Relation between acquisition of lexical concept and joint attention in children with autism spectrum disorder without severe intellectual disability

Masuhiko Sano; Tetsu Hirosawa; Mitsuru Kikuchi; Chiaki Hasegawa; Sanae Tanaka; Yuko Yoshimura

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0266953

Relation between acquisition of lexical concept and joint attention in children with autism spectrum disorder without severe intellectual disability

PLoS One. 2022 Apr 14;17(4):e0266953. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0266953. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Masuhiko Sano¹, Tetsu Hirosawa^{1

2}, Mitsuru Kikuchi^{1

2}, Chiaki Hasegawa², Sanae Tanaka², Yuko Yoshimura^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychiatry and Neurobiology, Graduate School of Medical Science, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan.
² Research Center for Child Mental Development, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan.
³ Faculty of Education, Institute of Human and Social Sciences, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan.

Abstract

In children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), impairment of joint attention and language function are observed frequently from early childhood. Earlier reports have described these two phenomena as mutually related. For this study, developing past research, the relation between joint attention and the ability of conceptual inference is examined in 113 Japanese children (67.9 months mean age, 75% male) with ASD. We calculated Pearson's correlation coefficients between their Joint attention abnormality evaluated by ADOS-2 and "Riddle" subscale in K-ABC, then they are negatively correlated: r (104) = -.285. A larger abnormality of joint attention is associated with a lower ability of conceptual inference. New findings were obtained indicating that, in children of this age group with ASD, the degree of joint attention impairment is correlated negatively with conceptual inference ability, but not with expressive and receptive language abilities. Consideration of the mechanism of this relation is presented in this report.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Attention
Autism Spectrum Disorder*
Child
Child, Preschool
Female
Humans
Intellectual Disability* / complications
Language Development
Language Development Disorders* / complications
Male

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the Center of Innovation Program of the Japan Science and Technology Agency, JST, JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers 20H04993 and 19K02952. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.