Language Development Milestones in Children with Autism

Dr. Mary Barbera

The waitlists to receive an Autism evaluation are getting longer every day, but there are some things you can do to get some insight on where your child or clients stand while you’re on the waitlist. Pediatrician Dr. James Coplan, who specializes in Language Developmental Milestones and diagnosed Lucas in 1999, has an Early Language Developmental Milestones Scale that I want to share with you today.

Auditory Language Development Milestones

The Early Language Development Milestone Scale was published in 1980 and is still available today. The scale is used to see if the child has a speech delay, one part of a speech impairment, or a more global language issue like kids on the spectrum have. It’s a screening tool for kids up to the age of three.
There are three types of skills that the early language development milestone scale is looking at. Dr. Coplan describes the scale as an 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper that’s divided horizontally into three areas.
The first area has to do with auditory expressive language skills. And those start with things like cooing, babbling, making single syllables, making multiple syllables, then jargoning. Jargoning is the rising and falling of syllables that are like speech, but aren’t quite speech.

The area also encompasses saying mama or dada, whether specific or not, as well as single words, two word phrases and then “cookie monster speech like “Me want cookie.” Three to five word phrases with broken English, leaving out the verb to be in conjunctions will take you from birth to about 36 months in the auditory expressive area.

Then, the second area is auditory receptive language skills. It starts with things like alerting to sound, turning to sound, turning to a bell or something else like that. And then following parents commands – initially with a gesture on the part of the parent. Like, “give me” with the parent’s hand out and then “give me” without the parents hand out.
Then following two step commands and then more complex commands. So, the auditory receptive area takes us from things like turning to sound all the way up to following two to three step commands.

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Visual Language Development Milestones

The third area is visual communications skills. Those are not often present on a language screening tool because most language tools are inherited from speech language pathologists who are about speech and receptive language. But visual skills are just as important. It starts with things like eye contact and then it moves on to things like playing games such as patty-cake and peek-a-boo and “so big,” which should come in around seven to nine months old. If you give a visual cue along with a verbal command, like “give it to me” with your hand out, that’s at a 9 month level. “Give it to me” without your hand out is at a 12 month level.
Then there is pointing. It turns out that the age at which children use their index finger to point to a desired object is virtually identical to the age at which children will use single words to name the object that they want.
This is based upon histories taken from Dr. Coplan’s research where his research assistants would ask parents the things their child is able to do at a certain age. Then they looked at how the data lined up. The index finger pointing lined up almost identically to the use of a single word. Delayed pointing is actually one of the indices of language development.

Help With Language Development Milestones

Because I’ve been trained in the STAT, which is a Screening Tool for Autism in Two year olds, and the ADOS and MChat and things like that, I do a fair amount of looking at pointing and talking about pointing. That is one of the big red flags for autism. In typical kids, this skill comes in fast and furious very early on. In kids with autism, it’s almost always delayed.

If your child or client is having trouble in any of the three areas, or is delayed with pointing, consider taking one of my free workshops for personal help from me and a community of parents and professionals who are going through the exact same thing.

Free Workshop to Learn to Turn Autism (or Signs of Autism) Around

Want to start making a difference for your child or clients?