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Lexical composition in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2012

LESLIE RESCORLA  and
PAIGE SAFYER
LESLIE RESCORLA
Affiliation:
Psychology, Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, USA
PAIGE SAFYER
Affiliation:
Psychology, Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, USA
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Abstract

For sixty-seven children with ASD (age 1;6 to 5;11), mean Total Vocabulary score on the Language Development Survey (LDS) was 65·3 words; twenty-two children had no reported words; and twenty-one children had 1–49 words. When matched for vocabulary size, children with ASD and children in the LDS normative sample did not differ in semantic category or word-class scores. Q correlations were large when percentage use scores for the ASD sample were compared with those for samples of typically developing children as well as children with vocabularies <50 words. The 57 words with the highest percentage use scores for the ASD children were primarily nouns, represented a variety of semantic categories, and overlapped substantially with the words having highest percentage use scores in samples of typically developing children as well as children with lexicons of <50 words. Results indicated that the children with ASD were acquiring essentially the same words as typically developing children, suggesting delayed but not deviant lexical composition.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 40 , Special Issue 1: Atypical development , January 2013 , pp. 47 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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Footnotes

[*]

Address for correspondence: Leslie Rescorla, Bryn Mawr College – Psychology, 101 N. Merion Ave Bryn Mawr Pennsylvania 19010, United States. e-mail: lrescorl@brynmawr.edu

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