Categorization skills and receptive language development in autistic children

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.

Color Perception in Children with Autism

“…Kovattana and Kraemer (1974) found that a non-verbal group of children with autism preferred to use color and size cues rather than form on a sorting task, whereas there was no cue dominance in control groups. However, Ungerer and Sigman (1987) found no significant differences in children's sorting by function, form or color when compared to a control group of typically developing children.…”

Is It a Bird? Is It a Plane? Category Use in Problem-solving in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

“…However, subsequent findings have demonstrated largely intact learning of basic shape categories (Bott et al 2006;Soulieres et al 2007) and unimpaired recognition of prototype exemplars (Molesworth et al 2005(Molesworth et al , 2008. Similar results have arisen from studies examining basic sorting (Tager-Flusberg 1985;Ungerer and Sigman 1987), category recognition (Geurts et al 2004;Verté et al 2005) and free sequencing abilities (McGonigleChalmers and Alderson-Day 2010): where ASD participants are asked to sort or match according to basic and familiar categories, they perform as well as typicallydeveloping controls.…”

Subjective Organisation in the Free Recall Learning of Adults with Asperger’s Syndrome

“…Moreover, semantic categorisation skills were found to be unimpaired in lower-functioning children with ASD by Tager-Flusberg (1985a,b) and by Ungerer and Sigman (1987). Prototype formation, in which participants form an abstract mental representation or prototype on the basis of studied exemplars of a particular category was found to be impaired in children with ASD and cognitive impairment (Klinger & Dawson, 2001) but not in adults with Asperger's syndrome (Molesworth, Bowler & Hampton, 2005), suggesting that global cognitive impairment but not ASD per se may impair this capacity.…”