Referential Gaze and Word Mapping in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Reference work entry

Abstract

Individuals with ASD reportedly have difficulty associating novel words with novel objects by using the speaker’s gaze as a guide. To map words onto objects via a speaker’s gaze, it is important to attend to the speaker’s face, recognize his/her gaze, follow the gaze, and interpret the gaze as referential. Studies to date have suggested that individuals with ASD have atypical social functioning in some situations, while some functions are intact in other situations. For example, individuals with ASD do not spontaneously follow another’s gaze, but they do if they are instructed to do so or after they experience a training phase. Studies to date have suggested that some children with ASD have difficulty in word mapping via the speaker’s gaze because they pay less attention to the speaker’s face, and other children with ASD have difficulty because they do not treat the other’s gaze as referential.

Keywords

Autism Spectrum Disorder Autism Spectrum Disorder Word Mapping Mutual Exclusivity Referent Object 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Japan Society for the Promotion of ScienceTokyoJapan
  2. 2.Division of Information System DesignTokyo Denki UniversitySaitamaJapan

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