Intact Statistical Word Learning in Autism Spectrum Disorders

<p>Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have impairments in language acquisition, but the underlying mechanism of these deficits is poorly understood. Implicit learning appears potentially relevant to language development, particularly in speech segmentation, which relies on sensitivity to the transitional probabilities between speech sounds. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between implicit learning and current language abilities in school-aged children with autism (<em>n</em> = 17) and typical development (<em>n =</em> 24) using a well-studied artificial language learning task. Results suggest that the ASD and TD groups were equally able to implicitly learn transitional probabilities from a lengthy stimulus stream. Furthermore, task performance was not strongly associated with current language abilities. Implications for implicit learning research in ASD are discussed.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Year dc:date.available

2011

Author dc:creator

• Mayo, Jessica

Contributors dc:contributor

• Deborah Fein; James (Jim) Magnuson
• Inge-Marie Eigsti

• autism
• language
• implicit learning
• statistical learning
• speech segmentation

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/gs_theses/181

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu:gs_theses-1166