Eye Say: Investigating language production processes in typical and atypical development
Lead Research Organisation:
Royal Holloway University of London
Department Name: Psychology
Abstract
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People |
ORCID iD |
| Courtenay Norbury (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Kelly DJ
(2013)
Deficits in volitional oculomotor control align with language status in autism spectrum disorders.
in Developmental science
Norbury CF
(2014)
Sources of variation in developmental language disorders: evidence from eye-tracking studies of sentence production.
in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences
Norbury CF
(2014)
Practitioner review: Social (pragmatic) communication disorder conceptualization, evidence and clinical implications.
in Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines
| Description | We investigated sentence production in typically developing children (TD) and three clinical populations, children with autism and language impairments (ALI); children with autism and language within the normal range (ALN); children with language impairments (LI). We asked children to describe cartoon scenes (e.g. 'monkey tickling a man'). We used eye-tracking to measure how long speakers surveyed the scene before they started talking, giving us an indication of how speakers plan their utterances. We also linked what speakers said with what they were looking at, giving us an indication of how an utterance is formulated. We found that while reflexive eye-movements were unimpaired in all three clinical groups, children with ALI and LI were less able than peers to control volitional eye movements. Thus, deficits in oculomotor behaviour are neither universal nor specific to ASD. Furthermore, the ALI phenotype overlaps with LI in ostensibly non-verbal tasks, providing further support to the hypothesis that autism and LI share causal risk factors (Kelly, Walker & Norbury, Developmental Science, 2013). With regard to verbal descriptions, we found that children in all three clinical groups were particularly slow to articulate subject noun phrases, even when sentence frames were provided. We embedded social events in visually cluttered, but contextually relevant scenes. All children fixated items in the the background; however, children with ASD and some children with LI devoted proportionally more fixations to the background and mentioned non-core elements of the scene in verbal output more frequently than TD peers. When children with language impairment (LI and ALI), mentioned irrelevant information, core scene elements (patients or verbs) were omitted, yielding sentences that violated semantic, syntactic and pragmatic expectations. Although it is possible to redirect attention to socially relevant aspects of the scene, this was less successful for children (relative to reported attempts with adults) and did not tend to alter preferred utterances. (Norbury et al., in preparation). These findings suggest that children with ASD have greater difficulty determining which aspects of a visual scene are most relevant for description. This arises from a combination of reduced social interest and reduced attention/inhibitory control; deficits are most apparent in situations where there are multiple visual targets. These findings lead to a theory of language impairment in ASD that incorporates multiple risk and protective factors. One can imagine a developmental trajectory in which poor eye-movement control, coupled with reduced interest in social interaction leads to qualitatively different visual and linguistic input. Over time, this not only disrupts the ability to learn words and grammar, but also pragmatic aspects of communication. (Norbury, 2013, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society). |
| Exploitation Route | The main findings that we have published confirm differences within the autism spectrum that align with language impairment. They also highlight the importance of attention control in language production. These suggest targets and possible strategies for intervention. |
| Sectors | Education,Healthcare |
| Description | Presentation to practitioner group |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | I presented at a Special Interest Group in Autism to approximately 100 predominantly speech-language therapists. The main focus of the talk was to illustrate variation in language ability within the autism spectrum and how techniques like eye-tracking can give us detailed information about the timing of language processes and how differences in visual attention may affect communication planning. this was followed by much discussion about clinical implications of the work. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017 |
| Description | Talk to Special Interest Group in Autism |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | I presented at a Special Interest Group in Autism to approximately 100 predominantly speech-language therapists. The main focus of the talk was to illustrate variation in language ability within the autism spectrum and how techniques like eye-tracking can give us detailed information about the timing of language processes and how differences in visual attention may affect communication planning. this was followed by much discussion about clinical implications of the work. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |