| Examining the validity of the use of ratio IQs in psychological assessments | IQ tests are amongst the most used psychological assessments, both in research and clinical settings. For participants who cannot complete IQ tests normed for their age, ratio IQ scores (RIQ) are routinely computed and used as a proxy of IQ, especially in large research databases to avoid missing data points. However, because it has never been scientifically validated, this practice is questionable. In the era of big data, it is important to examine the validity of this widely used practice. In this paper, we use the case of autism to examine the differences between standard full-scale IQ (FSIQ) and RIQ. Data was extracted from four databases in which ages, FSIQ scores and subtests raw scores were available for autistic participants between 2 and 17 years old. The IQ tests included were the MSEL (N=12033), DAS-II early years (N=1270), DAS-II school age (N=2848), WISC-IV (N=471) and WISC-V (N=129). RIQs were computed for each participant as well as the discrepancy (DSC) between RIQ and FSIQ. We performed two linear regressions to respectively assess the effect of FSIQ and of age on the DSC for each IQ test, followed by additional analyses comparing age subgroups as well as FSIQ subgroups on DSC. Participants at the extremes of the FSIQ distribution tended to have a greater DSC than participants with average FSIQ. Furthermore, age significantly predicted the DSC, with RIQ superior to FSIQ for younger participants while the opposite was found for older participants. These results question the validity of this widely used alternative scoring method, especially for individuals at the extremes of the normal distribution, with whom RIQs are most often employed. | 79/17423 | Secondary Analysis | Shared |
| Word Learning and Word Features | Vocabulary composition and word-learning biases are closely interrelated in typical development. Learning new words involves attending to certain properties to facilitate word learning. Such word-learning biases are influenced by perceptually and conceptually salient word features, including high imageability, concreteness, and iconicity. This study examined the association of vocabulary knowledge and word features in young children with ASD (n = 280) and typically developing (TD) toddlers (n = 1,054). Secondary analyses were conducted using data from the National Database for Autism Research and the Wordbank database. Expressive vocabulary was measured using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory. Although the trajectories for concreteness, iconicity, and imageability are similar between children with ASD and TD toddlers, divergences were observed. Differences in imageability are seen early but resolve to a common trajectory; differences in iconicity are small but consistent; and differences in concreteness only emerge after both groups reach a simultaneous peak, before converging again. This study reports unique information about the nonlinear growth patterns associated with each word feature for and distinctions in these growth patterns between the groups. | 36/280 | Primary Analysis | Shared |
| Examining the Shape Bias in Young Autistic Children: A Vocabulary Composition Analysis | Shape is a salient object property and one of the first that children use to categorize objects under one label. Colunga and Sims (2017) suggest that noun vocabulary composition and word learning biases are closely interrelated in typical development. The current study examined the association between noun vocabulary knowledge and perceptual word features, specifically shape and material features. Participants included 249 autistic children and 1,245 non-autistic toddlers who were matched on expressive noun vocabulary size and gender. Nouns were categorized using the Samuelson and Smith (1999) noun feature database. A simple group comparison revealed no group differences in shape bias; both groups evidenced developing noun vocabularies that favored shape+solid and nonsolid+material nouns. However, the trajectory of evidence of shape bias as a function of vocabulary size differed between the groups, with autistic children
demonstrating a reduced shape-bias initially. Future work should examine how children’s learning biases shift over development and whether the shape bias promotes lexical development to the same degree across groups. | 13/249 | Secondary Analysis | Shared |
| Deviant vocabulary development in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder | Children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have core impairments in social communication and have restricted interests and repetitive behaviors. Additionally, the majority of young children with ASD have early language delays. Although these early delays are well-documented, it is remains unclear whether language skills are simply delayed or if they are deviant. The current study aimed to expand on previous studies (e.g., Charman et al., 2003; Luyster, Lopez, & Lord, 2007; Rescorla & Safyer, 2012) to provide a large-scale comparison of early language profiles between typically developing (TD) toddlers and young children with ASD. Specifically, we sought to examine the composition of word classes (i.e., nouns, predicates, and close classed words) and semantic categories (i.e., games and routines, sound effects and animal noises) in the early TD and ASD language profiles. A series of linear regression analyses revealed that children with ASD produced a smaller percentage of nouns, and that the percentage of nouns in a vocabulary decreased as children learned more words, but that this reduction was less steep in the ASD group. When examining predicates, we found that children with ASD produced a significantly higher percentage of predicates. Also, as vocabulary size increased, the percentage of predicates increased; however, the slope was less steep for children with ASD. Lastly, children with SD produced a significantly higher percentage of closed class words and the trajectory of growth of the percentage of closed class words differed between groups. The current findings suggest that children with ASD may employ different word-learning strategies during early lexical development. | 37/247 | Secondary Analysis | Shared |
