The effects of dialogic reading on the expressive vocabulary of children with autism characteristics

Delayed language development is often the primary concern for parents of children with autism. It is this delay that initially provokes parents to have their children evaluated for the disorder. Delayed oral language affects an array of important life skills such as social communication and emergent literacy. This study has been designed to target expressive vocabulary, a fundamental aspect of language, using a storybook intervention based on dialogic reading. The differential effects of dialogic reading enhanced with attention cues compared to dialogic reading alone on expressive language behaviors were measured using an alternating treatment design. The results of this study indicate that the participants with autism spectrum characteristics benefited from dialogic reading with or without attention cues. All the children with autism were able to increase their vocabulary use by the completion of the intervention regardless of the treatment condition. Additionally, positive gains were noted on the standardized assessments related to vocabulary acquisition. The teachers of the children with autism reported the interventions resulted in favorable changes in their students' vocabulary use during storybook reading sessions and in spontaneous language use within the classroom.