Investigating Visual Attention Differences and Relationships with Accuracy During Word Learning in Autistic and Neurotypical Children

Successful word learning requires children to pay attention to corresponding auditory and visual input during naming events. However, differences in autistic children's visual attention that restrict their intake of information may impact encoding of novel word-referent associations in memory. This study investigated differences in autistic and neurotypical children's visual attention to stimuli, and whether these differences predicted referent selection and retention accuracy. Fifteen autistic (M_age = 91.87 months) and sixteen neurotypical (M_age = 52.31 months) children matched on receptive vocabulary (M_age autistic children = 53.27 months; M_age neurotypical children = 60.31) used a touch-screen computer to fast map novel words associated with animals (high-interest stimuli) and objects (neutral-interest stimuli). Retention was assessed after 5 minutes and 24 hours. Children's frequency and duration of looking towards targets was recorded directly via multiple cameras. Neurotypical children spent longer looking at targets during referent selection than autistic children. Autistic children looked at targets significantly more frequently than neurotypical children across word learning stages, and more frequently at targets in the animal condition at 5-minute retention. In-trial visual attention predicted response accuracy across word learning stages for both groups. Visual attention at referent selection also predicted 5-minute and 24-hour retention accuracy for both groups. Visual input during initial encoding influences children's likelihood of successfully forming long-term word-referent representations, indicating strong relationships between attention and learning accuracy. Moreover, population differences in visual attention may not have a detrimental impact on autistic children's word learning under experimental conditions when expectations are based on receptive vocabulary.