Chiodo Liliane, Majerus Steve, Mottron Laurent
Psychology & Neuroscience of Cognition Research Unit, PsyNCog University of Liège, Place des Orateurs, 1, Bâtiment 33, 4000 Liège, Belgium.
Centre d'Excellence en Troubles Envahissants du Développement de l'Université de Montréal, Hôpital Rivière-des-Prairies, 7070 Blvd Perras, Montréal, Québec H1E 1A4 Canada.
Mol Autism. 2017 Jul 21;8:35. doi: 10.1186/s13229-017-0155-7. eCollection 2017.
The distinction between autism and Asperger syndrome has been abandoned in the DSM-5. However, this clinical categorization largely overlaps with the presence or absence of a speech onset delay which is associated with clinical, cognitive, and neural differences. It is unknown whether these different speech development pathways and associated cognitive differences are involved in the heterogeneity of the restricted interests that characterize autistic adults.
This study tested the hypothesis that speech onset delay, or conversely, early mastery of speech, orients the nature and verbal reporting of adult autistic interests. The occurrence of a priori defined descriptors for and dimensions were determined, as well as the perceived function and benefits, in the response of autistic people to a semi-structured interview on their intense interests. The number of words, grammatical categories, and proportion of / descriptors were computed and compared between groups by variance analyses. The participants comprised 40 autistic adults grouped according to the presence ( = 20) or absence ( = 20) of speech onset delay, as well as 20 non-autistic adults, also with intense interests, matched for non-verbal intelligence using Raven's Progressive Matrices.
The overall nature, function, and benefit of intense interests were similar across autistic subgroups, and between autistic and non-autistic groups. However, autistic participants with a history of speech onset delay used more perceptual than thematic descriptors when talking about their interests, whereas the opposite was true for autistic individuals without speech onset delay. This finding remained significant after controlling for linguistic differences observed between the two groups.
Verbal reporting, but not the nature or positive function, of intense interests differed between adult autistic individuals depending on their speech acquisition history: oral reporting of intense interests was characterized by perceptual dominance for autistic individuals with delayed speech onset and thematic dominance for those without. This may contribute to the heterogeneous presentation observed among autistic adults of normal intelligence.
《精神疾病诊断与统计手册》第5版（DSM - 5）已不再区分自闭症和阿斯伯格综合征。然而，这种临床分类在很大程度上与语言开始延迟的存在与否重叠，而语言开始延迟与临床、认知和神经方面的差异相关。目前尚不清楚这些不同的语言发展途径及相关的认知差异是否与自闭症成年人特有的狭窄兴趣的异质性有关。
本研究检验了以下假设：语言开始延迟，或者相反，早期掌握语言，会影响成年自闭症患者兴趣的性质和语言表述。在自闭症患者对半结构化访谈其强烈兴趣的回答中，确定了先验定义的描述符在 和 维度上的出现情况，以及感知到的功能和益处。通过方差分析计算并比较了两组之间的单词数量、语法类别以及 / 描述符的比例。参与者包括40名成年自闭症患者，根据是否存在语言开始延迟分为两组（延迟组 = 20人，非延迟组 = 20人），以及20名同样有强烈兴趣的非自闭症成年患者，使用瑞文标准推理测验使其在非语言智力方面相匹配。
自闭症亚组之间以及自闭症组和非自闭症组之间，强烈兴趣的总体性质、功能和益处相似。然而，有语言开始延迟病史的自闭症参与者在谈论他们的兴趣时，使用的感知描述符比主题描述符更多，而无语言开始延迟的自闭症个体则相反。在控制了两组之间观察到的语言差异后，这一发现仍然显著。
成年自闭症个体对强烈兴趣的语言表述，而非兴趣的性质或积极功能，因其语言习得史不同而有所差异：有语言开始延迟的自闭症个体对强烈兴趣的口头表述以感知主导为特征，而无延迟的个体则以主题主导为特征。这可能有助于解释在智力正常的成年自闭症患者中观察到的异质性表现。
