Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, 2240 Campus Drive, Frances Searle Building, #2-366, Evanston, IL, 60208, USA.
Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong SAR, China.
Sci Rep. 2021 Jun 28;11(1):13401. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-91911-y.
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their first-degree relatives demonstrate automaticity deficits reflected in reduced eye-voice coordination during rapid automatized naming (RAN), suggesting that RAN deficits may be a genetically meaningful marker of ASD language-related impairments. This study investigated whether RAN deficits in ASD extend to a language typologically distinct from English. Participants included 23 Cantonese-speaking individuals with ASD and 39 controls from Hong Kong (HK), and age- and IQ-comparable groups of previously-studied English-speaking individuals with ASD (n = 45) and controls (n = 44) from the US. Participants completed RAN on an eye tracker. Analyses examined naming time, error rate, measures of eye movement reflecting language automaticity, including eye-voice span (EVS; location of eyes versus the named item) and refixations. The HK-ASD group exhibited longer naming times and more refixations than HK-Controls, in a pattern similar to that observed in the US-ASD group. Cultural effects revealed that both HK groups showed longer EVS and more fixations than US groups. Naming time and refixation differences may be ASD-specific impairments spanning cultures/languages, whereas EVS and fixation frequency may be more variably impacted. A potential underlying mechanism of visual "stickiness" may be contributing to this breakdown in language automaticity in ASD.
自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）个体及其一级亲属在快速自动命名（RAN）中表现出自动性缺陷，表现在眼睛和声音的协调性降低，这表明 RAN 缺陷可能是 ASD 语言相关障碍的一个具有遗传意义的标志物。本研究调查了 ASD 中的 RAN 缺陷是否会扩展到与英语在语言类型上不同的语言。参与者包括 23 名来自香港的自闭症谱系障碍个体和 39 名对照组，以及来自美国的先前研究过的英语自闭症谱系障碍个体（n = 45）和对照组（n = 44）的年龄和智商匹配组。参与者在眼动仪上完成 RAN。分析考察了命名时间、错误率以及反映语言自动性的眼动测量指标，包括眼-声距（EVS；眼睛与命名项目的位置）和注视回跳。与美国 ASD 组相似，香港 ASD 组的命名时间较长，注视回跳较多。文化效应表明，与美国组相比，两个香港组的 EVS 都更长，注视次数也更多。命名时间和注视回跳的差异可能是 ASD 特有的跨文化/语言障碍，而 EVS 和注视频率的影响可能更为多变。视觉“粘性”的潜在潜在机制可能导致 ASD 中语言自动性的这种崩溃。
