Premium
Children With Autism Illuminate the Role of Social Intention in Word Learning
Author(s) -
ParishMorris Julia,
Hen Elizabeth A.,
HirshPasek Kathy,
Golinkoff Roberta Michnick,
TagerFlusberg Helen
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.01065.x
Subject(s) - psychology , autism , mental age , vocabulary , vocabulary development , nonverbal communication , developmental psychology , word learning , cognitive psychology , language development , language acquisition , cognition , linguistics , teaching method , philosophy , pedagogy , mathematics education , neuroscience
To what extent do children with autism (AD) versus typically developing children (TD) rely on attentional and intentional cues to learn words? Four experiments compared 17 AD children ( M age = 5.08 years) with 17 language‐ and 17 mental‐age‐matched TD children ( M ages = 2.57 and 3.12 years, respectively) on nonverbal enactment and word‐learning tasks. Results revealed variability in all groups, but particularly within the AD group. Performance on intention tasks was the most powerful predictor of vocabulary in the AD group but not in the TD groups. These findings suggest that word learning cannot be explained exclusively by either attentional or intentional processes, and they provide evidence of a special role for intentional understanding in the vocabulary development of AD children.