Learning about neurodiversity from parents – auditory gestalt perception of prelinguistic vocalisations
Authors: Zhang Dajie , Lang Sigrun , Wilken Bernd , Einspieler Christa , Neul Jeffrey L. , Bölte Sven , Holzinger Daniel , Freilinger Michael , Poustka Luise , Sigafoos Jeff , Marschik Peter B. 
Published: March 2023

Background

Infants with Rett syndrome (RTT) may have subtle anomalies in their prelinguistic vocalisations but the detection of these is difficult, since their conspicuous vocalisations are often interspersed with inconspicuous ones.

Aims and methods

Extending a previous study with predominantly non-parents, the present study sampled parents of children with RTT and aimed to examine their gestalt perception of prelinguistic vocalisations.

Methods and procedure

Parents (n = 76) of female children with RTT listened to vocalisation recordings from RTT and typically developing (TD) infants, including an inconspicuous vocalisation from a RTT girl. For each recording, parents indicated if the vocalisation was produced by a RTT or a TD child.

Results

Overall correct to incorrect identification rate was 2:1, which was comparable to that of the previous study. Intriguingly, parents of RTT children seemed to be sensitive to features characterising the vocalisations of RTT infants, which has especially influenced their perception of the inconspicuous vocalisation from a RTT girl.

Conclusions and implications

These results invite further research on the potential characterising differences between vocalisations from TD infants and infants with divergent neurodevelopment.

What this paper adds?

Previous studies suggested that parents’ observations of their children’s behaviour are insightful and could aid clinical diagnosis. There is evidence that non-parents also seem to be sensitive to typical versus atypical characteristics in infant development. As normal and divergent developmental behaviours are often overlapping with each other, detecting deviant development is often difficult. For example, atypical vocalisations of infants later diagnosed with Rett syndrome (RTT) are often interspersed with their more typical and inconspicuous vocalisations. Can we learn extras from parents about divergences in prelinguistic vocalisations? The current study extended previous research and focused on the auditory gestalt perception of parents. We found parents of children with RTT were sensitive to the characterising differences between vocalisations from RTT and typically developing (TD) infants. They differentiated RTT vocalisations from TD vocalisations, even the RTT vocalisation was benchmarked as inconspicuous by speech-language experts. The characterising features that point to RTT, which seem to be perceptible to parents, might be more than the conspicuousness that could be readily classified by experts. What we have learned from parents’ perceptions motivates further research on the potential characterising features in prelinguistic vocalisations from different infants, especially in vocalisations that sound inconspicuous to experts and professionals, which may help to refine our understandings of diverse vocalisation patterns on the one hand, and to identify infants with neurodevelopmental divergences on the other hand.