Autistic children have difficulties in adapting their language for particular listeners and contexts. We asked whether these difficulties are more prominent when children are required to be cognitively flexible, when changing how they have previously referred to a particular object. We compared autistic (N = 30) with neuro-typical 5- to…

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the use of a treatment package comprised of a social story, discrimination training, and differential reinforcement with response cost on the vocal stereotypy of one preschooler diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. The study took place in a preschool classroom of a public school and was implemented…

Background: Many children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) struggle to understand familiar words and learn unfamiliar words. We explored the extent to which these problems reflect deficient use of probabilistic gaze in the extra-linguistic context. Method: Thirty children with ASD and 43 with typical development (TD) participated in a spoken…

This study investigates the question as to whether and how the linguistic and other cognitive abilities of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) differ from those of children with High-Functioning Autism (HFA). To this end, 27 Dutch-speaking elementary-school-age children with SLI, 27 age-matched children with HFA, and a control group…