Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YF, UK.
J Autism Dev Disord. 2024 Sep;54(9):3301-3315. doi: 10.1007/s10803-023-06066-8. Epub 2023 Aug 2.
Word learning depends on attention - children must focus on the right things at the right times. However, autistic children often display restricted interests, limiting their intake of stimuli during word learning. This study investigates how category interests influence word learning in autism and neurotypical development. Autistic and neurotypical children matched on receptive vocabulary used a touch-screen computer to learn novel words associated with animals (high-interest stimuli) and objects (neutral-interest stimuli) via fast mapping. Response accuracy and speed were examined at referent selection, 5-minute retention, and 24-hour retention. Both groups identified meanings of novel words associated with unfamiliar animals and objects via mutual exclusivity with comparable accuracy. After 5 minutes, autistic children retained animal names with greater accuracy than neurotypical children. Autistic children showed a greater increase in their accuracy between 5-minute and 24-hour retention and outperformed neurotypical children across conditions after a night's sleep. Across groups, 24-hour retention was predicted by number of target word repetitions heard at referent selection, indicating a relationship between fast mapping input and retention. However, autistic children were slower to respond correctly, particularly in the animal condition. For autistic children, superior word learning associated with high-interest stimuli was relatively short-term, as sleep appeared to consolidate their memory representations for neutral-interest stimuli. Although these results demonstrate that fundamental word learning mechanisms are not atypical in autism, slower response times may signal a speed-accuracy trade-off that could have implications for naturalistic language acquisition. Our findings also indicate favourable environmental conditions to scaffold word learning.
词汇学习依赖于注意力——儿童必须在正确的时间关注正确的事物。然而，自闭症儿童通常表现出兴趣受限，这限制了他们在词汇学习过程中对刺激的吸收。本研究调查了类别兴趣如何影响自闭症和神经典型发展中的词汇学习。在接受词汇量上相匹配的自闭症儿童和神经典型儿童使用触摸屏电脑通过快速映射学习与动物（高兴趣刺激）和物体（中性兴趣刺激）相关的新词。在参考选择、5 分钟保留和 24 小时保留时，检查了反应准确性和速度。两组儿童都通过互斥性以相当的准确性识别了与不熟悉的动物和物体相关的新词的含义。5 分钟后，自闭症儿童对动物名称的保留准确性高于神经典型儿童。自闭症儿童在 5 分钟和 24 小时保留之间的准确性提高幅度更大，并且在一夜睡眠后的所有条件下都表现优于神经典型儿童。在所有组中，24 小时保留与参考选择时听到的目标单词重复次数有关，表明快速映射输入与保留之间存在关系。然而，自闭症儿童的反应速度较慢，特别是在动物条件下。对于自闭症儿童来说，与高兴趣刺激相关的出色词汇学习是相对短期的，因为睡眠似乎巩固了他们对中性兴趣刺激的记忆表征。尽管这些结果表明自闭症中的基本词汇学习机制并非异常，但较慢的反应时间可能表明速度-准确性权衡，这可能对自然语言习得产生影响。我们的研究结果还表明，有利的环境条件可以支撑词汇学习。
