Lexical Processing in School-Age Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Children with Specific Language Impairment: The Role of Semantics.
Semantic cues help kids with ASD but give less boost to kids with SLI, even when vocabulary is matched.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team tested 8- to young learners with autism, with specific language impairment, and typical peers.
All kids had the same vocabulary size.
They measured how fast and how well each child named pictures after seeing related or unrelated words.
They also gave short tests of updating and shifting attention.
What they found
Semantic links helped every group name pictures faster.
The boost was smaller for kids with SLI than for kids with ASD or typical kids.
Better updating and shifting skills predicted better naming in all groups.
How this fits with other research
Ploog et al. (2007) found no semantic encoding problem in ASD. The new data agree: kids with ASD got a clear semantic boost.
Leclercq et al. (2014) showed that low-frequency words hurt sentence understanding in SLI. The new study adds that even high-frequency words get less help from meaning in SLI.
Anbar et al. (2024) tracked toddlers with ASD and found early language scores predict later pragmatics. The new study shows that at school age, semantic network size still matters for basic word access.
Why it matters
When you test a child with SLI, do not assume strong semantic links will speed up word finding. Use extra cues or simpler vocabulary. For kids with ASD, semantic cues work well—lean on them during teaching.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →During a naming task, pair each target word with a clear semantic cue for ASD learners; for SLI learners, add extra phonemic or visual prompts.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and specific language impairment (SLI) often have immature lexical-semantic knowledge; however, the organization of lexical-semantic knowledge is poorly understood. This study examined lexical processing in school-age children with ASD, SLI, and typical development, who were matched on receptive vocabulary. Children completed a lexical decision task, involving words with high and low semantic network sizes and nonwords. Children also completed nonverbal updating and shifting tasks. Children responded more accurately to words from high than from low semantic networks; however, follow-up analyses identified weaker semantic network effects in the SLI group. Additionally, updating and shifting abilities predicted lexical processing, demonstrating similarity in the mechanisms which underlie semantic processing in children with ASD, SLI, and typical development.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2015 · doi:10.1007/s10803-015-2534-2