Project description

About a quarter of parents of autistic children report that their child has experienced a loss of previously acquired language within their first three years of life. This early language regression (ELR) worries parents, with one of their main concerns being the prognosis for speech development. It is, however, difficult to provide clear responses on when language will resume and what level of language the child can expect to reach. The impact of ELR on language prognosis is therefore uncertain. The objective of our study was to establish whether ELR affects the communicative prognosis of autistic children and to characterize their language development profile. This study aims to guide clinicians in their responses to parental concerns at the time of diagnosis.

In order to answer these questions, we used socio-communicative, linguistic and cognitive data from 2,047 autistic participants from the Simons Simplex collection, aged between 4 and 18 years.

We showed that autistic children with ELR tended to have an initial speech development which followed typical norms until ELR happened. Their speech development then slowed down, but their final communicative prognostic was not affected by ELR. According to our data, it can be expected that most autistic children without intellectual disability will achieve speech fluency by adulthood whether or not they have had an ELR. Children with ELR therefore have a developmental process of language in three phases: A typical early acquisition, followed by a latency period of several years and finally, a “catch up” of their communicative speech.

In sum, an ELR delays speech progression, but does not affect the final communicative level.