Abstract
To what extent do children with autism (AD) versus typically developing
children (TD) rely on attentional and intentional cues to learn words?
Four experiments compared 17 AD children (M age = 5.08 years) with
17 language- and 17 mental-age-matched TD children (M ages = 2.57
and 3.12 years, respectively) on nonverbal enactment and word-learning
tasks. Results revealed variability in all groups, but particularly
within the AD group. Performance on intention tasks was the most
powerful predictor of vocabulary in the AD group but not in the TD
groups. These findings suggest that word learning cannot be explained
exclusively by either attentional or intentional processes, and they
provide evidence of a special role for intentional understanding
in the vocabulary development of AD children.
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