Content words in child-directed speech of mothers toward children with autism spectrum disorder

Purpose: Our study aimed to analyze the characteristics of content word usage in mother’s child-directed speech (CDS) toward children with autism spectrum disorder compared to mother’s CDS toward typically developing children. Method: We analyzed the lexical characteristics of CDS of mothers of children with autism (16 dyads) and compared them from a language developmental perspective to mothers of 20 typical children at the same level of expressive language development. Results: Results suggest that mothers of children with autism use equal amounts of content words at the same language level, but the content consists of significantly more concrete nouns and active verbs and rarely the use of abstract nouns, stative verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Conclusion: This study suggests that professionals and parents of children with autism should be aware of the importance of varying their language use of content words.