Cross-situational and ostensive word learning in children with and without autism spectrum disorder

Stick with Static: Unexpected Detrimental Effects of Visual Movement in a Looking-While-Listening Task

PURPOSE

Looking while listening (LWL) tasks track eye movements while children view images (e.g., a dog and a ball) and hear an auditory prompt (e.g., "Find the ball"), allowing researchers to measure receptive language in populations who may be difficult to test with traditional measures. However, LWL tasks often result in high levels of missing data and accurately measuring receptive language in autistic children remains a challenge.

METHODS

We analyzed data from 18 autistic children ages 2-5 years and examined whether adding visual movement of the named image improved LWL accuracy compared to a static condition. This study also investigated whether receptive language abilities on a standardized assessment moderated the effect of condition (i.e., static vs. movement) on LWL accuracy.

RESULTS

There was evidence of comprehension in both conditions, although children showed faster recognition in the static compared to the movement condition. Standardized language abilities did not moderate the effect of condition on LWL accuracy. However, as standardized receptive language scores increased, accuracy increased.

CONCLUSION

Findings indicate that the visual movement manipulation in the current study did not improve accuracy compared to traditional static images within the LWL task. These results also suggest a continued need to refine LWL tasks in order to improve LWL methodology and refine receptive language measures for autistic children.

The effect of volatility in linguistic input on prediction behavior in autistic toddlers

Domain-general prediction differences have been posited as underlying many aspects of the cognitive-behavioral profile in autism. An interesting potential implication of such differences is hyperplasticity of learning-the idea that autistic individuals may privilege more recent input over the accumulation of prior learning. Because real world language input is highly variable, hyperplasticity could have serious ramifications for language learning. To investigate potential hyperplasticity during a language processing task, we administered an experimental anticipatory eye movement (AEM) task to 2- to 3-year-old autistic children and neurotypical (NT) peers. Autistic children's change in anticipation from before to after a switch in contingencies did not significantly differ from NT counterparts, failing to support claims of hyperplasticity in the linguistic domain. Analysis of individual differences among autistic children revealed that cognitive ability was associated with prediction of the initial, stable contingencies, but neither age nor receptive language related to task performance. Results are discussed in terms of clinical implications and the broader context of research investigating prediction differences in autism.

The association between statistical learning and language development during childhood: A scoping review

The statistical account of language acquisition asserts that language is learned through computations on the statistical regularities present in natural languages. This type of account can predict variability in language development measures as arising from individual differences in extracting this statistical information. Given that statistical learning has been attested across different domains and modalities, a central question is which modality is more tightly yoked with language skills. The results of a scoping review, which aimed for the first time at identifying the evidence of the association between statistical learning skills and language outcomes in typically developing infants and children, provide preliminary support for the statistical learning account of language acquisition, mostly in the domain of lexical outcomes, indicating that typically developing infants and children with stronger auditory and audio-visual statistical learning skills perform better on lexical competence tasks. The results also suggest that the relevance of statistical learning skills for language development is dependent on sensory modality.

What have we learned from 15 years of research on cross-situational word learning? A focused review

In 2007 and 2008, Yu and Smith published their seminal studies on cross-situational word learning (CSWL) in adults and infants, showing that word-object-mappings can be acquired from distributed statistics despite in-the-moment uncertainty. Since then, the CSWL paradigm has been used extensively to better understand (statistical) word learning in different language learners and under different learning conditions. The goal of this review is to provide an entry-level overview of findings and themes that have emerged in 15 years of research on CSWL across three topic areas (mechanisms of CSWL, CSWL across different learner and task characteristics) and to highlight the questions that remain to be answered.

Atypical vocabulary acquisition in autism: where is it coming from?

Word-learning development is extremely varied among children with autism, with some showing a peak of abilities in vocabulary and others little or no comprehension or expression of isolated words. Typical word learning mechanisms, such as the application of mutual exclusivity, cross-situational mapping, the whole-object principle, and the noun-naming bias also share this heterogeneity: some mechanisms appear to develop in a typical fashion and others depend on the individuals’ language level. The reason for which word-learning processes could be atypical in autism is still the object of debate. Atypical attentional biases or early social interaction could both play a role in early word acquisition. But it is also unclear whether differences in vocabulary acquisition simply reflect the impact of co-morbid language impairment or there is a degree of specificity in autism. Finally, I propose that a more dimensional view in the study of word learning could be useful to move the field forward.

