Browsing by Author "McFayden, Tyler Christine"

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    The Impact of Birth Order on Language Development in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder in Simplex Families
    McFayden, Tyler Christine (Virginia Tech, 2021-05-11)
    The impact of birth order on language development has gained significant traction over the years, with contradictory evidence suggesting that lower birth order may hinder language development in typically-developing children (Nafissi and Vosoughi, 2015). However, results also suggest that when considering measures of social communication, second-born typically-developing children demonstrate a significant advantage (Kheirkhah and Cekaite, 2018). These findings have interesting ramifications when considering autistic children, as language impairments are characteristic of the disorder. The current study investigated the impact of birth order, in particular having an older, typically-developing sibling, on vocabulary and social language development in autistic youth. Participants included 1338 first-borns and 1049 second-borns (M age = 9.03 years, SD = 3.57; 86.4% male) with diagnoses of Autistic disorder, Aspergers, or PDD-NOS from the Simons Simplex Collection (Fischbach and Lord, 2010). Results indicated no significant differences in vocabulary or social language between first-borns and second-borns. Hierarchical linear regressions indicated no significant main effect of birth order; however, significant 2-way interactions with birth order x income and birth order x age predicted expressive vocabulary and inappropriate speech. Post-hoc simple slopes suggested that birth order may have a greater impact on language in younger autistic children, and lower-income families. This is the first work to date to investigate birth order and contextual factors on expressive language outcomes in autistic youth.
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    Social and Nonsocial Priming Effects on 12- to 15-Month-Olds’ Preferences for Infant-Directed Speech
    McFayden, Tyler Christine (Virginia Tech, 2018-05)
    In adults, the availability of certain kinds of cues prior to a recognition task facilitates performance (often called “priming”). Studies have found that conceptual and perceptual priming improves neural efficiency and thus shortens response time in adults. In infant research, various visual and auditory/visual events are used as attention getters to orient the infant to a screen and alert them to upcoming information for their detection, discrimination, and/or recognition. However, the influence of attention-getters on infants’ performance has rarely been systematically evaluated, even though these attention cues could be acting as perceptual/conceptual primes. This study investigated the effect of priming on infants’ preferences for infant-directed speech (IDS) compared to adult-directed speech (ADS). IDS, an inherently social event, can be described as a moderator between attention systems and later language development. Thus, if the attentional network is primed in advance of hearing IDS, it is possible that the magnitude of the IDS preference may change. In this study, 20, 12- to 18-month old infants were provided with either a nonsocial or social prime in an infant-controlled, speech preference procedure with both IDS and ADS speech types. The infant’s total looking duration to IDS relative to ADS was compared for the social versus nonsocial prime condition. Results indicated a main effect for speech and overall IDS preference. However, no significant effect of prime was detected. Results are discussed in terms of future directions to investigate social priming of language in infancy.