Children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have smaller vocabularies in infancy compared to typically-developing children. To understand whether their smaller vocabularies stem from problems in learning, our study compared a prospective risk sample of 18 elevated risk and 11 lower risk 24-month-olds on current vocabulary size and word learning ability using a paradigm in which parents teach their child words. Results revealed that both groups learned novel words, even though parents indicated that infants at elevated risk of ASD knew fewer words. This suggests that these early compromised vocabularies cannot be solely linked to difficulties in word formations.

与正常发育的儿童相比，被诊断患有自闭症谱系障碍 (ASD) 的儿童在婴儿期的词汇量通常较小。为了了解他们较小的词汇量是否源于学习问题，我们的研究使用父母教孩子单词的范式，比较了 18 名高风险和 11 名低风险 24 个月大儿童的前瞻性风险样本的当前词汇量和单词学习能力. 结果显示，两组都学习了新词，尽管父母表示患 ASD 风险较高的婴儿知道的词较少。这表明这些早期受损的词汇不能仅仅与构词困难有关。