Siblings of children with Autism: Linguistic and motor skills beyond three years of life

Abstract

Siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder (Sib-ASD) may show difficulties in language and motor skills at a very early age. However, few studies have evaluated these skills in older children. We analyze these skills in children between 4 and 7 years old to test whether these difficulties still exist and, if so, to describe how this magnitude is. We examined expressive and receptive language, and fine and gross motor skills of 43 children: 25 Sib-ASD and 18 siblings of children with typical development (Sib-TD) through several standardized tests. The results show that there are significant differences (all with ps < .05) between groups, showing a worse performance in grammatical comprehension, and related to motor skills in ball skills and overall motor skills in Sib-ASD. It is discussed that the fact of being aware of and identify these difficulties will help these children in their global development. Thus, more studies on sib-ASD in infancy and primary school are needed, in order to know how these differences might affect their school performance.