Parental tuning of language input to autistic and nonspectrum children

Caregivers' language input supports children's language development, and it is often tuned to the child's current level of skill. Evidence suggests that parental input is tuned to accommodate children's expressive language levels, but accommodation to receptive language abilities is less understood. In particular, little is known about parental sensitivity to children's abilities to process language in real time. Compared to nonspectrum children, children on the spectrum are slower to process language. In this study, we ask: Do parents of autistic children and those of nonspectrum children tune their language input to accommodate children's different language processing abilities? Children with and without a diagnosis of autism (ages 2-6 years, N = 35) and their parents viewed a display of six images, one of which was the target. The parent labeled the target to direct the child's attention to it. We first examined children's language processing abilities by assessing their latencies to shift gaze to the labeled referent; from this, we found slower latencies in the autistic group than in the nonspectrum group, in line with previous findings. We then examined features of parents' language and found that parents in both groups produced similar language, suggesting that parents may not adjust their language input according to children's speed of language processing. This finding suggests that (1) capturing parental sensitivity to children's receptive language, and specifically language processing, may enrich our models of individual differences in language input, and (2) future work should investigate if supporting caregivers in tuning their language use according to children's language processing can improve children's language outcomes.

Investigating the Mechanisms Driving Referent Selection and Retention in Toddlers at Typical and Elevated Likelihood for Autism Spectrum Disorder

It was suggested that children's referent selection may not lay memory traces sufficiently strong to lead to retention of new word-object mappings. If this was the case we expect incorrect selections to be easily rectified through feedback. Previous work suggested this to be the case in toddlers at typical likelihood (TL) but not in those at elevated likelihood (EL) for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (Bedford et al., ). Yet group differences in lexical knowledge may have confounded these findings. Here, TL (N = 29) and EL toddlers (N = 75) chose one of two unfamiliar objects as a referent for a new word. Both groups retained the word-referent mapping above chance when their choices were immediately reinforced but were at chance after corrective feedback. The same pattern of results was obtained when children observed another experimenter make the initial referent choice. Thus, children's referent choices lay memory traces that compete with subsequent correction; these strong word-object associations are not a result of children actively choosing potential referents for new words.

Multiple Mechanisms of Word Learning in Late-Talking Children: A Longitudinal Study

PURPOSE

The aim of this study was to identify variability in word-learning mechanisms used by late-talking children using a longitudinal study design, which may explain variability in late-talking children's outcomes.

METHOD

A cohort of typically developing children (n = 40) and children who were classified as late-talking children at age 2;0 (years;months; ≤ 10th percentile on expressive vocabulary, n = 21) were followed up at ages 3;0 and 3;6. We tested the cohort across tasks designed to isolate different mechanisms involved in word learning: encoding and producing spoken forms of words (using a nonword repetition task), identifying referents for words (using a fast mapping task), and learning associations between words and referents (using a cross-situational word-learning task).

RESULTS

Late-talking children had lower accuracy on nonword repetition than typically developing children, despite most of the sample reaching typical ranges for expressive vocabulary at age 3;6. There were no between-groups differences in fast mapping and retention accuracy; however, both were predicted by concurrent expressive vocabulary. Late-talking children performed less accurately than typically developing children on cross-situational word-learning retention trials, despite showing no between-groups differences during training trials. Combining performance across all three tasks predicted approximately 45% of the variance in vocabulary outcomes at the last time point.

CONCLUSIONS

Late-talking children continue to have deficits in phonological representation that impact their word-learning ability and expressive language abilities but do not show difficulties in fast mapping novel words. Late-talking children may also struggle to retain associative information about word-referent mappings. Late-talking children thus use some, but not all, word-learning mechanisms differently than typically developing children.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.20405856.

