Verbal and Figural Creativity in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder and Typical Development

Qualitative analysis of verbal fluency in school-age children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders. Associations with age and IQ

This study analyzes performance on both a Semantic and a Letter verbal fluency (VF) task in school-age children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (HF-ASD) (n = 20) and without ASD (n = 20) and investigates the relationship between VF indicators and age, verbal and non-verbal IQ, ASD severity, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptomatology. Furthermore, the Poor Lexical-Semantic Structure Model and the Slow-Retrieval Model are tested if they could account for semantic retrieval difficulties in children with HF-ASD. The HF-ASD group generated significantly fewer correct responses in both VF tasks in comparison to the control group. The type of task significantly affected performance and both groups showed higher word generativity on the Semantic task. The groups did not differ in clustering, switching, and errors. Age significantly correlated with the VF indicators in the ASD group, but in the control group, there was a significant negative correlation with the number of errors. Non-verbal and verbal IQ did not correlate with any VF indicators in both groups, while ASD severity and ADHD symptomatology correlated positively and significantly with error responses in the ASD group. The Slow-Retrieval Model explains VF difficulties in the HF-ASD group indicating that poorer word generativity can be attributed to slower retrieval of words from the semantic network.

Cognitive flexibility in children with Developmental Language Disorder: Drawing of nonexistent objects

Cognitive flexibility is the ability to adapt thoughts and behaviors to new environments. Previous studies investigating cognitive flexibility in children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) present contradictory findings. In the current study, cognitive flexibility was assessed in 5- and 6-year-old preschoolers with DLD (n = 23) and peers with typical development (TD; n = 50) using a nonexistent object drawing (NEOD) task. The children were asked to draw a nonexistent man and a nonexistent house. The children with DLD did not differ from their peers with TD on simple category changes, which were comprised of changes in the size or shape of parts of the object, change of the whole shape of the object, and deletion of parts of the object. Nevertheless, children with DLD made fewer more complex, high-level category changes, which included same-category insertions, position exchange of object's parts, and cross-category insertions. The difference between DLD and TD on high-level category changes was related to differences between the two groups in verbal short-term memory and inhibition. Furthermore, children with DLD made no changes to their original drawings of an existing man and house more often than their peers with TD. It is concluded that children with DLD aged 5-6 years show less flexibility on the NEOD task than age-matched children with TD. This difference in cognitive flexibility may be related to lower levels of verbal short-term memory and inhibition ability of children with DLD, or to different use of these cognitive skills on the NEOD task.