Elephants in pyjamas: testing the weak central coherence account of autism spectrum disorders using a syntactic disambiguation task

Riches, N. G., Loucas, T. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8130-6690, Baird, G., Charman, T. and Simonoff, E. (2016) Elephants in pyjamas: testing the weak central coherence account of autism spectrum disorders using a syntactic disambiguation task. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 46 (1). pp. 155-163. ISSN 1573-3432 doi: 10.1007/s10803-015-2560-0

Abstract/Summary

According to the weak central coherence (CC) account individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) exhibit enhanced local processing and weak part-whole integration. CC was investigated in the verbal domain. Adolescents, recruited using a 2 (ASD status) by 2 (language impairment status) design, completed an aural forced choice comprehension task involving syntactically ambiguous sentences. Half the picture targets depicted the least plausible interpretation, resulting in longer RTs across groups. These were assumed to reflect local processing. There was no ASD by plausibility interaction and consequently little evidence for weak CC in the verbal domain when conceptualised as enhanced local processing. Furthermore, there was little evidence that the processing of syntactically ambiguous sentences differed as a function of ASD or language-impairment status.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/42929
Identification Number/DOI	10.1007/s10803-015-2560-0
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Clinical Language Sciences Interdisciplinary Research Centres (IDRCs) > Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism (CeLM)
Publisher	Springer
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