Associative learning of pictures and words by low-functioning children with autism.
Low-functioning autistic kids taught a word with a picture will pick the picture later, not the real object—so check whether they actually understand the object-word link.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Preissler (2008) worked with low-functioning children with autism.
The team paired new words with pictures over many trials.
Later they checked if the kids picked the real object or the picture when they heard the word.
What they found
The children almost always pointed to the picture, not the object.
They learned the word-picture link, but they did not link the word to the actual item.
This shows associative learning, not true word meaning.
How this fits with other research
McLennan et al. (2008) seems to disagree. They taught picture-to-object matching and saw success.
The gap is in the teaching method. Allen used simple repetition; D et al. used error prevention prompts before any mistake could happen.
The two studies together say: kids can learn the picture-object link, but only if we guard against errors.
Why it matters
If you teach words with flash cards, test with the real item next.
If the child picks the card again, switch tactics. Use error prevention prompts or teach with the real object first. This small check keeps language goals on track.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This research investigates whether children with autism learn picture, word and object relations as associative pairs or whether they understand such relations as referential. In Experiment 1, children were taught a new word (e.g. ;whisk') repeatedly paired with a novel picture. When given the picture and a previously unseen real whisk and asked to indicate a whisk, children with autism, unlike typically developing peers matched on receptive language, associated the word with the picture rather than the object. Subsequent experiments respectively confirmed that neither a bias for selecting pictures nor perseverative responding accounted for these results. Taken together, these results suggest that children with autism with cognitive difficulties are learning picture-word and picture-object relations via an associative mechanism and have difficulty understanding the symbolic nature of pictures.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2008 · doi:10.1177/1362361307088753