Specificity of Phonological Representations for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Ron Pomper, Susan Ellis Weismer, Jenny Saffran and 1 others
PMID 31098924WHAT IT FOUND
Young children with autism were as affected by mispronunciations as younger typically developing children, even though they recognized words less accurately overall.
Key findings
01Mispronunciations reduced word recognition accuracy, and the reduction was the same for children with autism and typically developing children.
02Children with autism recognized words less accurately overall than the younger typically developing group.
03Within the autism group, children with different language or nonverbal scores were equally affected by mispronunciations.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The groups were not the same age. Children with ASD were 24 to 36 months old, while children with typical development were 18 to 24 months old. Children with ASD contributed fewer usable trials than children with typical development, which can happen when attention or task demands differ. The paper reports an eye-gaze task, not a treatment trial, so it cannot show that changing speech perception practice will improve vocabulary. Some children with ASD had scores too low to match with the typical group, and their word recognition was near chance. The matched analyses used smaller subsamples, including 22 children from each group matched on language and 31 children from each group matched on nonverbal cognition, so not all children contributed to every comparison.
Declared interests
The authors declared that they have no conflict of interest. The supplied text does not report a funding source.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that speech perception training will improve vocabulary in autism. The study measured eye-gaze word recognition, not a therapy outcome, and children with autism were less accurate overall than younger typically developing children.