Language development, reading and word learning in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): a review on eye tracking studies

Objectives: The purpose of this article is to review research that has been conducted over the past five years on language development, reading skills and word learning with the use of the eye tracking machine as regards the population with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in comparison to typically developed population. Materials and methods: A combination of relevant terms from Google Scholar, Research Gate and PsychINFO databases was used and as a result 24 studies emerged. The total number of studies that met the inclusion criteria was 21. Results: Studies focusing on the language development of people with ASD have presented significant findings regarding vocabulary processing and the preferential focus on specific stimuli (images, audio) over a wide range of ages that in some cases have not been investigated until then. Furthermore, studies on reading have found that adults with ASD showed a strong preference for images and symbols over texts, longer reading time and performances similar to the typical population in vocabulary processing. Studies on word learning demonstrated that adults with ASD are able to rely on gaze cues in order to learn a new word and they have the ability to use syntactic bootstrapping. For preschool and early school-aged children with ASD the results showed that they are capable of cross-situational learning. Conclusions: This review provides information on the effectiveness of the eye tracking method as a tool that can contribute to the identification of deficits in language processing on the part of individuals with ASD from early childhood to adulthood, and more specifically as regards the domains of language development, reading and word learning.

Visual perceptual salience and novel referent selection in children with and without autism spectrum disorder

Background & Aims

Many young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate striking delays in early vocabulary development. Experimental studies that teach the meanings of novel nonwords can determine the effects of linguistic and attentional factors. One factor that may affect novel referent selection in children with ASD is visual perceptual salience-how interesting (i.e., striking) stimuli are on the basis of their visual properties. The goal of the current study was to determine how the perceptual salience of objects affected novel referent selection in children with ASD and children who are typically developing (TD) of similar ages (mean age 3-4 years).

Methods

Using a screen-based experimental paradigm, children were taught the names of four unfamiliar objects: two high-salience objects and two low-salience objects. Their comprehension of the novel words was assessed in low-difficulty and high-difficulty trials. Gaze location was determined from video by trained research assistants.

Results

Contrary to initial predictions, findings indicated that high perceptual salience disrupted novel referent selection in the children with ASD but facilitated attention to the target object in age-matched TD peers. The children with ASD showed no significant evidence of successful novel referent selection in the high-difficulty trials. Exploratory reaction time analyses suggested that the children with autism showed "stickier" attention-had more difficulty disengaging (i.e., looking away)-from high-salience distracter images than low-salience distracter images, even though the two images were balanced in salience for any given test trial.

Conclusions and Clinical Implications

These findings add to growing evidence that high perceptual salience has the potential to disrupt novel referent selection in children with ASD. These results underscore the complexity of novel referent selection and highlight the importance of taking the immediate testing context into account. In particular, it is important to acknowledge that screen-based assessments and screen-based learning activities used with children with ASD are not immune to the effects of lower level visual features, such as perceptual salience.

Novel word recognition in childhood stuttering

Language skills have long been posited to be a factor contributing to developmental stuttering. The current study aimed to evaluate whether novel word recognition, a critical skill for language development, differentiated children who stutter from children who do not stutter. Twenty children who stutter and 18 children who do not stutter, aged 3–8 years, completed a novel word recognition task. Real-time eye gaze was used to evaluate online learning. Retention was measured immediately and after a 1-hr delay. Children who stutter and children who do not stutter exhibited similar patterns of online novel word recognition. Both groups also had comparable retention accuracy. Together, these results revealed that novel word recognition and retention were similar in children who stutter and children who do not stutter. These patterns suggest that differences observed in previous studies of language in stuttering may not be driven by novel word recognition abilities in children who stutter.

It takes all kinds (of information) to learn a language: Investigating the language comprehension of typical children and children with autism

What factors influence children's understanding of language, in both typical and atypical development? In this article, I summarize findings from the Longitudinal Study of Early Language (LSEL), which has been following the talk, understanding, and interactions of typically developing (TD) children and children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The LSEL has found group similarities in syntactic understanding and word learning strategies, but also within-group variability that correlates with other aspects of the children's behavior. In particular, early linguistic knowledge and social abilities are both shown to play independent roles in later talk and understanding. Thus, theoretical perspectives that highlight social vs. linguistic underpinnings to language development should be viewed as complementary rather than competing.

