Abstract
Verbal short-term memory (vSTM) has been shown to be associated with language development in typical and atypical populations. In this study, we investigated cognitive and language skills in 33 school-aged children with ASD (6 - 12 years old) with both typical and low levels of intelligence (18 with typical non-verbal IQ [>80 in Raven] and 15 with low non-verbal IQ [p p < 0.05). Regression analysis showed that expressive vocabulary was predicted by non-verbal IQ and vSTM, syntactic production was predicted by vSTM and picture comprehension was predicted by non-verbal IQ. Conversely, expressive vocabulary could predict non-verbal IQ, vSTM, immediate visual memory, delayed visual memory, and visual information recall. It seems that vSTM is a strong predictor of language skills for children with ASD, just like it is for other typical and atypical populations. Finally, dissociations exist in individual performances between non-verbal IQ and memory on the one hand and language skills (expressive vocabulary, syntactic production) on the other hand. We discuss the significance of these findings in terms of previous results reported in ASD literature as well as in terms of clinical implications and intervention in ASD individuals.
Highlights
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterised by persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction and restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior in early developmental period, according to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [1]
The results showed that non-verbal IQ correlated significantly and strongly with all three language tasks (p < 0.001), while memory tasks correlated significantly and strongly with expressive vocabulary and syntactic production (p < 0.05)
The specific questions the present study addresses are the following: 1) Is there a relationship between cognitive and language skills for children with ASD and which cognitive skills are strongly related with language skills? 2) To what extent can cognitive skills predict the language skills of school-aged children with ASD and to what extent can language skills predict their cognitive skills? 3) Do children with ASD with low cognitive skills always perform poorly on language tasks and vice versa?
Summary
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterised by persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction and restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior in early developmental period, according to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [1]. Along with these phenotypical autistic symptoms, variations in performance in cognitive skills-such as intelligence, memory and attention, as well as in language skills may be present in ASD. Children with ASD may display spared skills in some areas of cognitive functioning (such as in non-verbal or visuo-spatial domain) [4] [5] [6] and low level skills in others -such as in verbal abilities, working memory and processing speed [7] [8] [9]
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