Word imageability is associated with expressive vocabulary in children with autism spectrum disorder
Affiliation of Author, Researcher, or Creator
School of Communication
Department
Communication Sciences and Disorders
Author(s)
Kimberly R Lin, Lisa Wisman Weil, Audrey Thurm, Catherine Lord, Rhiannon J Luyster
Resource Type
Article
Publication, Publisher or Distributor
Autism and Developmental Language Impairments
Publication Date
3-16-2022
Brief Description
Throughout typical development, children prioritize different perceptual, social, and linguistic cues to learn words. The earliest acquired words are often those that are perceptually salient and highly imageable. Imageability, the ease in which a word evokes a mental image, is a strong predictor for word age of acquisition in typically developing (TD) children, independent of other lexicosemantic features such as word frequency. However, little is known about the effects of imageability in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), who tend to have differences in linguistic processing and delayed language acquisition compared to their TD peers. This study explores the extent to which imageability and word frequency are associated with early noun and verb acquisition in children with ASD.
Keywords
imageability, word frequency, language development, autistic children, early noun acquisition, early verb acquisition
Recommended Citation
Lin, K., Wisman Weil, L., Thurm, A., Lord, C., & Luyster, R. (2022). Word imageability predicts expressive vocabulary in children with autism spectrum disorder. Autism and Developmental Language Impairments. https://doi.org/10.1177/23969415221085827
Preferred Citation Style
APA
Peer Reviewed
1
License Agreement
1