Abstract
The category knowledge and receptive language skills of 16 autistic, mentally retarded, and normal children were assessed. The autistic children's knowledge of function, form, and color categories was comparable to that of the mental- age- matched mentally retarded and normal comparison groups. Category knowledge and receptive language were more closely associated for mentally retarded and normal children than for autistic children. The findings indicate that category knowledge is not sufficient for the development of receptive language in autistic children.
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Support for this research was provided by Grant 12–41 from the March of Dimes, Biobehavioral Research Support Grant 516, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Grant MH33815, and NIMH Postdoctoral Fellowship 1 F32 MH 07550. Subjects were recruited from the University of California, Los Angeles, Clinical Research Center (CRC) for the Study of Childhood Psychosis, funded by NIMH Grant MH30897. We thank members of the CRC, particularly Peter Tanguay, Barbara Fish, and B. J. Freeman, for their support of our research efforts. We also thank Mary Beth Sorensen and M. Holly Hackman for their assistance in data collection, Carmen Gibbon for her help in preparation of the manuscript, and Dolores Adams and Gwenda Aitchison for their help in data analysis. Peter Mundy, Rosa Needleman, and Tracy Sherman also contributed significantly to this project.
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Ungerer, J.A., Sigman, M. Categorization skills and receptive language development in autistic children. J Autism Dev Disord 17, 3–16 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01487256
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01487256