Recognition and language in low functioning autism.
The hypothesis that a pervasive impairment of declarative memory contributes to language impairment in low functioning autism (LFA) was tested. Participants with LFA, high functioning autism (HFA), intellectual disability (ID) without autism, and typical development (TD) were given two recognition tests and four tests of lexical understanding. It was predicted that recognition would be impaired in the LFA group relative to the HFA and TD groups but not the ID group, and that recognition would correlate with lexical knowledge in the LFA group but none of the other groups. These predictions were supported except that the HFA group performed more similarly to the LFA group than expected, a finding interpreted in terms of selectively impaired episodic memory.
Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV7 4AL, UK. J.Boucher@warwick.ac.uk
Jill
J
Boucher
Sally
S
Bigham
Andrew
A
Mayes
Tom
T
Muskett
D000293:Adolescent; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy; D002648:Child; D015897:Comorbidity; D003210:Concept Formation; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D004495:Education of Persons with Intellectual Disabilities; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011594:Psychometrics; D014825:Vocabulary