Struggling with alternative descriptions: Impaired referential processing in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

• 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]