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Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Gepubliceerd in:

02-11-2018 | Original Paper

Thinking Ahead: Incremental Language Processing is Associated with Receptive Language Abilities in Preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Auteurs: Courtney E. Venker, Jan Edwards, Jenny R. Saffran, Susan Ellis Weismer

Gepubliceerd in: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders | Uitgave 3/2019

Abstract

In typical development, listeners can use semantic content of verbs to facilitate incremental language processing—a skill that is associated with existing language skills. Studies of children with ASD have not identified an association between incremental language processing in semantically-constraining contexts and language skills, perhaps because participants were adolescents and/or children with strong language skills. This study examined incremental language processing and receptive language in young children with ASD with a range of language skills. Children showed a head start when presented with semantically-constraining verbs (e.g., Read the book) compared to neutral verbs (e.g., Find the book). Children with weaker receptive language showed a smaller head start than children with stronger receptive language skills, suggesting continuity between typical development and ASD.

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Although Brock et al. (2008) found no significant relationship between language scores and the isolated effect of verb semantics, it should be noted that in their study, “individuals with poorer language scores spent significantly more time gazing at the (contextually inappropriate) phonological competitor” (p. 899), regardless of autism diagnosis. We do not focus heavily on this finding in the present study because our task and research questions focused on looks to target in the presence of an unrelated distracter.

Because PLS-5 Auditory Comprehension growth scale values provide an absolute measure of language ability and do not control for age, we examined the correlation between receptive language and age. This correlation was non-significant, r = − .128, p = .626.

To simplify internal algorithms, the software used to calculate inter-coder agreement excluded trials that differed in the number of gaze shifts. On average, 77% of trials were retained.

Following Borovsky et al. (2012) we also tested whether age was associated with children’s performance in the experimental task. The model containing age did not provide a significantly better fit to the data than the baseline model (χ²₆ = 7.851, p = .249), and age yielded no significant main effects or interactions (ps > .176).

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Titel: Thinking Ahead: Incremental Language Processing is Associated with Receptive Language Abilities in Preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Auteurs: Courtney E. Venker
Jan Edwards
Jenny R. Saffran
Susan Ellis Weismer
Publicatiedatum: 02-11-2018
Uitgeverij: Springer US
Gepubliceerd in: Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders / Uitgave 3/2019
Print ISSN: 0162-3257
Elektronisch ISSN: 1573-3432
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-3778-4

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