自闭症个体语义加工障碍综述

A review of the studies on semantic processing of individuals with autism

近年许多研究关注自闭症个体语义加工,并发现他们在语义加工方面存在障碍,自由回忆词汇数量显著较少,语义聚合程度显著较低。"语义编码缺陷说"和"语义检索缺陷说"是目前解释自闭症个体语义加工障碍的两种代表性观点。自闭症个体回忆时加工水平效应的缺乏和检索提示回忆时的良好表现分别成为支持两种观点的最有力证据。

This review focuses on semantic processing of individuals with autism.Studies on the semantic processing abilities of individuals with autism have recently increased,and some researchers found that the autistic population has a relatively intact semantic processing ability.However,the dominant view is that they have some form of semantic processing impairment;recall significant fewer words and tend to cluster less than typically developing individuals in free recall experiments.While there is still some controversy regarding the reason for the deficit in semantic processing,the two most commonly suggested explanations for semantic processing deficits are poor semantic decoding and poor semantic retrieval.Studies on the levels of processing effects provide the most persuasive evidence in favor of poor semantic decoding.The autistic subjects showed none of the levels of processing effects of their typical counterparts,instead showing a bias towards low-level(phonological,graphical) processing.Research on cued recall provides the main evidence to support poor semantic retrieval.The findings that the autistic population demonstrated a comparable performance with typically developing individuals when semantic cues were provided suggests that any semantic processing deficits may be attributed to their difficulties in retrieval.