Autistic children are found to be unable to perceive concepts through language

Researchers have studied, for the first time, the effect of linguistic labeling in the autistic child population.

These researchers, from the Lindy Lab group at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), have analysed the degree of difficulty that autistic children have in recognising concepts through language.

The results of the study suggest that autistic children do not perceive concepts through language, and therefore have difficulty in deducing that two objects with the same name form a category. In this sense, the authors of the study emphasize the need to continue researching the relationship between language and concepts in the autistic mind.

“Autistic children do not expect two objects to have common properties or be the same type of object simply because they share a name. They are not sensitive to categorisation through the language they are being offered,” says Agustín Vicente, Ikerbasque professor and researcher in the Lindy Lab group at the UPV/EHU. “If autistic children have difficulty deducing that two objects with the same name form a category, they may tend to generate concepts that do not coincide with those of other children, and this can lead to difficulties in communication, among other things,” Vicente adds.

Neurotypical people, those who conform to socially typical cognitive and communicative behavioural standards, are sensitive to the so-called linguistic labelling effect during their childhood. Let us take two different types of vacuum cleaners as an example: “If we tell a neurotypical child that a Dyson and a Roomba are both vacuum cleaners, they will expect them to do the same thing, in this case, vacuum. But if we don’t tell them, and we simply call one Dyson and the other Roomba, if they see us vacuuming with the Dyson, they may not expect that we can also vacuum with the Roomba,” explains Vicente. “By assigning it a linguistic label, a name, a link is established between the properties of that object and the assigned label,” adds Sergio Parrillas, a predoctoral researcher in the Lindy Lab group at the UPV/EHU. “By showing them a second object with that same label, regardless of how different or similar it is to the first object, the child expects it to perform the same function, in this case vacuuming.” If, on the other hand, a very similar object is presented to the child, but with a different label or name, the child does not generalize the function of craving the new object, interpreting that they belong to different categories.”

Therefore, “sharing a name is a more powerful categorization criterion than having a similar appearance. This phenomenon is important because it acts as a source of acquisition of concepts through language,” the UPV/EHU researcher emphasizes.

In neurotypical children, this occurs from 10 months onwards, and the aim of this study was to find out whether the acquisition of concepts through language also occurs in children on the autism spectrum between 3 and 9 years of age. The results indicate that, unlike neurotypical children, it has not been possible to identify a sensitivity to the labelling effect in the autistic child population.

Sergio Parrillas is part of the Hizkuntzalaritza Teorikorako Taldea (HiTT) research group at the UPV/EHU. (Photo: Nuria González / UPV/EHU)

The linguistic labeling effect is an important source of concept acquisition and could predict aspects as relevant in language development as vocabulary acquisition and breadth. For this reason, both Lindy Lab researchers emphasize the need to continue investigating the relationship between language and concepts in the autistic mind. “Investigating why some children who belong to the autistic spectrum have such a limited and imprecise vocabulary could help in the development of intervention programs in the future so that they can communicate better, with a broader and more organized vocabulary,” add Sergio Parrillas and Agustín Vicente.

This study is based on the Master’s Thesis that Sergio Parrillas has prepared in the Lindy Lab laboratory, which is part of the Hizkuntzalaritza Teorikorako Taldea (HiTT) research group at the UPV/EHU and with which he won the 5th Izaskun Heras Prado Award. Sergio Parrillas is autistic and currently has a predoctoral contract from the Basque Government to prepare a doctoral thesis, supervised by Ikerbasque professor Agustín Vicente (UPV/EHU) and researcher Irene de la Cruz Pavía (Deusto).

The study is titled “Testing the Labeling Effect in Autistic Children.” It has been published in the academic journal Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. (Source: UPV/EHU)