| Modeling Vocabulary Growth in Autistic and Non-Autistic Children | We assessed the goodness of fit of three models of vocabulary growth, with varying sensitivity to the structure of the environment and the learner’s internal state, to estimated vocabulary growth trajectories in autistic and non-autistic children. We first computed word-level acquisition norms that indicate the vocabulary size at which individual words tend to be learned by each group. We then evaluated how well network growth models based on natural language co-occurrence structure and word associations account for variance in the autistic and non-autistic acquisition norms. In addition to replicating key observations from prior work and observing that the growth models explained similar amounts of variance in each group, we found that autistic vocabulary growth also exhibits growth consistent with “the lure of the associates” model. Thus, both groups leverage semantic structure in the learning environment for vocabulary development, but autistic vocabulary growth is also strongly influenced by existing vocabulary knowledge. | 12/247 | Secondary Analysis | Shared |
| 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. | 36/216 | Secondary Analysis | Shared |
| Semantic modeling 2023 | Although it is well documented that children with ASD are slower to develop their lexicons, we still have a limited understanding of the structure of early lexical knowledge in children with ASD. The current study uses network analysis and differential item functioning anlaysis to examine the structure of semantic knowledge, which may provide insight into the learning processes that influence early word learning. | 11/208 | Secondary Analysis | Shared |
| Semantic Network Modeling | Although it is well documented that children with ASD are slower to develop their lexicons, we still have a limited understanding of the structure of early lexical knowledge in children with ASD. The current study uses network analysis to examine the structure of semantic knowledge, which may provide insight into the learning processes that influence early word learning. | 25/200 | Secondary Analysis | Shared |
| Semantic Network Modeling in Young Autistic Children | Background: Most young autistic children have delayed vocabulary growth relative to their non-autistic peers. Additionally, previous studies have revealed that autistic children are less likely to encode associated features of novel objects, suggesting inefficient encoding or different processes for acquiring semantic information about words. Recent network analyses of vocabulary growth revealed important relationships between early vocabulary acquisition and the structure of the sematic environment.
Methods: We studied the expressive vocabularies of 970 non-autistic toddlers (Mage = 20.82 months) and 194 autistic children (Mage = 54.58 months) in two studies. The groups were vocabulary-matched (words produced: MAutistic = 213.60, MNon-autistic = 213.72). In study 1, we estimated their trajectories of semantic development using network analyses. Network structure was based on child-oriented adult-generated word associations. We compared child semantic networks according to indegree, average shortest path length, and clustering coefficient (features that holistically contribute to well-connected network structure). Then, in study 2, we attempted to relate vocabulary-level effects to word-level learning biases.
Results: Study 1 revealed that autistic and non-autistic children are sensitive to the structure of their semantic environment. Both groups demonstrated nonlinear vocabulary trajectories that differed from random acquisition networks. Despite similarities, group differences were observed for each network metric. Differences were most pronounced for clustering coefficient (how closely connected groups of words are), with earlier peaks for autistic children. Study 2 demonstrated that many words differ in their expected vocabulary size of acquisition.
Conclusions: Group differences at the vocabulary- and word-levels indicate that, although autistic children are learning from their semantic environment, they may be processing their semantic environment differently. These deviations indicate that autistic children have distinctive learning biases that may align with core autism features. | 10/194 | Secondary Analysis | Shared |
| Identifying Areas of Overlap and Distinction in Early Lexical Profiles of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Late Talkers, and Typical Talkers | This study compares the lexical composition of 11827 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) aged 121 to 84173 months with 4,626 vocabulary-matched typically developing toddlers with and without language delay, aged 8 to 30 months. Children with ASD produced a higher proportion of verbs than typical and late talkers, but a similar number of nouns. Additionally, differences were identified in five four semantic categories, four three of them related to play. Most differences appear to reflect the extent of the language delay between the groups. However, children with ASD produced fewer high-social verbs than neurotypical children. We discuss how these lexical differences might be associated with ASD features and language delay, providing partial support for a categorical view of language delay. | 13/118 | Secondary Analysis | Shared |
| Do children with Autism Spectrum Disorder learn words differently? | Children with ASD often are late to start to produce words. However, despite the importance of language abilities for child outcomes in children with ASD, we still have only scratched the surface of understanding these children's early lexicons. Therefore, in the current study we examined the semantic networks of the words that children with ASD have been reported to produce and compared them to typically developing children. | 12/82 | Secondary Analysis | Shared |
| Investigating Vocabulary Profiles in Preverbal and Minimally Verbal Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder | The majority of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are delayed in producing their first words and approximately 30% continue to be minimally verbal across childhood. The current study examined the syntactic and semantic features of the early words that 64 preverbal and minimally verbal children with ASD produced and compared them to 682 typically developing (TD) toddlers who produced 1-10 words. Word-level responses that were reported on the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory were examined. Children with ASD produced a greater proportion of predicates, relative to the TD group. Also, there were group differences in the following semantic categories: action words, people, sound effects, and animals. Of these, children with ASD produced more action words. We further examined the action words by assigning them social scores, with action words that typically involve people having higher social scores. TD toddlers produced action words that were slightly more social than children with ASD. These findings suggest that future studies should examine early verb learning and processing in children with ASD. | 2/64 | Secondary Analysis | Shared |
