Inhibition of Automatic Semantic Processing in Children With High-Functioning Pervasive Developmental Disorders Having Reading Difficulty

Abstract

Inhibition of automatic semantic processing was examined in children who have high functioning-pervasive developmental disorders (HF-PDD) with or without reading di culty and in typically developing children. In Experiment 1, lexical decision tasks were conducted under three priming conditions: (1) normal character condition, (2) transposed-letter internal nonwords condition, and (3) transposed-letter external nonwords condition.e results indicated that all participants displayed semantic priming under the normal and transposed-letter internal nonwords condition, whereas semantic priming was not observed under the transposed-letter external nonwords condition. In Experiment 2, speed-reading was conducted under normal, transposed-letter internal nonwords, transposed-letter external nonwords condition, and nonword conditions. e results indicated that HF-PDD students with reading di culty showed low reading scores under the nonword condition. Moreover, their reading score under the transposed-letter internal nonwords condition declined more than that under the nonword condition. e above results indicate that students with HF-PDD and reading di culty have problems in conducting bottom-up processing while inhibiting top-down processing, when automatically generated semantic processing interferes with the processing conducted through the phonological route.

Analysis of Asperger Syndrome Using Genetic-Evolutionary Random Support Vector Machine Cluster

“… Woods et al (2013) found that AS patients were commonly characterized by having difficulties in social skills and communication, which can present challenges in everyday functioning. Yanai and Maekawa (2014) found that children with AS had more difficulties with automatic semantic processing than children with normal development. Herrington et al (2007) indicated that AS patients showed significantly decreased activity between the right superior temporal gyrus and the angular gyrus compared with the HC.…”