注意和记忆对孤独症儿童词汇发展滞后的影响

The influence of atypical attention and memory on vocabulary delay in children with autism spectrum disorder

孤独症语言障碍的表现之一是词汇发展滞后,可能与其注意和记忆损伤有关。当前研究结果表明,孤独症儿童在学习词汇时难以利用社会注意提供的有效信息,且其注意易受到无关刺激干扰,这可能导致其形成的物体−词汇的联结不稳定,影响其进一步将这种联结整合到心理词典并保存在记忆中。未来研究应探究联合注意影响孤独症儿童词汇学习的发展轨迹和机制,儿童的词汇知识对其词汇记忆的影响,并关注自然场景中孤独症儿童的词汇学习过程和个体差异。

Vocabulary delay is prevalent in children with autism spectrum disorder(ASD),yet there is no converging evidence regarding its underlying mechanisms.Attention and memory are two general cognitive mechanisms involved in word learning.Numerous studies have shown that atypical attention and memory are observed in children with ASD,which may have a cascading downstream effect on their word learning.Children with ASD show diminished sustained attention to target objects in joint attention dyads and they are easily distracted by salient but irrelevant stimuli in the environment.Consequently,word-referent relationships established by children with ASD are inaccurate and weak.Moreover,the weak word-referent relationships and sleep disorders might have negative consequences on children with ASD’s word consolidation and retention.Further work is required to investigate the developmental trajectory and mechanisms that underlie the link between joint attention and word learning,the influence of existing lexical knowledge on word retention and explore the role of parent behaviors in children with ASD’s word learning.