Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) comprises multiple mental and behavioural variations that mostly appear in early stage of life and effects persistently to all life. Establishing oral language plays an important role in expressive language, with a strong link to understanding reading and writing of ASD children. The study employed a quasi-experimental design to assess the impact of structured oral language activities on expressive language skills in ASD children. Nineteen participants, aged 3-5 years, engaged in activities such as mealtime conversations, morning discussions, storybook reading aloud and rhymes over an 8-week period. Pre-testing established baseline measures, and outcomes were assessed through the quantity and quality of expressive language exhibited across these activities. The highest number of participants were 4 years of age and the majority were male participants (78.9%). The result indicated that the mean ± standard deviation of the pre-test and post-test of expressive language skill was 0.263 ± 0.452 with a p-value of 0.021 ≤ 0.05 level of confidence, with the most significant gains observed in morning conservations (p = 0.001) and reading aloud (p < 0.001). An increase in both the quantity and complexity of expressive language was observed across all activities. Significant differences can be seen in the amount and type of expressive language in activities related to morning conversation and reading aloud. Children expressed an increase in learning of numbers of words used specifically nouns, verbs and adjectives, with an improvement in the expression of vocabulary. There was a significant difference in the expressive language of ASD children receiving structured oral language representing facilitation in language development in ASD children.
Shams et al. (Wed,) studied this question.