title: Evidence against poor semantic encoding in individuals with autism.
abstract: This article tests the hypothesis that individuals with autism poorly encode verbal information to the semantic level of processing, instead paying greater attention to phonological attributes. Participants undertook a novel explicit verbal recall task. Twenty children with autism were compared with 20 matched typically developing children. On each trial, 20 words were presented individually on a computer screen. Half of the items were related through having either a common semantic theme, or a common phonological feature. Following a filler task, the participants were presented with a cue and asked to recall items consistent with the cue. No differences between the autism and comparison groups were found in either the semantic or the phonological condition. A follow-up comparison revealed that the participants with autism showed comparable levels of recall to an additional group of children matched in chronological age. The findings do not support the idea of a developmental delay in semantic encoding in children with autism.
authors.affiliation: University of Western Australia, Australia. andrew.whitehouse@psy.ox.ac.uk
authors.forename: Andrew J O
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Whitehouse
authors.forename: Murray T
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Maybery
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Durkin
mesh_terms: D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D012660:Semantics; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D013067:Speech Perception