Activation of Thematic and Taxonomic Relations During Lexical-Semantic Processing in Autistic Children: Evidence From Eye Movements.
Autistic preschoolers understand word meanings but get stuck on nearby category neighbors, so trim visual choices during teaching.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Hua et al. (2025) watched autistic and typical preschoolers' eyes while they heard a word and saw four pictures. One picture matched the word. The other three were either theme friends (cake beside candle) or category mates (cake beside cookie).
Eye cameras tracked how fast kids spotted the target and how long they stared at competitors. The team wanted to know if semantic links work the same way in autism.
What they found
Both groups locked onto the target picture equally fast. Autistic kids, however, kept looking back at the taxonomic competitors longer. The extra peeking slowed their final choice.
The result shows the network is intact but noisier for autistic children.
How this fits with other research
Ploog et al. (2007) found no recall gap in autism, arguing semantic storage is fine. Zihui agrees but adds the new detail: storage is fine, yet competition is stronger.
Adams et al. (2021) saw that bright, flashy distracters hurt toddlers with ASD. Zihui shows that even quiet, meaning-related neighbors can do the same trick a year later.
Haebig et al. (2015) worked with older, school-age kids and saw weaker network effects in SLI than in ASD. Zihui extends the story downward, proving the ASD pattern is already present in preschool.
Why it matters
When you teach new words, cut the clutter. Present one clear exemplar instead of several category mates. If you must show choices, space them apart in time or use theme links (cow-milk) rather than category links (cow-horse). The goal is to let the target word win the race.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study investigated the activation of thematic and taxonomic relations during online lexical-semantic processing in autistic children using an eye-tracking competition task. Thirty-six preschool-aged autistic children and 35 age-, gender-, and verbal-IQ-matched neurotypical (NT) children viewed arrays containing a target object, a thematically related competitor, a taxonomically related competitor, and an unrelated distractor while hearing the target word. Results revealed three key findings. First, both groups demonstrated activation of thematic and taxonomic relations during lexical processing, with comparable timing of activation onset. Second, while autistic children began to systematically orient attention to the target as quickly as NT children, they showed reduced overall attention to the target during lexical processing. Third, autistic children exhibited stronger activation of taxonomic relations and stronger taxonomic competition effects on target recognition compared to NT children, whereas their activation of thematic relations and thematic competition effects were comparable to NT children. These findings suggest that while the basic thematic and taxonomic activation processes remain robust in autistic children, and while their initial activation of the target and semantically related representations is as fast as that of NT children, the increased sensitivity to taxonomic relations in autistic children might interfere with the overall processing efficiency of target words. These results advance our understanding of lexical-semantic organization and processing in autism and provide implications for language intervention strategies.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2025 · doi:10.1002/aur.70023