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• The study examined first impressions of the speech of ASD and NT adults (Speakers) by other ASD and NT adults (Raters). • Raters evaluated Speakers using a Likert scale targeting first impressions of seven discourse features. • ASD and NT Raters both formed less favorable impressions of the spoken discourse of ASD Speakers. • There are specific linguistic features that distinguish the speech of ASD and NT adults. Studies on impression formation in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have suggested that both ASD and neurotypical (NT) individuals extract paralinguistic cues (e.g., vocal and facial expressions) from brief extracts of social behaviors to form less favorable impressions of the personality traits of ASD individuals than of their NT peers. Yet, discourse studies in ASD have also suggested that there are specific linguistic features (e.g., conjunctions) that can distinguish the speech of ASD individuals from that of NT individuals. This study investigates whether naïve participants with and without autism can perceive discourse features previously identified as characteristic of ASD speech, based on a single exposure to conversation extracts. A cross-design rating experiment was created whereby a group of ASD and NT adults (blind to diagnosis information) rated audio recordings involving ASD and NT speakers. Rating participants evaluated the recordings using a Likert scale targeting impressions of discourse features. ASD and NT Raters behaved similarly on the ratings of discourse features; evaluating the speech of ASD Speakers less favorably than those of NT Speakers. Our results extend previous findings by showing that linguistic cues also lead to less favorable impressions of the discourse of ASD Speakers, and this from both the perspective of NT and ASD Raters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We investigated whether children with ASD can selectively learn from speakers. Children with ASD, children with DLD and TD children participated in this study • Speakers differed on previously demonstrated accuracy and on potential reliability. • Children in all groups preferred word-mappings offered by previously accurate speakers. • Eye-tracking data revealed that they avoided inaccurate speakers' testimony. • Only TD children displayed preference for mappings offered by more reliable speakers. The purpose of this study was to explore whether children with autism display selectivity in social learning. We investigated the processing of word mappings provided by speakers who differed on previously demonstrated accuracy and on potential degree of reliability in three groups of children (children with autism spectrum disorder, children with developmental language disorder, and typically developing children) aged 4–9 years. In Task 1, one speaker consistently misnamed familiar objects and the second speaker consistently gave correct names. In Task 2, both speakers provided correct information but differed on how they could achieve this accuracy. We analyzed how the speakers' profiles influenced children's decisions to rely on them in order to learn novel words. We also examined how children attended to the speakers' testimony by tracking their eye movements and comparing children' gaze distribution across speakers' faces and objects of their choice. Results show that children rely on associative trait attribution heuristics to selectively learn from accurate speakers. In Task 1, children in all groups preferred the novel object selected by accurate speakers and directly avoided information provided by previously inaccurate speakers, as revealed by the eye-tracking data. In Task 2, where more sophisticated reasoning about speakers' reliability was required, only children in the typically developing group performed above chance. Nonverbal intelligence score emerged as a predictor of children's preference for more reliable informational sources. In addition, children with autism exhibited reduced attention to speakers' faces compared with children in the comparison groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) show a tendency to reuse referential descriptions previously used by their conversational partner. • We found that children with ASD have difficulties in switching to alternative labels to refer to the items for which they have already established precedents. • We found no partner specific processing for broken precedents in children with and without ASD. • Our findings suggest that children with ASD may occasionally exhibit difficulties in processing referential communication due to executive dysfunction. Children and adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) show a tendency to preferentially rely on those referential descriptions that have previously been used by their conversational partner. However, such a tendency may become maladaptive in a situation of interaction with different partners who may introduce alternative lexical descriptions for the same referent. Six-year-old children with ASD, as well as mental- and verbal-age-matched typically developing (TD) children moved items on a touch-screen following instructions by an experimenter. During the entrainment phase, the experimenter introduced lexical descriptions for all the items. Then, either the original experimenter or a new partner, depending on the condition, used alternative descriptions for some items and kept the same descriptions for others. Accuracy and time to locate items were collected. Relative to TD children, children with ASD had more difficulty in recognizing and interpreting referential descriptions when another description has been previously used. Whether a new description was introduced by a new or the original experimenter had no effect in any group. Referential processing in ASD is compromised by impaired ability to confront alternative conceptual perspectives. A potential executive source for these difficulties is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While