Brief Report: Fast Mapping Predicts Differences in Concurrent and Later Language Abilities Among Children with ASD

Venker, Courtney E.; Kover, Sara T.; Weismer, Susan Ellis

doi:10.1007/s10803-015-2644-x

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…In Baron-Cohen et al's landmark study, children with ASD assigned a novel label to a toy that was their own focus of attention rather than the toy in the focus of attention of the person uttering the novel word. However, later research substantially qualified the conclusion that children with ASD cannot use social cues for word learning, finding that, in many circumstances, they can learn a name for a novel object when it is presented ostensively as part of a social interaction (e.g., Akechi et al, 2011;Luyster & Lord, 2009;McDuffie, Yoder, & Stone, 2006;Parish-Morris, Hennon, Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff, & Tager-Flusberg, 2007;Venker, Kover, & Ellis Weismer, 2016). For example, Luyster and Lord (2009) presented children with ASD with a mean age of 2.5 years (much younger than the 7-to 12-year-olds studied by Baron-Cohen et al) with two novel objects.…”

Section: Nounsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Lexical Development in Young Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): How ASD May Affect Intake From the Input

Arunachalam

Luyster

2018

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purpose Most children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have below-age lexical knowledge and lexical representation. Our goal is to examine ways in which difficulties with social communication and language processing that are often associated with ASD may constrain these children's abilities to learn new words and to explore whether minimizing the social communication and processing demands of the learning situation can lead to successful learning. Method In this narrative review of recent work on lexical development in ASD, we describe key findings on children's acquisition of nouns, pronouns, and verbs and outline our research program currently in progress aimed at further elucidating these issues. Conclusion Our review of studies that examine lexical development in children with ASD suggests that innovative intervention approaches that take into account both the social communication and processing demands of the learning situation may be particularly beneficial. Presentation Video https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.7324013

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Section: Nounsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Lexical Development in Young Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): How ASD May Affect Intake From the Input

Arunachalam

Luyster

2018

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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“…Depending on their design, novel word studies can address various phases of word learning, from initial exposure to longer-term retention (Horst & Samuelson, 2008;McMurray et al, 2012). Some studies measure fast mapping-children's ability to identify a labeled referent after only minimal exposure to a novel word and its meaning (Carey & Bartlett, 1978;McDuffie et al, 2012;Venker et al, 2016). Other studies-often conducted with school-aged children or adolescents with ASD-measure retention, consolidation, and/or generalization of new words over longer periods of time (Hartley et al, 2019(Hartley et al, , 2020Henderson et al, 2014;Norbury et al, 2010).…”

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confidence: 99%

Visual perceptual salience and novel referent selection in children with and without autism spectrum disorder

Venker

Neumann

Aladé

2022

Autism & Developmental Language Impairments

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Background & Aims Many young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate striking delays in early vocabulary development. Experimental studies that teach the meanings of novel nonwords can determine the effects of linguistic and attentional factors. One factor that may affect novel referent selection in children with ASD is visual perceptual salience—how interesting (i.e., striking) stimuli are on the basis of their visual properties. The goal of the current study was to determine how the perceptual salience of objects affected novel referent selection in children with ASD and children who are typically developing (TD) of similar ages (mean age 3–4 years). Methods Using a screen-based experimental paradigm, children were taught the names of four unfamiliar objects: two high-salience objects and two low-salience objects. Their comprehension of the novel words was assessed in low-difficulty and high-difficulty trials. Gaze location was determined from video by trained research assistants. Results Contrary to initial predictions, findings indicated that high perceptual salience disrupted novel referent selection in the children with ASD but facilitated attention to the target object in age-matched TD peers. The children with ASD showed no significant evidence of successful novel referent selection in the high-difficulty trials. Exploratory reaction time analyses suggested that the children with autism showed “stickier” attention—had more difficulty disengaging (i.e., looking away)—from high-salience distracter images than low-salience distracter images, even though the two images were balanced in salience for any given test trial. Conclusions and Clinical Implications These findings add to growing evidence that high perceptual salience has the potential to disrupt novel referent selection in children with ASD. These results underscore the complexity of novel referent selection and highlight the importance of taking the immediate testing context into account. In particular, it is important to acknowledge that screen-based assessments and screen-based learning activities used with children with ASD are not immune to the effects of lower level visual features, such as perceptual salience.

