What is it about?
One influential theory of autism suggests that it may be caused by seeing "trees rather than the forest" - known as weak central coherence. This study shows that the first words learnt by children with ASD tend to be those that have few connections of meaning with other words.
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Why is it important?
We have been pursuing a line of inquiry about which words children with ASD learn first. The initial data suggested that they learnt colour words, numbers and letter names more easily than the names of common things like pets or people. This study is more comprehensive and includes two comparison samples.
Perspectives
This study provides a different understanding of central coherence difficulties in ASD.
Dr Timothy Ivor Williams
University of Reading
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Which Words are Hard for Autistic Children to Learn?, Mind & Language, October 2013, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/mila.12038.
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