosodic expression & preference. Quigley, J., McNally, S., & Lawson, S. Prosody in infant-mother dyads at-risk of autism. Child Language Seminar, Manchester 2013.

9. Infant vocalisations Mothers selectively respond/imitate vocalisations Infants use this feedback to shape babbling HR dyads (18 months) infants more dev. less complex vocalisations mothers imitate & respond to more non speech-like vocalisations sig. associations only for LR dyads Quigley, J. & McNally, S. Maternal response patterns to infant vocalisations. 3 rd Early Language Acquisition Conference Lyon 2012.

10. Conclusions Early identification via maternal rather than infant behaviour Risk sensitivity important factor Few outcome associations: language development facilitated only when child actively engaged Infant behaviour alters the input they receive leading to potential cascading effects on language development.