Understanding communication complexity among infants with neurogenetic syndromes

Nancy Brady has been gratified to see the tool she and colleagues pioneered over a decade ago to measure the growth of infants' pre-speech communication skills translated into several languages and referenced in more than 100 research papers, including a åçnew one published in the Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research.

Brady, a professor in the University of Kansas Department of Speech-Language-Hearing: Sciences & Disorders, and her former graduate student Olivia Boorom were among the co-authors of a new paper titled “Prelinguistic Communication Complexity of Children With Neurogenetic Syndromes.” 

For the first time, Brady said, researchers used the tool to compare communication complexity among infants with three different syndromes -- Down, Angelman and Fragile X – as well as a low-risk control group.

Brady explained that "the feedback loop that leads to spoken language and more symbolic language" begins in infancy with behaviors like babbling and reaching.

When they combine that with a look right at you, it's really clear that they are communicating with you, versus if they're just sort of playing with their toys and babbling. So on our scale, they get different credit for how and when they add those different components. If they are combining vocalization and a gesture and a look, they get the highest grade on the pre-linguistic part of the scale."

Nancy Brady, Professor, University of Kansas Department of Speech-Language-Hearing: Sciences & Disorders

Brady said the new research made use of an innovation pioneered during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown: shipping a video-recording kit with instructions to families and asking them to undertake the roughly 50-minute-long experiment in their own homes. Seventy-two families participated: a control group of 19 plus 53 with the various syndromes-- (24 Down, 16 Angelman, 13 Fragile X. The researchers then watched the videos and encoded the interactions according to the scale.

The developmental differences seen among the three groups may offer clues to better understanding of and treatment for the conditions, Brady said. This work is one of many research initiatives at KU that seek to improve brain health.

"If they're limited to using lower levels of complexity, maybe that's a warning sign that we need to start doing a lot more interventions and really focus on getting more communication interactions going," Brady said. "I have another study ongoing right now with toddlers with autism. We're really trying to figure out where kids are getting stuck, if you will, on that developmental path towards language so we can intervene earlier and more effectively."