narrative competence has been well documented in autistic children and young adolescents, fairly little is known about narrative performance of autistic adults. However, narrative abilities continue to develop well into adulthood. Hence, the main objective of the present study is to provide a clearer linguistic and communicative profile of ASD in adulthood by performing a systematic description of narrative performance in autistic adults. A specific annotation scheme was developed to code narrative production, in order to be able to compare the production of autistic participants to pairwise matched neurotypical adults relative to microstructure (syntactic complexity), macrostructure (overall story structure and cohesive ties) and internal state language of the corpus' narratives. The results suggest that autistic adults performed worse than their neurotypical peers on all three dimensions of narrative production, resulting in less coherent narratives overall for autistic adults. • Narrative production continues to be an area of difficulty for ASD adults. • Group differences emerged in all three main dimensions of narrative production. • ASD adults exploit linguistic features less efficiently to enhance their narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low integration of speech sounds with the mouth movements likely contributes to language acquisition disabilities that frequently characterize young autistic children. However, the existing empirical evidence either relies on complex verbal instructions or merely focuses on preferential gaze on in-synch videos. The former method is clearly unadapted for young, minimally, or nonverbal autistic children, while the latter has several biases, making it difficult to interpret the data. We designed a Reinforced Preferential Gaze paradigm that allows to test multimodal integration in young, nonverbal autistic children and overcomes several of the methodological challenges faced by previous studies. We show that autistic children have difficulties in temporally binding the speech signal with the corresponding articulatory gestures. A condition with structurally similar nonsocial video stimuli suggests that atypical multimodal integration in autism is not limited to speech stimuli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have documented the significant presence of spontaneous and productive use of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) in the speech of five Tunisian boys with autism, an unusual phenomenon. In typical development, MSA is not fully acquired before the late school years. The Arabic language in Tunisia is in a state of diglossia, and (unlike the colloquial Tunisian Arabic variety) MSA is virtually never used in everyday conversation. Television programs broadcast across the Arabic‐speaking world constitute the most important source of MSA for preschool children. Typically developing children require active social interaction to develop language, but some children with autism may use television and cartoons as noninteractional input to acquire language. This study highlighted the existence of a noninteractional language‐learning strategy that may partly compensate for the sociopragmatic deficits that characterize autism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined whether the atypical speech style that is frequently reported in autistic adults is underpinned by an inflexible production of phonetic targets. In a first task, 20 male autistic adults and 20 neuro-typicals had to read and produce native vowels. To assess the extent to which phonetic inflexibility is due to an overall fine-grained control of phonetic behavior or to a lack of flexibility in the realization of one's phonological repertoire, the second task asked participants to reproduce artificial vowel-like sounds. Results confirmed the presence of a greater articulatory stability in the production of native vowels in autistic adults. When instructed to imitate artificial vowel-like sounds, the autistic group did not better approximate the targets' acoustic properties relative to neuro-typicals but their performance at reproducing artificial vowels was less variable and influenced to a greater extent by the articulatory properties of their own vocalic space. These findings suggest that the greater articulatory stability observed in autistic adults arises from a lack of flexibility in the production of their own native vowels. The two phonetic tasks are devoid of any pragmatic constraint, which indicates that phonetic inflexibility in autism is partly independent of register selection. LAY SUMMARY: Autistic and neuro-typical adults took part in two tasks: one in which they produced vowels from French, their native tongue, and the other where they imitated unfamiliar vowels. Autistic adults displayed significantly less variation in their production of different French vowels. In imitating unfamiliar vowels, they were more influenced by the way they pronounce French vowels. These results suggest that the atypical speech style, frequently attested in autistic individuals, could stem from an unusually stable pronunciation of speech sounds., (© 2021 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is often associated with impaired perspective-taking skills. Deception is an important indicator of perspective-taking, and therefore may be thought to pose difficulties to people with ASD (e.g., Baron-Cohen in J Child Psychol Psychiatry 3:1141-1155, 1992). To test this hypothesis, we asked participants with and without ASD to play a computerised deception game. We found that participants with ASD were equally likely-and in complex cases of deception even more likely-to deceive and detect deception, and learned deception at a faster rate. However, participants with ASD initially deceived less frequently, and were slower at detecting deception. These results suggest that people with ASD readily engage in deception but may do so through conscious and effortful reasoning about other people's perspective.

