Mutual exclusivity in autism spectrum disorders: testing the pragmatic hypothesis.
While there is ample evidence that children treat words as mutually exclusive, the cognitive basis of this bias is widely debated. We focus on the distinction between pragmatic and lexical constraints accounts. High-functioning children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) offer a unique perspective on this debate, as they acquire substantial vocabularies despite impoverished social-pragmatic skills. We tested children and adolescents with ASD in a paradigm examining mutual exclusivity for words and facts. Words were interpreted contrastively more often than facts. Word performance was associated with vocabulary size; fact performance was associated with social-communication skills. Thus mutual exclusivity does not appear to be driven by pragmatics, suggesting that it is either a lexical constraint or a reflection of domain-general learning processes.
Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, 406 Babbidge Road, Unit 1020, CT 06269, USA. Ashley.de_Marchena@uconn.edu
Ashley
A
de Marchena
Inge-Marie
IM
Eigsti
Amanda
A
Worek
Kim Emiko
KE
Ono
Jesse
J
Snedeker
D000293:Adolescent; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002648:Child; D002659:Child Development Disorders, Pervasive / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D008568:Memory; D012919:Social Behavior; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014825:Vocabulary