Lateral Preferences in Autistic Children with Severe Language Impairment

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate lateral preferences in children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) in order to verify the hypothesis that the abnormal cerebral lateralization is typical for autistic individuals with severe impairment of language development. Handedness, eyedness, earedness and footedness of a group consisting of 17 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), all with severely disordered language development (10 boys and 7 girls, range 5.7–16.1 years; Mean age=9.8 years), and a control group, consisting of 17 healthy children (7 girls and 10 boys, range 5.3–12.8 years; Mean age=8.1) were assessed by performance tests with the aim of comparing the type and stability of these lateral preferences. The results showed that the group with ASD demonstrated atypical patterns of hemispheric dominance for all investigated modalities, except the footedness, namely, handedness, eyedness and earedness. These findings are in line with results of previous studies and support the assumption that the atypical pattern of cerebral laterality is linked with comorbide language impairments and not with the ASD per se.