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Do Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Benefit from Structural Alignment When Constructing Categories?

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Abstract

Individuals with ASD seem to construct categories via processes different to typically developing individuals. We examined whether individuals with ASD engage in structural alignment of exemplars when constructing categories. We taught children with ASD and typically developing children novel nouns for either single or multiple exemplars, and then examined their extensions of the learned nouns to objects that were either a perceptual or conceptual match to the original exemplar(s). Results indicated that, unlike typically developing participants, those with ASD gained no benefit from seeing multiple exemplars of the category and, thus, did not appear to engage in structural alignment in their formation of categories. However, they demonstrated superior performance compared to typically developing children when presented with a single exemplar.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council.

Author Contributions

SS conceived of the study, collected the data, designed the study, coordinated and drafted the manuscript; AK contributed to the design of the study, interpretation of data, and drafting the manuscript; JPM contributed to the design of the study, interpretation of the data, and drafting the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, West Midlands, B15 2TT, UK

    Simon Snape & Andrea Krott

  2. Department of Psychology and Kinney Center, Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Joseph P. McCleery

  3. Center for Autism Research, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Joseph P. McCleery

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  1. Simon Snape
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  2. Andrea Krott
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  3. Joseph P. McCleery
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Correspondence to Simon Snape.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 2 and 3.

Table 2 Pictures used in single exemplar condition of structural alignment task
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Table 3 Pictures used in multiple exemplar condition of structural alignment task and control experiment
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Snape, S., Krott, A. & McCleery, J.P. Do Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Benefit from Structural Alignment When Constructing Categories?. J Autism Dev Disord 48, 2912–2924 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-018-3551-8

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