Trice Katherine Marie, Qi Zhenghan
Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, United States.
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, United States.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2025 Aug 21;19:1633013. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2025.1633013. eCollection 2025.
Mentalizing skills-the capacity to attribute mental states-play critical roles in word learning during typical language development. In autism, mentalizing difficulties may constrain word-learning pathways, limiting language-acquisition opportunities. We ask how autistic children encode and retrieve novel words and what drives individual differences. We test whether autistic children's word learning benefits from pragmatic inferences, as in non-autistic. Forty-nine 6-to-9-year-old verbal autistic children participated. During learning, four novel words in the direct-mapping condition (DM) could be uniquely mapped to one novel object and four in the pragmatic-inference condition (PI) required children to assume speaker intent. Immediate recall and retention (15-min delay) were tested via four-alternative-forced-choice-task. Autistic children showed above-chance PI mapping, no immediate recall differences, and PI retention advantage. However, individual difference analyses suggest a bimodal PI-retention pattern: 55% showed above-chance PI word recognition (PI-Retained) and 45% at-or-below-chance (PI-Limited). Retention profiles do not reflect general memory-most PI-Limited children remembered DM words well. Instead, profile was associated directly with learning success. For PI-Limited specifically, learning performance was at-chance. Eye-movement during learning showed converging evidence: only PI-Retained consistently diverged between looks-to-target and competitor. Only nonverbal IQ in conjunction with initial mapping reliably differentiated groups, not mentalizing or language measures. This suggests distinct pathways of word-meaning acquisition in autistic children with otherwise similar profiles. While PI resolution may facilitate word-meaning acquisition for some, DM better serves others. This underscores the importance of characterizing learning processes as a pathway to understanding the heterogeneity of language in autism.
心理化技能——即赋予心理状态的能力——在典型语言发展过程中的词汇学习中起着关键作用。在自闭症中，心理化困难可能会限制词汇学习途径，减少语言习得机会。我们探究自闭症儿童如何编码和检索新单词以及个体差异的驱动因素。我们测试自闭症儿童的词汇学习是否像非自闭症儿童一样受益于语用推理。49名6至9岁的自闭症言语儿童参与了研究。在学习过程中，直接映射条件（DM）下的四个新单词可唯一映射到一个新物体，而语用推理条件（PI）下的四个新单词则要求儿童推测说话者意图。通过四项选择强迫任务测试即时回忆和记忆保持（延迟15分钟）。自闭症儿童在PI映射上表现高于随机水平，即时回忆无差异，且在PI记忆保持方面具有优势。然而，个体差异分析显示出一种双峰PI记忆保持模式：55%的儿童PI单词识别高于随机水平（PI-保留组），45%的儿童处于或低于随机水平（PI-受限组）。记忆保持情况并不反映一般记忆能力——大多数PI-受限组儿童对DM单词记忆良好。相反，这种模式与学习成功直接相关。具体对于PI-受限组而言，学习表现处于随机水平。学习过程中的眼动显示出趋同的证据：只有PI-保留组在看向目标和竞争物之间始终存在差异。只有非言语智商与初始映射能可靠地区分不同组，而心理化或语言测量指标则不能。这表明在其他方面特征相似的自闭症儿童中，存在不同的词义习得途径。虽然PI解析可能有助于一些儿童习得词义，但DM对另一些儿童更有效。这凸显了将学习过程作为理解自闭症语言异质性途径进行特征描述的重要性。
