Inhibitory control and lexical alignment in children with an autism spectrum disorder

Background: Two experiments investigated the contribution of conflict inhibition to pragmatic deficits in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Typical adults’ tendency to re-use interlocutors’ referential choices (lexical alignment) implicates communicative perspective-taking, which is regulated by conflict inhibition. We examined whether children with ASD spontaneously lexically aligned, and whether conflict inhibition mediated alignment. Methods: Children with ASD and chronological- and verbal-age-matched typically-developing controls played a picture-naming game. We manipulated whether the experimenter used a preferred or dispreferred name for each picture, and examined whether children subsequently used the same name. Results: Children with ASD spontaneously lexically aligned, to the same extent as typically-developing controls. Alignment was unrelated to conflict inhibition in both groups. Conclusions: Children with ASD’s referential communication is robust to impairments in conflict inhibition under some circumstances. Their pragmatic deficits may be mitigated in a highly structured interaction.