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Inhibitory control and lexical alignment in children with an autism spectrum disorder
Author(s) -
Hopkins Zoë,
Yuill Nicola,
Branigan Holly P.
Publication year - 2017
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/jcpp.12792
Subject(s) - psychology , autism spectrum disorder , perspective (graphical) , typically developing , developmental psychology , inhibitory control , autism , theory of mind , cognitive psychology , cognition , neuroscience , artificial intelligence , computer science
Background Two experiments investigated the contribution of conflict inhibition to pragmatic deficits in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Typical adults’ tendency to reuse interlocutors’ referential choices (lexical alignment) implicates communicative perspective‐taking, which is regulated by conflict inhibition. We examined whether children with ASD spontaneously lexically aligned, and whether conflict inhibition mediated alignment. Methods Children with ASD and chronological‐ and verbal‐age‐matched typically developing controls played a picture‐naming game. We manipulated whether the experimenter used a preferred or dispreferred name for each picture, and examined whether children subsequently used the same name. Results Children with ASD spontaneously lexically aligned, to the same extent as typically developing controls. Alignment was unrelated to conflict inhibition in both groups. Conclusions Children with ASD's referential communication is robust to impairments in conflict inhibition under some circumstances. Their pragmatic deficits may be mitigated in a highly structured interaction.