Associative learning of pictures and words by low-functioning children with autism.

Full Abstract

This research investigates whether children with autism learn picture, word and object relations as associative pairs or whether they understand such relations as referential. In Experiment 1, children were taught a new word (e.g. ;whisk') repeatedly paired with a novel picture. When given the picture and a previously unseen real whisk and asked to indicate a whisk, children with autism, unlike typically developing peers matched on receptive language, associated the word with the picture rather than the object. Subsequent experiments respectively confirmed that neither a bias for selecting pictures nor perseverative responding accounted for these results. Taken together, these results suggest that children with autism with cognitive difficulties are learning picture-word and picture-object relations via an associative mechanism and have difficulty understanding the symbolic nature of pictures.

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Author information

Author/s: Preissler, Melissa Allen (MA);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK. melissa.allen@lancaster.ac.uk

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Controlled Clinical Trial; Journal Article

Journal: Autism : the international journal of research and practice (Autism), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2008-May; vol 12 (issue 3) : pp 231-48

Dates: Created 2008/04/30; Completed 2008/07/08;

PMID: 18445733, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Association Learning
Autistic Disorder - psychology; therapy
Child
Child, Preschool
Comprehension
Female
Humans

Humans
Intelligence
Language Development Disorders - psychology; therapy
Male
Pattern Recognition, Visual
Symbolism
Verbal Learning

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