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Brief Report: A Comparison of Statistical Learning in School-Aged Children with High Functioning Autism and Typically Developing Peers

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“One gets to the heart of the matter by a series of experiences in the same pattern…”

-Robert Graves.

Abstract

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders have impairments in language acquisition, but the underlying mechanism of these deficits is poorly understood. Implicit learning is potentially relevant to language development, particularly in speech segmentation, which relies on sensitivity to transitional probabilities between speech sounds. This study investigated the relationship between implicit learning and current language abilities in school-aged children with high functioning autism and a history of language delay (n = 17) and in children with typical development (n = 24) using a well-studied artificial language learning task. Results suggest that high functioning children with autism (HFA) 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 HFA are discussed.

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Fig. 1
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Notes

  1. Note the large age range of the subjects included. Although there is evidence that age may play a role in statistical learning abilities (Arciuli and Simpson 2011), age did not appear to play a role in the current sample. That is, age was not significantly related to performance on our measure of implicit learning (i.e., the 2AFC test) for either the TD or HFA groups. Nevertheless, it was important to ensure that groups were well-matched on age.

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Acknowledgments

Research supported by grant #446762 from the University of Connecticut Research Foundation to I.M.E. We thank Julia Evans and Jenny Saffran for sharing their stimuli. We are particularly grateful to staff and students at the Perkins school in Lancaster, MA, and the William E. Norris Elementary School, in Southampton, MA, for facilitating recruitment. Portions of this work were presented at the International Meeting for Autism Research in Philadelphia, PA, 2010.

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  1. Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, 406 Babbidge Road, Unit 1020, Storrs, CT, 06269-1020, USA

    Jessica Mayo & Inge-Marie Eigsti

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  1. Jessica Mayo
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  2. Inge-Marie Eigsti
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Correspondence to Inge-Marie Eigsti.

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The present study was conducted by Jessica D. Mayo, University of Connecticut and Inge-Marie Eigsti, University of Connecticut.

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Mayo, J., Eigsti, IM. Brief Report: A Comparison of Statistical Learning in School-Aged Children with High Functioning Autism and Typically Developing Peers. J Autism Dev Disord 42, 2476–2485 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-012-1493-0

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