EVIDENCE FOR THE DIMENSIONAL AND CATEGORIAL ACCOUNTS OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

This study compared the lexical composition of 216 children with ASD aged 11 to 173 months with that of 7,287 typically developing toddlers with and without language delay aged 8 to 30 months. The children with ASD and late talkers produced a lower proportion of nouns and a higher proportion of predicates than typical talkers. The ASD group produced a higher proportion of action words and place words as well as a lower proportion of sound words than the neurotypical groups. We found that children with ASD produced fewer high-social verbs as rated by adults. We discuss how these differences might be associated with features of ASD in a way that supports the categorical view of language development.