Are Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Initially Attuned to Object Function Rather Than Shape for Word Learning?

Field, Charlotte; Allen, Melissa L.; Lewis, C. S.

doi:10.1007/s10803-015-2657-5

Cited by 15 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…Despite the insubstantial evidence gathered to support the categorical view of language delay, findings that identify different learning biases in children with ASD warrant the continued examination of evidence for the dimensional or categorical account of language development (e.g., Field et al 2016;Happé and Booth 2008;Pierce et al 2011). Additionally, previous results from research that solely focused on the acquisition of nouns and verbs motivate us to further examine these two syntactic categories.…”

Section: The Dimensional and The Categorical Account Of Language Devementioning

confidence: 94%

Identifying Areas of Overlap and Distinction in Early Lexical Profiles of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Late Talkers, and Typical Talkers

Jiménez

Haebig

Hills

2020

J Autism Dev Disord

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This study compares the lexical composition of 118 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) aged 12 to 84 months with 4626 vocabulary-matched typically developing toddlers with and without language delay, aged 8 to 30 months. Children with ASD and late talkers showed a weaker noun bias. Additionally, differences were identified in the proportion of nouns and verbs, and in the semantic categories of animals, toys, household items and vehicles. Most differences appear to reflect the extent of the age differences between the groups. However, children with ASD produced fewer high-social verbs than typical talkers and late talkers, a difference that might be associated with ASD features. In sum, our findings identified areas of overlap and distinction across the developing lexical profiles.

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Section: The Dimensional and The Categorical Account Of Language Devementioning

confidence: 94%

Identifying Areas of Overlap and Distinction in Early Lexical Profiles of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Late Talkers, and Typical Talkers

Jiménez

Haebig

Hills

2020

J Autism Dev Disord

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“…The importance of shape as central among perceptual properties of objects is further confirmed by findings of impaired categorisation skills and impaired shape bias in children with autism potentially leading to atypical categorisation and problems with word learning and semantics (Hartley and Allen 2014a;Field et al 2016;Abdelaziz et al 2018). There is also evidence that children with autism are not as successful in categorising objects on the basis of black and white contour sketches in comparison to more realistic colour images of the object (Hartley and Allen 2014b).…”

Section: The Developmental Perspective: Learning Object Labelsmentioning

confidence: 82%

Language and perception: Introduction to the Special Issue “Speakers and Listeners in the Visual World”

et al. 2019

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Language and perception are two central cognitive systems. Until relatively recently, however, the interaction between them has been examined only partially and not from an over-arching theoretical perspective. Yet it has become clear that linguistic and perceptual interactions are essential to understanding both typical and atypical human behaviour. In this editorial, we examine the link between language and perception across three domains. First, we present a brief review of work investigating the importance of perceptual features, particularly shape bias, when learning names for novel objects-a critical skill acquired during language development. Second, we describe the Visual World Paradigm, an experimental method uniquely suited to investigate the languageperception relationship. Studies using the Visual World Paradigm demonstrate that the relationship between linguistic and perceptual information during processing is both intricate and bi-directional: linguistic cues guide interpretation of visual scenes, while perceptual information shapes interpretation of linguistic input. Finally, we turn to a discussion of cospeech gesture focusing on iconic gestures which depict aspects of the visual world (e.g., motion, shape).The relationship between language and these semantically-meaningful gestures is likewise complex and bi-directional. However, more research is needed to illuminate the exact circumstances under which iconic gestures shape language production and comprehension. In conclusion, although strong evidence exists supporting a critical relationship between linguistic and perceptual systems, the exact levels at which these two systems interact, the time-course of the interaction, and what is driving the interaction, remain largely open questions in need of future research.

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“…Recent work with young children with ASD with more developed language abilities has demonstrated that, like TD children, they are capable of syntactic bootstrapping within a transitive sentence frame to guide attention in causal scenes (Horvath, McDermott, et al, 2018). Other work in this area suggests that children with ASD may have a greater attentional bias to object function rather than object shape (Field et al, 2016) and that children with ASD may have a reduced shape bias (Potrzeba et al, 2015; Tek et al, 2008). A reduced shape bias may influence object learning (i.e.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterizing the early vocabulary profiles of preverbal and minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder

Haebig

Jiménez

Cox

et al. 2020

Autism

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Children with autism spectrum disorder often have significant language delays. But do they learn language differently than neurotypical toddlers? We compared the lexical skills of 64 preverbal and minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder to 461 vocabulary-size-matched typically developing toddlers. We also examined social features of verb knowledge using a novel collection of social ratings. Children with autism spectrum disorder produced proportionally more verbs than typically developing toddlers. Children with autism spectrum disorder produced proportionally more action and food words, while typically developing toddlers produced proportionally more animal, people words, and animal sounds and sound effects. Children with autism spectrum disorder also produced “mommy” and “daddy” at lower rates. We discuss how these differences may reflect an association between lexical development and weaknesses in social communication. Lay abstract Although preverbal and minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder represent a significant portion of the autism spectrum disorder population, we have a limited understanding of and characterization of them. Although it is a given that their lexical profiles contain fewer words, it is important to determine whether (a) the words preverbal and minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder produce are similar to the first words typically developing children produce or (b) there are unique features of the limited words that preverbal and minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder produce. The current study compared the early word profiles of preverbal and minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder to vocabulary-matched typically developing toddlers. Children with autism spectrum disorder produced proportionally more verbs than typically developing toddlers. Also, children with autism spectrum disorder produced proportionally more action and food words, while typically developing toddlers produced proportionally more animal words, animal sounds and sound effects, and people words. Children with autism spectrum disorder also produced “mommy” and “daddy” at lower rates. Our findings identified several areas of overlap in early word learning; however, our findings also point to differences that may be connected to core weaknesses in social communication (i.e. people words). The findings highlight words and categories that could serve as useful targets for communication intervention with preverbal and minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder.

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Are Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Initially Attuned to Object Function Rather Than Shape for Word Learning?

Cited by 15 publications

References 66 publications

Identifying Areas of Overlap and Distinction in Early Lexical Profiles of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Late Talkers, and Typical Talkers

Identifying Areas of Overlap and Distinction in Early Lexical Profiles of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Late Talkers, and Typical Talkers

Language and perception: Introduction to the Special Issue “Speakers and Listeners in the Visual World”

Characterizing the early vocabulary profiles of preverbal and minimally verbal children with autism spectrum disorder

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