Testing the Labeling Effect in Autistic Children.
Sergio Parrillas-Manchón, Elena Castroviejo, José V Hernández-Conde and 2 others
PMID 38801477WHAT IT FOUND
Autistic children did not show the typical labeling effect.
When two objects had the same name, they did not expect them to share hidden properties any more than when the objects had different names. This suggests labels may not guide category formation in autism as they do in typical development.
Key findings
01There was no significant difference in the number of actions performed on a test object between autistic children in the Same Label group and the Distinct Label group when the object did not make a sound.
02Both groups of autistic children performed significantly more actions in the Unpredicted condition compared to the Baseline condition, but the difference between the label groups was not significant.
03Statistical models failed to show a main effect for the label variable, indicating autistic children did not demonstrate the same sensitivity to linguistic labels as typically developing children.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study had a small sample size (30 children) and a wide range of ages and verbal mental ages, which may have masked effects in specific subgroups. The task relied heavily on imitation skills, which were not individually assessed or controlled for beyond a warm-up check. The design was between-subjects, so it could not compare how the same child reacted to both label conditions. The authors note that a post-hoc analysis of children matched for verbal mental age showed a trend toward an effect in older verbal children, but this was not significant.
Declared interests
The study was funded by the Basque Government (Eusko Jaurlaritza), the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, and the University of the Basque Country. No commercial conflicts of interest were reported.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that autistic children are insensitive to all social cues or labels. The null result here is specific to the 'labeling effect' on category formation in a novel object task. It does not mean labels are useless, but that they may not automatically trigger the same cognitive grouping mechanisms they do in typical development.