Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience a variety of symptoms sometimes including atypicalities in language use. The study explored differences in semantic network organisation of adults with ASD without intellectual impairment. We assessed clusters and switches in verbal fluency tasks ('animals', 'human feature', 'verbs', 'r-words') via curve fitting in combination with corpus-driven analysis of semantic relatedness and evaluated socio-emotional and motor action related content. Compared to participants without ASD (n = 39), participants with ASD (n = 32) tended to produce smaller clusters, longer switches, and fewer words in semantic conditions (no p values survived Bonferroni-correction), whereas relatedness and content were similar. In ASD, semantic networks underlying cluster formation appeared comparably small without affecting strength of associations or content.

This paper describes an experiment in statistical analysis of corpora with respect to the temporal changes in language use. The technique approximates the notion of temporal relevance of usage evolution by analysing and evaluating the frequency distribution of a set of indicators over time and by isolating string configurations with unlikely temporal distribution.

EinleitungDas Institut für Deutsche Sprache (im folgenden kurz IDS genannt) hat die Aufgabe, den Gebrauch der deutschen Sprache der Gegenwart und der jüngeren Vergangenheit zu dokumentieren und zu erforschen.

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