Abstract
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulty generalizing—i.e., relating new stimuli to past experiences. Few experimental studies have addressed this weakness, despite its impact on intervention effects. In a reanalysis of data (de Marchena et al. Cognition 119(1):96–113, 2011), we tested a novel form of generalization—the ability to transfer a strategy used in one context to a similar context—in verbally fluent youth with ASD and matched typically developing controls. Participants with ASD were subtly less likely to learn from experience; their generalizations were less consistent. Generalization in ASD correlated with receptive vocabulary but not age, suggesting a link to language development. A richer understanding of how to promote generalization in ASD will advance both theory and practice.
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Notes
Perhaps surprisingly, the literature suggests that if participants in the current study had received feedback on the initial label condition, this may not have changed performance on the second (fact) condition, at least in the ASD group. Children with ASD use mutual exclusivity to the same extent as TD children when making initial object-word mappings; however, feedback does not improve long-term retention of these mappings in ASD, as it does in TD (Bedford et al. 2013). Similarly, receiving feedback on the use of exclusivity during the label condition may have increased the likelihood that TD children would generalize to the fact condition, while having little effect on performance in ASD.
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Acknowledgments
We thank our collaborators involved in design and data collection for the original word learning study, Jesse Snedeker, Amanda Worek, and Kim Emiko Ono. A sincere and deep thank you to all of the children and adolescents who participated in this study and their gracious families. This project was (in part) supported by Award Number T32NS007413 from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). These data were previously published in de Marchena et al. (2011). This work was presented at the 2015 meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Philadelphia, PA.
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de Marchena, A.B., Eigsti, IM. & Yerys, B.E. Brief Report: Generalization Weaknesses in Verbally Fluent Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder. J Autism Dev Disord 45, 3370–3376 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-015-2478-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-015-2478-6