Characteristics of Word Categorization in Children with High-Functioning Autism

Abstract

Objectives: Categorization is identifying and classifying the common features of different objects, which is required to integrate and to process semantic features. It can also help to store and to retrieve words efficiently, and to infer new objects. The purpose of this study is to find the characteristics of semantic information process in high-functioning autism by using categorization preference task and categorization understanding task. Methods: The participants were 12 children with high-functioning autism from the 1st grade to the 3rd grade of elementary school and 12 typically developing children with matching chronological age, IQ, and language level. Children performed categorization preference task and understanding task which composed of perceptual-thematic category conditions and perceptual-taxonomic category conditions. The differences between the groups and conditions were being compared. Results: In the categorization preference task, children with high-functioning autism showed significantly strong preference for perceptual categorization over thematic and taxonomic categorizations as compared with typically developing children. In the categorization understanding task, both the children with high-functioning autism and the typically developing children revealed high performances, and there were no significant differences according to the groups and conditions. Conclusion: The results of this study demonstrated that children with high-functioning autism relied on perceptual characteristics although they have high-levels of knowledge on categorization. These results also suggested that characteristics of information process in children with high-functioning autism could influence the performance of language tasks.