Canonical babbling trajectories across the first year of life in autism and typical development

This study explores vocal development as an early marker of autism, focusing on canonical babbling (CB) rate and onset, typically established by seven months. Previous reports suggested delayed or reduced CB in infants later diagnosed with autism, but the story may be complicated. We present a prospective study on 44 infants later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) compared with 127 infants later identified as typically developing (TD) who were followed longitudinally with day-long recordings from 0-13 months. Eight 5-minute segments from each of their recordings were coded for canonical and non-canonical syllables. The results confirmed many reports that CB is a robust feature of human vocal development in the first year of life, with small overall mean differences in CB rates between the ASD and TD groups beginning around 9 months, primarily in males. Our findings highlight the importance of considering sex differences in vocal communication as part of the early detection and diagnosis of autism when determining the need for communication supports to maximize outcomes.