Processing of co-reference in autism spectrum disorder
Processing of co-reference in autism spectrum disorder
Accuracy for reading comprehension and inferencing tasks has previously been reported as reduced for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), relative to typically developing (TD) controls. In this study, we used an eye movements and reading paradigm to examine whether this difference in performance accuracy is underpinned by differences in the inferential work required to compute a co-referential link. Participants read two sentences that contained a category noun (e.g., bird) that was preceded by and co-referred to an exemplar that was either typical (e.g., pigeon) or atypical (e.g., penguin). Both TD and ASD participants showed an effect of typicality for gaze durations upon the category noun, with longer times being observed when the exemplar was atypical, in comparison to typical. No group differences or interactions were detected for target processing, and verbal language proficiency was found to predict general reading and inferential skill. The only difference between groups was that individuals with ASD engaged in more re-reading than TD participants. These data suggest that readers with ASD do not differ in the efficiency with which they compute anaphoric links on-line during reading.
Howard, Philippa, Lucy
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Liversedge, Simon
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Benson, Valerie
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Howard, Philippa, Lucy
55560828-d0cb-45bb-8ea6-18f057a8a4cb
Liversedge, Simon
3ebda3f3-d930-4f89-85d5-5654d8fe7dee
Benson, Valerie
4827cede-6668-4e3d-bded-ade4cd5e5db5
Howard, Philippa, Lucy, Liversedge, Simon and Benson, Valerie
(2017)
Processing of co-reference in autism spectrum disorder.
Autism Research.
(doi:10.1002/aur.1845).
Abstract
Accuracy for reading comprehension and inferencing tasks has previously been reported as reduced for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), relative to typically developing (TD) controls. In this study, we used an eye movements and reading paradigm to examine whether this difference in performance accuracy is underpinned by differences in the inferential work required to compute a co-referential link. Participants read two sentences that contained a category noun (e.g., bird) that was preceded by and co-referred to an exemplar that was either typical (e.g., pigeon) or atypical (e.g., penguin). Both TD and ASD participants showed an effect of typicality for gaze durations upon the category noun, with longer times being observed when the exemplar was atypical, in comparison to typical. No group differences or interactions were detected for target processing, and verbal language proficiency was found to predict general reading and inferential skill. The only difference between groups was that individuals with ASD engaged in more re-reading than TD participants. These data suggest that readers with ASD do not differ in the efficiency with which they compute anaphoric links on-line during reading.
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Accepted/In Press date: 16 July 2017
e-pub ahead of print date: 22 August 2017
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Running head: Co-reference in ASD
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Local EPrints ID: 414096
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/414096
ISSN: 1939-3792
PURE UUID: 1a8782f0-4b04-441c-88f4-6d6714387a36
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Date deposited: 14 Sep 2017 16:31
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 05:43
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Author:
Philippa, Lucy Howard
Author:
Simon Liversedge
Author:
Valerie Benson
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