Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.
J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2017 Oct;58(10):1155-1165. doi: 10.1111/jcpp.12792. Epub 2017 Aug 24.
Two experiments investigated the contribution of conflict inhibition to pragmatic deficits in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Typical adults' tendency to reuse interlocutors' referential choices (lexical alignment) implicates communicative perspective-taking, which is regulated by conflict inhibition. We examined whether children with ASD spontaneously lexically aligned, and whether conflict inhibition mediated alignment.
Children with ASD and chronological- and verbal-age-matched typically developing controls played a picture-naming game. We manipulated whether the experimenter used a preferred or dispreferred name for each picture, and examined whether children subsequently used the same name.
Children with ASD spontaneously lexically aligned, to the same extent as typically developing controls. Alignment was unrelated to conflict inhibition in both groups.
Children with ASD's referential communication is robust to impairments in conflict inhibition under some circumstances. Their pragmatic deficits may be mitigated in a highly structured interaction.
两项实验研究了冲突抑制对自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）儿童语用缺陷的贡献。典型成年人倾向于重复对话者的指称选择（词汇对齐），这暗示了交际视角的转换，而交际视角的转换受到冲突抑制的调节。我们考察了自闭症儿童是否会自发地进行词汇对齐，以及冲突抑制是否会调节这种词汇对齐。
自闭症儿童和年龄匹配的典型发育对照组儿童玩图片命名游戏。我们操纵实验者对每张图片使用偏好名称或非偏好名称，并观察儿童随后是否使用相同的名称。
自闭症儿童和典型发育对照组儿童一样，会自发地进行词汇对齐。在两组中，对齐都与冲突抑制无关。
在某些情况下，自闭症儿童的参照交流不受冲突抑制损伤的影响。他们的语用缺陷在高度结构化的互动中可能会减轻。
