Defining spoken language benchmarks and selecting measures of expressive language development for young children with autism spectrum disorders.
OBJECTIVE
The aims of this article are twofold: (a) to offer a set of recommended measures that can be used for evaluating the efficacy of interventions that target spoken language acquisition as part of treatment research studies or for use in applied settings and (b) to propose and define a common terminology for describing levels of spoken language ability in the expressive modality and to set benchmarks for determining a child's language level in order to establish a framework for comparing outcomes across intervention studies.


METHODS
The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders assembled a group of researchers with interests and experience in the study of language development and disorders in young children with autism spectrum disorders. The group worked for 18 months through a series of conference calls and correspondence, culminating in a meeting held in December 2007 to achieve consensus on these aims.


RESULTS
The authors recommend moving away from using the term functional speech, replacing it with a developmental framework. Rather, they recommend multiple sources of information to define language phases, including natural language samples, parent report, and standardized measures. They also provide guidelines and objective criteria for defining children's spoken language expression in three major phases that correspond to developmental levels between 12 and 48 months of age.
Tager-Flusberg
Helen
H
Department of Anatomy, Boston University School of Medicine, 715 Albany Street L-814, Boston, MA 02118, USA. htagerf@bu.edu
Rogers
Sally
S
Cooper
Judith
J
Landa
Rebecca
R
Lord
Catherine
C
Paul
Rhea
R
Rice
Mabel
M
Stoel-Gammon
Carol
C
Wetherby
Amy
A
Yoder
Paul
P
D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000150:complications / Q000523:psychology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007804:Language Development; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000150:complications / Q000523:psychology; D007807:Language Tests; D054583:National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (U.S.); D010290:Parents; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D013060:Speech; D009626:Terminology as Topic; D014481:United States