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“…To assess whether significant differences in nonverbal IQ might account for differences found in receptive and expressive language, phonological processing, and social symptom severity between the three FN/NN subgroups, we repeated these analyses using ANCOVA to control for nonverbal IQ ( Venker et al, 2016 ). To determine if the critical assumption of homogeneity of regression slopes for ANCOVA ( Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007 ) was met for each dependent variable for which there was a significant between-group difference, we examined whether there were interaction effects between subgroup and nonverbal IQ, which would violate this assumption.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Only two studies have examined the relationship of experimental word learning via fast mapping to language development in children with ASD, and neither measured retention of the novel words learned. First, in a longitudinal study of 59 preschool children with ASD, Venker, Kover, and Weismer (2016) reported that performance on a fast mapping task was positively associated with receptive and expressive language abilities concurrently at age 3 and at a follow-up at age 5 years. Although the association between word learning and expressive language at age 3 was no longer significant when analyses were adjusted for nonverbal IQ, associations held with receptive language at both age 3 and 5 years.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An experimental study of word learning in minimally verbal children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder

Joseph

Skwerer

Eggleston

et al. 2019

Autism & Developmental Language Impairments

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Background and aims: When children hear a novel word, they tend to associate it with a novel rather than a familiar object. The ability to map a novel word to its corresponding referent is thought to depend, at least in part, on languagelearning strategies, such as mutual exclusivity and lexical contrast. Although the importance of word learning strategies has been broadly investigated in typically developing children as well as younger children with autism spectrum disorder, who are usually language delayed, there is a paucity of research on such strategies and their role in language learning in school-age children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder who have failed to develop fluent speech. In this study, we examined the ability of minimally verbal children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder to learn and retain novel words in an experimental task, as well as the cognitive, language, and social correlates of these abilities. We were primarily interested in the characteristics that differentiated between three subgroups of participants: those unable to use word learning strategies, particularly mutual exclusivity, to learn novel words; those able to learn novel words over several exposure trials but not able retain them; and those able to retain the words they learned. Methods: Participants were 29 minimally verbal individuals with autism spectrum disorder from 5 to 17 years of age. Participants completed a computerized touchscreen novel-word-learning procedure followed by assessments of immediate retention and of delayed retention, two hours later. Participants were grouped according to whether they passed/failed at least 7 of 8 (binomial p5.035) novel word learning trials and 7 of 8 immediate or delayed retention trials, and were compared on measures of nonverbal IQ, receptive and expressive vocabulary, phonological processing, joint attention and symptom severity. Results: Of 29 participants, 14 failed both learning and immediate retention, 8 passed learning but failed immediate retention, and 7 passed both learning and immediate retention. Group performance was highly similar for delayed retention. Language level, particularly expressive vocabulary, differentiated between participants who did and did not succeed in retention, even while controlling for differences in nonverbal IQ. Conclusions: The ability of minimally verbal school-age children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder to identify the referents of novel words was associated with nonverbal cognitive abilities. Retention of words was associated with concurrent expressive language abilities. Implications: Our findings of associations between the retention of novel words acquired in a lab-based experimental task and concurrent language ability warrants further investigation with larger samples and longitudinal research designs, which may support the incorporation of contrastive word learning strategies into language learning interventions for severely language-impaired individuals with autism spectrum disorder.

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Brief Report: Fast Mapping Predicts Differences in Concurrent and Later Language Abilities Among Children with ASD

Cited by 12 publications

References 19 publications

Lexical Development in Young Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): How ASD May Affect Intake From the Input

Lexical Development in Young Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): How ASD May Affect Intake From the Input

Visual perceptual salience and novel referent selection in children with and without autism spectrum disorder

An experimental study of word learning in minimally verbal children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder

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