How do Autistic and Neurotypical Children's Interests Influence their Accuracy During Novel Word Learning?

Word learning depends on attention - children must focus on the right things at the right times. However, autistic children often display restricted interests, limiting their intake of stimuli during word learning. This study investigates how category interests influence word learning in autism and neurotypical development. Autistic and neurotypical children matched on receptive vocabulary used a touch-screen computer to learn novel words associated with animals (high-interest stimuli) and objects (neutral-interest stimuli) via fast mapping. Response accuracy and speed were examined at referent selection, 5-minute retention, and 24-hour retention. Both groups identified meanings of novel words associated with unfamiliar animals and objects via mutual exclusivity with comparable accuracy. After 5 minutes, autistic children retained animal names with greater accuracy than neurotypical children. Autistic children showed a greater increase in their accuracy between 5-minute and 24-hour retention and outperformed neurotypical children across conditions after a night's sleep. Across groups, 24-hour retention was predicted by number of target word repetitions heard at referent selection, indicating a relationship between fast mapping input and retention. However, autistic children were slower to respond correctly, particularly in the animal condition. For autistic children, superior word learning associated with high-interest stimuli was relatively short-term, as sleep appeared to consolidate their memory representations for neutral-interest stimuli. Although these results demonstrate that fundamental word learning mechanisms are not atypical in autism, slower response times may signal a speed-accuracy trade-off that could have implications for naturalistic language acquisition. Our findings also indicate favourable environmental conditions to scaffold word learning.