An ongoing debate in the literature on language acquisition is whether preschool children process reference in an egocentric way or whether they spontaneously and by-default take their partner's perspective into account. The reported study implements a computerized referential task with a controlled trial presentation and simple verbal instructions. Contrary to the predictions of the partner-specific view, entrained referential precedents give rise to faster processing for 3- and 5-year-old children, independently of whether the conversational partner is the same as in the lexical entrainment phase or not. Additionally, both age groups display a processing preference for the interaction with the same partner, be it for new or previously used referential descriptions. These results suggest that preschool children may adapt to their conversational partner; however, partner-specificity is encoded as low-level auditory-phonological priming rather than through inferences about a partner's perspective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is often described as being characterised by a uniform pragmatic impairment. However, recent evidence suggests that some areas of pragmatic functioning are preserved. This study seeks to determine to which extent context-based derivation of non-linguistically encoded meaning is functional in ASD. We compare the performance of 24 adults with ASD, and matched neuro-typical adults in two act-out pragmatic tasks. The first task examines generation of indirect request interpretations, and the second the comprehension of irony. Intact contextual comprehension of indirect requests contrasts with marked difficulties in understanding irony. These results suggest that preserved pragmatics in ASD is limited to egocentric processing of context, which does not rely on assumptions about the speaker's mental states.

Total sleep deprivation (TSD) is known to alter cognitive processes. Surprisingly little attention has been paid to its impact on social cognition. Here, we investigated whether TSD alters levels-1 and -2 visual perspective-taking abilities, i.e. the capacity to infer (a) what can be seen and (b) how it is seen from another person's visual perspective, respectively. Participants completed levels-1 and -2 visual perspective-taking tasks after a night of sleep and after a night of TSD. In these tasks, participants had to take their own (self trials) or someone else's (other trials) visual perspective in trials where both perspectives were either the same (consistent trials) or different (inconsistent trials). An instruction preceding each trial indicated the perspective to take (i.e. the relevant perspective). Results show that TSD globally deteriorates social performance. In the level-1 task, TSD affects the selection of relevant over irrelevant perspectives. In the level-2 task, the effect of TSD cannot be unequivocally explained. This implies that visual perspective taking should be viewed as partially state-dependent, rather than a wholly static trait-like characteristic., (© 2017 European Sleep Research Society.)

Several studies suggest that sleep improves perceptual skills in the visual texture discrimination task (TDT). Here we report that besides consolidation, sleep also generalizes the learned perceptual abilities to the untrained eye. Healthy volunteers (n = 32) were trained on the TDT, in which they had to discriminate between horizontal and vertical target textures briefly presented in the periphery of the visual field (left upper quadrant). After a 10-hr interval filled with either sleep or wakefulness, they were retested first on the trained eye in the trained quadrant and then on the untrained eye and quadrant. In line with prior findings, visual discrimination was globally higher after sleep than after wakefulness, as compared to performance levels at the end of training. Furthermore, discrimination performance was significantly improved only in the sleep condition for the untrained eye in the same quadrant, but also showed a trend to generalize to the untrained eye and untrained quadrant. Our results suggest that sleep-dependent perceptual skills continue developing at a later visual-process stage than the V1 area, where learning is not monocular anymore.