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

Abstract

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

Production and comprehension of pronouns in individuals with autism: A meta-analysis and systematic review

“…Landry and Loveland (1988) found joint attention behaviors were positively correlated with the correct production of I / you pronouns, and children with autism demonstrated fewer joint attention behaviors than TD children. These findings support Arunachalam and Luyster’s (2018) view that the quality and quantity of linguistic input impacts language development. Furthermore, the characteristics of a language may influence the rate at which children develop competence in its grammatical forms.…”

“…A recent meta-analysis suggests any expressive–over-receptive language gaps may be evident only in specific language domains (Kwok et al, 2015). Differences in receptive and expressive language vary across aspects of language, indicating individuals with autism demonstrate relatively intact phonological and syntactic skills, especially in comparison with their semantic and pragmatic language skills (Arunachalam & Luyster, 2018).…”

“…Although the validity of the ToM hypothesis has been questioned recently (in terms of whether people with autism demonstrate a deficit or a difference in the way they process social information; Atherton et al, 2019), difficulties with ToM remains one of the widely referenced cognitive theories to explain why individuals with autism show distinct differences in English language usage. Researchers have theorized that ToM and associated perspective taking skills are necessary for the comprehension and production of personal and ambiguous pronouns because they require the speaker to understand and shift perspectives between themselves and others (Arunachalam & Luyster, 2018; Kuijper et al, 2015). There is currently insufficient evidence, however, to indicate that reference production depends on the ability to understand the listener’s mental state (Arnold et al, 2009).…”

“…correct use of pronouns you / I depends on the identities of the speaker and the receiver of the message). Arunachalam and Luyster (2018) discuss an apparent association between the time children with autism spent in one-on-one interactions and parent-reported pronoun errors, with preliminary studies showing a positive correlation between the number of first and second pronoun errors and time spent in one-on-one interaction rather than time in interactions with two or more people clarification on the scope and variability of language development continues to be a major research concern, though few researchers focus on pronouns as a way of better understanding the social communication differences individuals with autism experience. This review elucidates current research findings.…”

Read my lips! Perception of speech in noise by preschool children with autism and the impact of watching the speaker’s face

“…Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are a diverse set of conditions that often include reduced and atypical receptive language abilities [ 1 ]. Children diagnosed with or at risk for ASD may approach the task of learning words differently than do their typically developing peers (see [ 2 , 3 ] for recent reviews) and are less likely to look at an object upon hearing its name [ 4 – 6 ]. They also access semantic meaning later in the word recognition process [ 7 ].…”