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

Abstract

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.

Do focused interests support word learning? A study with autistic and nonautistic children

“…Here, we aimed to make conditions similar in important visual features (e.g., animacy and size) but different in their cognitive and preferential significance to the child (more on this below). We expect that this contrast might explain the differences observed between the present study and Venker et al (2022). However, the present report is more similar to the Pomper and Saffran (2018) study, in which salient objects were familiar (not novel, as in Venker et al, 2022), and where the nonautistic children struggled to successfully map new words.…”

“…Moreover, the test trials present the same image completing different actions; therefore, within trials, the visual salience of the two images is wellmatched (though they are completing slightly different movements on the screen). All of these design features reduce the likelihood that "sticky" visual attention (Bryson et al, 2018;Sacrey et al, 2013) is likely to provide a clear explanation for our findings (as in, for instance, Venker et al, 2022). Finally, it is important to note that the action presented was not thematically related to the interest; the character in the image enacted an action that was conceptually unrelated to the interest.…”

“…One set of previous findings points to the importance of visual salience in word learning and has yielded somewhat mixed findings across studies and across diagnostic groups. While Pomper and Saffran (2018) reported that the presence of highly salient familiar objects interrupted novel word learning for nonautistic preschoolers, Venker et al (2022) reported that highly visually salient novel objects supported word learning for nonautistic preschoolers. In contrast, Venker et al (2022) reported that autistic children failed to learn new words when novel objects were highly visually salient.…”

“…While Pomper and Saffran (2018) reported that the presence of highly salient familiar objects interrupted novel word learning for nonautistic preschoolers, Venker et al (2022) reported that highly visually salient novel objects supported word learning for nonautistic preschoolers. In contrast, Venker et al (2022) reported that autistic children failed to learn new words when novel objects were highly visually salient. In locating our findings within these previous reports, it is important to highlight a distinction between these previous studies and the present one: visual salience (as in these prior reports) versus conceptual salience (as in the present study).…”

Touch to learn: Multisensory input supports word learning and processing

“…Thus our perspective that touch may impact infant word learning, is motivated by a large body of work on embodied cognition showing that perceptual and motor experience impact word learning within a dynamic systems framework (e.g., Yoshida & Smith, 2008; Yu & Smith, 2012). Further, it is also informed by work with children with speech and language disorders who show sensory differences to typically developing children (e.g., children with ASD; Ben‐Sasson et al., 2022) which seem to impact their ability to acquire their lexicon (e.g., Lin et al., 2022; Tenenbaum et al., 2014; Venker et al., 2022). Thus, we explored how number of distinct sensory experiences impact the growth of the lexicon and test the hypothesis that a larger number of multisensory experiences with objects will facilitate children's learning by enriching their representations.…”