title: Lexical Processing in School-Age Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Children with Specific Language Impairment: The Role of Semantics.
abstract: Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and specific language impairment (SLI) often have immature lexical-semantic knowledge; however, the organization of lexical-semantic knowledge is poorly understood. This study examined lexical processing in school-age children with ASD, SLI, and typical development, who were matched on receptive vocabulary. Children completed a lexical decision task, involving words with high and low semantic network sizes and nonwords. Children also completed nonverbal updating and shifting tasks. Children responded more accurately to words from high than from low semantic networks; however, follow-up analyses identified weaker semantic network effects in the SLI group. Additionally, updating and shifting abilities predicted lexical processing, demonstrating similarity in the mechanisms which underlie semantic processing in children with ASD, SLI, and typical development.
authors.affiliation: University of Wisconsin, 1500 Highland Avenue Room 449, Madison, WI, 53705, USA. ehaebig@wisc.edu.|Purdue University, Lyles-Porter Hall, 715 Clinic Drive Room 3121, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA. ehaebig@wisc.edu.
authors.forename: Eileen
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Haebig
authors.affiliation: University of Wisconsin, 1500 Highland Avenue Room 487, Madison, WI, 53705, USA.
authors.forename: Margarita
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kaushanskaya
authors.affiliation: University of Wisconsin, 1500 Highland Avenue Room 473, Madison, WI, 53705, USA.
authors.forename: Susan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ellis Weismer
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000067877:Autism Spectrum Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology; D007807:Language Tests; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012660:Semantics; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D014825:Vocabulary
keywords: Autism; Lexical processing; Specific language impairment