Reduced sensitivity to context in language comprehension: A characteristic of Autism Spectrum Disorders or of poor structural language ability?
Melanie Eberhardt, Aparna Nadig
PMID 26898317WHAT IT FOUND
Children with autism and normal language understood context as well as peers.
When autism came with weaker grammar and vocabulary, context understanding dropped, like in children with language impairment. Check structural language before assuming an autism-specific comprehension style.
Key findings
01Children with autism and normal language did not differ from typically developing children in accuracy or response time when using sentence context to choose a picture.
02In Experiment 2, children with autism made fewer context-sensitive completions than typically developing controls, but children with primary language impairment also made fewer, and the autism and language impairment groups did not differ.
03In Experiment 1, structural language ability predicted context-sensitive responses for rare homonyms, while nonverbal IQ and autism diagnosis did not.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The two experiments were not parallel: one used picture selection in English, the other used sentence completion in German, so task differences could influence results. The children were tested only in a narrow age range and in a very structured language task, so it may not show how they understand everyday conversation. In Experiment 2, the language impairment group had lower nonverbal test scores than the other groups, which can complicate comparison. This was not a treatment study, so it does not show that improving language will improve context use.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that children with autism have a general weakness in using context. Children with autism and normal language performed like controls, and children with autism plus language impairment looked like children with language impairment, not like a distinct autism group.