title: Lexical composition in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
abstract: For sixty-seven children with ASD (age 1;6 to 5;11), mean Total Vocabulary score on the Language Development Survey (LDS) was 65·3 words; twenty-two children had no reported words; and twenty-one children had 1-49 words. When matched for vocabulary size, children with ASD and children in the LDS normative sample did not differ in semantic category or word-class scores. Q correlations were large when percentage use scores for the ASD sample were compared with those for samples of typically developing children as well as children with vocabularies <50 words. The 57 words with the highest percentage use scores for the ASD children were primarily nouns, represented a variety of semantic categories, and overlapped substantially with the words having highest percentage use scores in samples of typically developing children as well as children with lexicons of <50 words. Results indicated that the children with ASD were acquiring essentially the same words as typically developing children, suggesting delayed but not deviant lexical composition.
authors.affiliation: Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, USA. lrescorl@brynmawr.edu
authors.forename: Leslie
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Rescorla
authors.forename: Paige
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Safyer
mesh_terms: D002659:Child Development Disorders, Pervasive / Q000523:psychology*; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007804:Language Development; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D012660:Semantics; D014825:Vocabulary