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Inner speech impairments in autism
Author(s) -
Whitehouse Andrew J.O.,
Maybery Murray T.,
Durkin Kevin
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
journal of child psychology and psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.652
H-Index - 211
eISSN - 1469-7610
pISSN - 0021-9630
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2006.01624.x
Subject(s) - autism , psychology , recall , cognition , task (project management) , encoding (memory) , audiology , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , neuroscience , medicine , management , economics
Background: Three experiments investigated the role of inner speech deficit in cognitive performances of children with autism. Methods: Experiment 1 compared children with autism with ability‐matched controls on a verbal recall task presenting pictures and words. Experiment 2 used pictures for which the typical names were either single syllable or multisyllable. Two encoding conditions manipulated the use of verbal encoding. Experiment 3 employed a task‐switching paradigm for which performance has been shown to be contingent upon inner speech. Results: In Experiment 1, children with autism demonstrated a lower picture‐superiority effect compared to controls. In Experiment 2, the children with autism showed a lower word‐length effect when pictures were presented alone, but a more substantial word‐length effect in a condition requiring overt labelling. In Experiment 3, articulatory suppression affected the task‐switching performance of the control participants only. Conclusions: Individuals with autism have limitations in their use of inner speech.