Authors: Letitia R Naigles Elizabeth Kelley Eva Troyb Deborah Fein
Publish Date: 2013/01/16
Volume: 43, Issue: 9, Pages: 2048-2061
Abstract
In two experiments typically developing TD children highfunctioning children with autism HFA and children with a history of autism who have achieved optimal outcomes OOs matched on age M = 13 years and nonverbal IQ were asked to extend properties of categories to new items categorical induction All groups demonstrated some knowledge of category structure by extending at abovechance levels however the TD group extended more consistently than the OO and HFA groups More consistent extenders had higher lexical and nonverbal IQ scores Experiment 1 or higher pragmatics scores Experiment 2 Thus even very high functioning individuals with autism or with an OO still exhibit residual difficulties with category knowledge and extension moreover category tasks relate to a variety of verbal and nonverbal abilities The difficulty these groups had with categorical induction may be related to their difficulty with generalization more widely future research should investigate this possibilityThis research was funded by R01 MH076189 from NIMH to DF and by R01 2DC007428 to LRN We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Molly Helt Alyssa Orinstein Michael Rosenthal and Katherine Tyson and a number of UConn undergraduates in conducting Experiment 1 as well as the children and families who participated Preliminary results from these experiments were presented at the International Meetings for Autism Research in 2006 and 2009
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