Language Processing and Word Learning in Preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorder

项目摘要/摘要 自闭症谱系障碍(ASD)儿童的语言能力经常受损。英语语言能力 学龄前几年是一个强有力的结果预测者。在这些早年，父母是早期语言的主要来源。 因此，研究自闭症儿童的父母提供的语言输入以及儿童的语言输入能力是至关重要的 理解这些输入并从中学习。在目前的提案中，我们研究了患有自闭症的学龄前儿童和典型的- 发展中(TD)同龄人为他们听到的语言赋予意义，以及父母的语言输入如何支持这些努力。 更具体地说，我们的目标是了解孩子们是如何学习新单词的意思的。我们关注的是动词 因为听到陌生动词的句子语境为TD儿童提供了有用的信息 它们的意义。然而，我们几乎不知道哪种句子语境在自闭症中最有用，或者什么是 父母在自己的演讲中提供的各种语境。为了探讨这个问题，我们向孩子们介绍陌生的单词 无论是在精心构建的语言上下文中，还是在不同的信息量和易于处理的上下文中，以及 每个语境的重复次数(研究1)或由其父母产生的无脚本句子语境(研究2)。 我们使用眼球跟踪测量来评估孩子们如何理解上下文并赋予单词一个含义。 这项研究将揭示ASD和TD的语言学习机制，并将为 制定有效的语言干预措施，包括基于家长的干预措施。

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Language ability is often impaired in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Language ability in the preschool years is a powerful predictor of outcomes. In these early years, parents are a primary source of early language. It is therefore crucial to study the language input that parents of children with ASD provide and children's abilities to comprehend and learn from that input. In the current proposal, we study how preschoolers with ASD and typically- developing (TD) peers assign meaning to the language they hear, and how parental language input supports these efforts. More specifically, our goal is to understand how children learn the meanings of new words. We focus on verbs because the sentence contexts in which unfamiliar verbs are heard provide helpful information for TD children to acquire their meaning. However, we know little about what kinds of sentence contexts are most useful in ASD, or about what kinds of contexts parents provide in their own speech. To pursue this issue, we present children with unfamiliar words either in carefully constructed linguistic contexts, varying how informative and easy-to-process they are, as well as the number of repetitions of each context (Study 1) or unscripted sentence contexts produced by their own parent (Study 2). We use eye-tracking measures to assess how children understand the contexts and assign the words a meaning. This research will shed light on the mechanisms underlying language learning in ASD and in TD and will support the development of effective language interventions, including parent-based interventions.