Social and Linguistic Factors in the Development of Children with Autism

There is an ongoing debate in the literature over the main source of information that children use when acquiring and developing language. Theories either support a computational linguistic perspective – in which children are thought to use aspects of language itself and their ability to perceive patterns to acquire language – or a social perspective, in which children are thought to use their ability to jointly attend with communication partners in order to acquire language. It is difficult to tease apart these sources of information in typically-developing children, but children with autism spectrum disorders have difficulty with both joint attention and language development, to varying degrees. The current study is a longitudinal analysis of specific language development in young children with autism and their typically-developing peers, using joint attention behaviors and computational behaviors to predict language growth. Joint attention proved to be important in lexical development but not as much in grammatical development, and computational abilities proved important specifically for pronoun use. Furthermore, the growth itself of early grammatical and lexical abilities predicted scores on later language tests. These results support a role for social abilities in the growth of lexical development, and a role for computational abilities on initial language abilities, but not on their growth over time

Language Typology and Sentence Frame Effects on Motion Verb Interpretation in Grade Schoolers

Most English descriptions of motion events express manner in the main verb and path in a prepositional phrase, as in “She skips out of the house”. However, the same event can be described differently if a different syntactic frame is used: “She exits the house”. While young children have been found to interpret novel motion verbs according to the syntactic frame information, adults have been found to rely somewhat more on the overall language pattern, or typology (Hohenstein et al., 2004; Naigles & Terrazas, 1998). Grade schoolers have not been examined in this paradigm, and their linguistic abilities suggest that they may show an important part of a developmental trajectory regarding the acquisition of motion verbs. Sixty-four children grade schoolers and 12 adults viewed live-action events showing spontaneous motion events and heard 8 novel verbs in manner frames (“He’s daxing up the stairs”), and 8 in path frames (“He’s kradding the garage”). Side-by-side videos then showed the actor performing the same manner but a different path, or performing a different manner along the same path. The accompanying audio asked the participant to find the action matching the verb screen (e.g. “Choose kradding”). Children of all ages chose more manner than path interpretations in both conditions, while adults showed fewer manner interpretations in the path frame condition. As the path frame condition progressed, children chose gradually more path interpretations; moreover, eye movement data show that children looked towards the path screen more during the path frame condition. Support for a u-shaped developmental trajectory and a shift from language-general to language-specific word-learning mechanisms are discussed

Delaying surgery for patients with a previous SARS-CoV-2 infection

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Risk of COVID-19 after natural infection or vaccinationResearch in context

Background: While vaccines have established utility against COVID-19, phase 3 efficacy studies have generally not comprehensively evaluated protection provided by previous infection or hybrid immunity (previous infection plus vaccination). Individual patient data from US government-supported harmonized vaccine trials provide an unprecedented sample population to address this issue. We characterized the protective efficacy of previous SARS-CoV-2 infection and hybrid immunity against COVID-19 early in the pandemic over three-to six-month follow-up and compared with vaccine-associated protection. Methods: In this post-hoc cross-protocol analysis of the Moderna, AstraZeneca, Janssen, and Novavax COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials, we allocated participants into four groups based on previous-infection status at enrolment and treatment: no previous infection/placebo; previous infection/placebo; no previous infection/vaccine; and previous infection/vaccine. The main outcome was RT-PCR-confirmed COVID-19 >7–15 days (per original protocols) after final study injection. We calculated crude and adjusted efficacy measures. Findings: Previous infection/placebo participants had a 92% decreased risk of future COVID-19 compared to no previous infection/placebo participants (overall hazard ratio [HR] ratio: 0.08; 95% CI: 0.05–0.13). Among single-dose Janssen participants, hybrid immunity conferred greater protection than vaccine alone (HR: 0.03; 95% CI: 0.01–0.10). Too few infections were observed to draw statistical inferences comparing hybrid immunity to vaccine alone for other trials. Vaccination, previous infection, and hybrid immunity all provided near-complete protection against severe disease. Interpretation: Previous infection, any hybrid immunity, and two-dose vaccination all provided substantial protection against symptomatic and severe COVID-19 through the early Delta period. Thus, as a surrogate for natural infection, vaccination remains the safest approach to protection. Funding: National Institutes of Health

Risk of COVID-19 after natural infection or vaccinationResearch in context

Summary: Background: While vaccines have established utility against COVID-19, phase 3 efficacy studies have generally not comprehensively evaluated protection provided by previous infection or hybrid immunity (previous infection plus vaccination). Individual patient data from US government-supported harmonized vaccine trials provide an unprecedented sample population to address this issue. We characterized the protective efficacy of previous SARS-CoV-2 infection and hybrid immunity against COVID-19 early in the pandemic over three-to six-month follow-up and compared with vaccine-associated protection. Methods: In this post-hoc cross-protocol analysis of the Moderna, AstraZeneca, Janssen, and Novavax COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials, we allocated participants into four groups based on previous-infection status at enrolment and treatment: no previous infection/placebo; previous infection/placebo; no previous infection/vaccine; and previous infection/vaccine. The main outcome was RT-PCR-confirmed COVID-19 >7–15 days (per original protocols) after final study injection. We calculated crude and adjusted efficacy measures. Findings: Previous infection/placebo participants had a 92% decreased risk of future COVID-19 compared to no previous infection/placebo participants (overall hazard ratio [HR] ratio: 0.08; 95% CI: 0.05–0.13). Among single-dose Janssen participants, hybrid immunity conferred greater protection than vaccine alone (HR: 0.03; 95% CI: 0.01–0.10). Too few infections were observed to draw statistical inferences comparing hybrid immunity to vaccine alone for other trials. Vaccination, previous infection, and hybrid immunity all provided near-complete protection against severe disease. Interpretation: Previous infection, any hybrid immunity, and two-dose vaccination all provided substantial protection against symptomatic and severe COVID-19 through the early Delta period. Thus, as a surrogate for natural infection, vaccination remains the safest approach to protection. Funding: National Institutes of Health