Intentional Training With Speech Production Supports Children's Learning the Meanings of Foreign Words: A Comparison of Four Learning Tasks

To determine the best techniques to teach children foreign words, we compared the effectiveness of four different learning tasks on their foreign-word learning (i.e., learning word forms and word meanings). The tasks included incidental learning, intentional learning with production, intentional learning without production, and cross-situational statistical learning. We also analyzed whether children's age and cognitive skills correlate with the learning of word forms and word meanings. Forty-four 5-8-year-old children participated in the study. The results reveal that the children were able to learn the correct word forms from all four tasks and no differences emerged between the effectiveness of the tasks on the learning of word-forms. The children also learned the word meanings with all four tasks, yet the intentional task with production was more effective than the incidental task. This suggests that the ability of children to learn foreign words benefited from them knowing that they were supposed to learn new words and producing them aloud while training. The age of the children correlated with their learning results for word forms and meanings on the intentional task without production. The older children learned more effectively than the younger children in this task. Children's phonological processing skills were correlated with learning the word meanings from the incidental task, suggesting that children with better phonological skills were able to benefit from incidental learning more than children with poorer phonological skills. Altogether, the results suggest that children's foreign-language learning benefits from intentional training with speech production regardless of their age or cognitive skills.

Comparing cross-situational word learning, retention, and generalisation in children with autism and typical development

Word learning is complicated by referential ambiguity - there are often multiple potential targets for a newly-heard word. While typically developing (TD) children can accurately infer word meanings from cross-situational statistics, specific difficulties tracking word-object co-occurrences may contribute to language impairments in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Here, we investigate cross-situational word learning as an integrated system including mapping, retention, and generalisation in both typical development and autism. In Study 1, children with ASD were as accurate at disambiguating the meanings of novel words from statistical correspondences as TD controls matched on receptive vocabulary. In Study 2, both populations spontaneously utilised social and non-social attentional cues to facilitate and accelerate their mapping of word-referent relationships. Across Studies 1 and 2, both groups retrieved and generalised word-referent representations with impressive and comparable accuracy. Although children with ASD performed very similarly to TD children on measures of learning accuracy, they were significantly slower to identify correct referents under both cued and non-cued learning conditions. These findings indicate that mechanisms supporting cross-situational word learning, and the relationships between them, are not qualitatively atypical in language-delayed children with ASD. However, the increased time required to generate correct responses suggests that these mechanisms may be less efficient, potentially impacting learning in natural environments where visual and auditory stimuli are presented rapidly. Our data support claims that word learning in the longer term is driven by the gradual accumulation of word-object associations over multiple learning instances and could potentially inform the development of interventions designed to scaffold word learning.

Fast mapping is a laboratory task, not a cognitive capacity

Fast Mapping is a laboratory task that typically involves an experimenter creating a nonsense name for an object the participant has never seen before. We demonstrate how researchers' use of the term Fast Mapping has extended beyond its core meaning as a laboratory task to more abstractly denote an internal process, a skill that children employ in their everyday lives, and an inherent capacity. We argue that such over-extension is problematic.

Auditory-visual misalignment: A theoretical perspective on vocabulary delays in children with ASD

In this commentary, we describe a novel theoretical perspective on vocabulary delays in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)-a perspective we refer to as auditory-visual misalignment. We synthesize empirical evidence that: (a) as a result of differences in both social and nonsocial visual attention, the auditory-visual statistics available to children with ASD for early word learning are misaligned; (b) this auditory-visual misalignment disrupts word learning and contributes to the vocabulary delays shown by children with ASD; and (c) adopting a perspective of auditory-visual misalignment has important theoretical and clinical implications for understanding and supporting vocabulary development in children with ASD. Theoretically, the auditory-visual misalignment perspective advances our understanding of how attentional differences impact vocabulary development in children with ASD in several ways. By adopting the point of view of the child, we provide a framework that brings together research on social and domain-general visual attention differences in children with ASD. In addition, the auditory-visual misalignment perspective moves current thinking beyond how misalignment disrupts vocabulary development in the moment, and considers the likely consequences of misalignment over developmental time. Finally, considering auditory-visual misalignment may assist in identifying active ingredients of existing language interventions or in developing new interventions that deliver high quality, aligned input. Future research is needed to determine how manipulating auditory-visual alignment changes word learning in ASD and whether the effects of auditory-visual misalignment are unique to ASD or shared with other neurodevelopmental disorders or sources of language impairment. Autism Research 2018, 11: 1621-1628. © 2018 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: This article describes a new way of thinking about vocabulary delays in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We suggest that children with ASD may have difficulty learning words because their attention is not tuned in to what is most important for learning, creating a mismatch between what they see and what they hear. This perspective brings together research on different types of attentional differences in people with ASD. It may also help us to understand how language interventions work.