Caregiver linguistic alignment to autistic and typically developing children
Background: Language development is a highly interactive activity. However, most research on linguistic environment has focused on quantity and complexity of linguistic input to children, with current models showing that complexity facilitates language in both TD children and autistic children.Aims: We investigate the presence and sensitivity of caregivers’ active reuse of their children’s language (linguistic alignment), and how well it predicts language development beyond other measures of linguistic input, taking also into account the child’s cognitive, social and linguistic abilities.Methods: We measure lexical, syntactic and semantic types of caregiver alignment in a longitudinal corpus involving 32 adult-autistic child and 35 adult-TD child dyads, with children between 2 and 5 years of age. We assess the extent to which caregivers repeat their children’s word, syntax and semantics, and whether this predicts language development beyond more standard predictors. Results: Caregivers tend to re-use their child’s language in a way that is related to the child’s individual, primarily linguistic differences. Caregivers’ alignment provides unique information improving our ability to predict future language development in both typical and autistic children. Conclusions: We provide evidence that language acquisition also relies on interactive conversational processes, previously understudied. We share open-source scripts to systematically extend our approach to new contexts and languages.