Is interference control in children with specific language impairment similar to that of children with autistic spectrum disorder?
Autistic kids fail interference tasks because of rigid thinking, not weak verbal memory—train flexibility, not just language.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Marton et al. (2018) compared three groups of kids: autism, specific language impairment, and neurotypical.
They gave each child memory tasks that tempt you to use old, wrong answers.
The goal was to see who gets stuck on past info and why.
What they found
Both autism and language-impaired kids made more errors than typical peers.
The autism group slipped up because they kept using the old rule.
The language group slipped up because their verbal memory was weak.
Same poor score, different reason.
How this fits with other research
Reed (2023) saw the same sticking problem. Autistic kids took longer to switch sorting rules after hearing verbal hints.
Both studies say: the trouble is mental flexibility, not weak language memory.
Kaçar Kütükçü et al. (2026) extends the story to Turkish-speaking children. They also found that autism and developmental language disorder split apart on grammar, not on simple repetition.
Together the papers show: if a child keeps giving old answers, check whether it is rigid thinking or poor verbal storage, then pick the right support.
Why it matters
You can test this in five minutes. Present a quick set of pictures, then change the rule. If the child keeps using the first rule, add flexibility drills like reversal cards or intraverbal category swaps instead of more verbal memory games. Target the core problem, not the side effect.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Start a conditional-discrimination reversal game: switch the correct picture set mid-trial and praise quick rule changes.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
AIMS: The purpose of the study was to examine resistance to proactive interference, which is strongly associated with working memory (WM) performance and language processing, in children with specific language impairment (SLI), with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and with typical development (TD). METHODS: Sixty children (eight to ten years; matched in age and nonverbal IQ) participated in the study. Resistance to proactive interference was measured using a verbal conflict paradigm. RESULTS: Children with SLI and ASD show a deficit in resistance to proactive interference compared to their TD peers, but the source of the problem appears to be different for the two clinical groups. The interference problem exhibited by the children with SLI is related to a more complex deficit involving different cognitive-linguistic functions, whereas the children with ASD show a specific problem in cognitive flexibility. IMPLICATIONS: The theoretical implications are that poor resistance to interference may be caused by weaknesses in different WM functions, such as a deficit in updating or responses based on familiarity rather than recollection. The clinical implications are that children with SLI and ASD show distinct patterns of performance; therefore they need different types of intervention to strengthen their resistance to proactive interference.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2018 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2017.11.007