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Young typically developing (TD) children have been observed to utilize word learning strategies such as the noun bias and shape bias; these improve their efficiency in acquiring and categorizing novel terms. Children using the shape bias extend object labels to new objects of the same shape; thus, the shape bias prompts the categorization of object words based on the global characteristic of shape over local, discrete details. Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) frequently attend to minor details of objects rather than their global structure. Therefore, children with ASD may not use shape bias to acquire new words. Previous research with children with ASD has provided evidence that they parallel TD children in showing a noun bias, but not a shape bias (Tek et al., 2008). However, this sample was small and individual and item differences were not investigated in depth. In an extension of Tek et al. (2008) with twice the sample size and a wider developmental timespan, we tested 32 children with ASD and 35 TD children in a longitudinal study across 20 months using the intermodal preferential looking paradigm. Children saw five triads of novel objects (target, shapematch, color-match) in both NoName and Name trials; those who looked longer at the shape-match during the Name trials than the NoName trials demonstrated a shape bias. The TD group showed a significant shape bias at all visits, beginning at 20 months of age while the language-matched ASD group did not show a significant shape bias at any visit.Within the ASD group, though, some children did show a shape bias; these children had larger vocabularies concurrently and longitudinally. Degree of shape bias elicitation varied by item, but did not seem related to perceptual complexity. We conclude that shape does not appear to be an organizing factor for word learning by children with ASD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Delays in early language development are characteristic of young autistic children, and one of the most recognizable first concerns that motivate parents to seek a diagnostic evaluation for their child. Although early language abilities are one of the strongest predictors of long-term outcomes, there is still much to be understood about the role of language impairment in the heterogeneous phenotypic presentation of autism. Using a personcentered, Latent Profile Analysis, we first aimed to identify distinct patterns of language and social communication ability in a clinic-based sample of 498 autistic children, ranging in age from 18 to 60 months (M = 33 mo, SD = 12 mo). Next, a multinomial logistic regression analysis was implemented to examine sociodemographic and child-based developmental differences among the identified language and social communication profiles. Three clinically meaningful profiles were identified from parent-rated and clinician-administered measures: Profile 1 (48% of the sample) “Relatively Low Language and Social Communication Abilities,” Profile 2 (34% of the sample) “Relatively Elevated Language and Social Communication Abilities,” and Profile 3 (18% of the sample) “Informant Discrepant Language and Relatively Elevated Social Communication Abilities.” Overall, young autistic children from the lowest-resource households exhibited the lowest language and social communication abilities, and the lowest non-verbal problem-solving and fine-motor skills, along with more features of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and atypical auditory processing. These findings highlight the need for effective community-based implementation strategies for young autistic children from low-resource households and underrepresented communities to improve access to individualized quality care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies on parenting adult children with ASD were scarce, and their intervention protocols mainly were derived from established work with children. Development of an applicable adult-oriented protocol and demonstration of its effectiveness is warranted. The present study outlined the development and evaluation of Core Autism Parenting Skills (CAPS), which targets to enhance parenting self-efficacy (PSE) intervention for adult children with ASD by addressing two intervention goals in parallel: acquisition of parenting skills and cultivating positive attributes. In CAPS, PSE is operationalised into four parent roles: to observe, reinforce, empathise, and accompany, each with requisite attributes, skills, and prescribed training. Twenty-seven parents with adult children with ASD (aged 16-37) were recruited. They completed measures assessing their PSE, competence in the four parent roles, and emotional well-being at pre-training, posttraining and 2-month follow-up. The intervention was well-received by the participants and reported significant improvements in PSE, parent role competence at post-training and 2-month follow-up. The applicability of PSE and parent role competence in constructing effective parenting intervention for adult children with ASD was supported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perspective taking has been proposed to be impaired in persons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), especially when implicit processing is required. In narrative texts, language perception and interpretation is fundamentally guided by taking the perspective of a narrator. We studied perspective taking in the linguistic domain of so-called Free Indirect Discourse (FID), during which certain text segments have to be interpreted as the thoughts or utterances of a protagonist without explicitly being marked as thought or speech representations of that protagonist (as in direct or indirect discourse). Crucially, the correct interpretation of text segments as FID depends on the ability to detect which of the protagonists "stands out" against the others and is therefore identifiable as implicit thinker or speaker. This so-called "prominence" status of a protagonist is based on linguistic properties (e.g., grammatical function , referential expression), in other words, the perspective is "hidden" and has to be inferred from the text material. In order to test whether this implicit perspective taking ability that is required for the interpretation of FID is preserved in persons with ASD, we presented short texts with three sentences to adults with and without ASD. In the last sentence, the perspective was switched either to the more or the less prominent of two protagonists. Participants were asked to rate the texts regarding their naturalness. Both diagnostic groups rated sentences with FID anchored to the less prominent protagonist as less natural than sentences with FID anchored to the more prominent protagonist. Our results that the high-level perspective taking ability in written language that is required for the interpretation of FID is well preserved in persons with ASD supports the conclusion that language skills are highly elaborated in ASD so that even the challenging attribution of utterances to protagonists is possible if they are only implicitly given. We discuss the implications in the context of claims of impaired perspective taking in ASD as well as with regard to the underlying processing of FID. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For successful language use, interlocutors must be able to accurately assess their shared knowledge ("common ground"). Such knowledge can be accumulated through linguistic and non-linguistic context, but the same context can be associated with different patterns of knowledge, depending on the interlocutor's participant role (Wilkes-Gibbs and Clark, 1992). Although there is substantial evidence that children's ability to model partners' knowledge develops gradually, most such evidence focuses on non-linguistic context. We investigated the extent to which 8- to 10-year-old children can assess common ground developed through prior linguistic context, and whether this is sensitive to variations in participant role. Children repeatedly described tangram figures to another child, and then described the same figures to a third child who had been a side-participant, an overhearer, or absent during the initial conversation. Children showed evidence of partner modeling, producing shorter referential expressions with repeated mention to the same partner. Moreover, they demonstrated sensitivity to differences in common ground with the third child based on participant role on some but not all measures (e.g., description length, but not definiteness). Our results suggest that by ten, children make distinctions about common ground accumulated through prior linguistic context but do not yet consistently deploy this knowledge in an adult-like way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over repeated reference conversational partners tend to converge on preferred terms or referential pacts. Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by pragmatic difficulties that are best captured by less structured tasks. To this end we tested adults with ASD who did not have language or intellectual impairments, and neurotypical comparison participants in a referential communication task. Participants were directors, describing unlexicalized, complex novel stimuli over repeated rounds of interaction. Group comparisons with respect to referential efficiency showed that directors with ASD demonstrated typical lexical entrainment: they became faster over repeated rounds and used shortened referential forms. ASD and neurotypical groups did not differ with respect to the number of descriptors they provided or the number of exchanges needed for matchers to identify figures. Despite these similarities the ASD group was slightly slower overall. We examined partner-specific effects by manipulating the common ground shared with the matcher. As expected, neurotypical directors maintained referential precedents when speaking to the same matcher but not with a new matcher. Directors with ASD were qualitatively similar but displayed a less pronounced distinction between matchers. However, significant differences and different patterns of reference emerged over time; neurotypical directors incorporated the new matcher's contributions into descriptions, whereas directors with ASD were less likely to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]