Predictive Language Processing in Preschool Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Eye-Tracking Study
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Updated: Feb 3, 2026

Eye Tracking Young Children with Autism
Published on: March 27, 2012
Peng Zhou1, Likan Zhan2, Huimin Ma3
1Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Child Cognition Lab, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China. zhoupeng1892@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn.
Abstract:
Sentence comprehension relies on the abilities to rapidly integrate different types of linguistic and non-linguistic information. The present study investigated whether Mandarin-speaking preschool children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are able to use verb information predictively to anticipate the upcoming linguistic input during real-time sentence comprehension. 26 five-year-olds with ASD, 25 typically developing (TD) five-year-olds and 24 TD four-year-olds were tested using the visual world eye-tracking paradigm. The results showed that the 5-year-olds with ASD, like their TD peers, exhibited verb-based anticipatory eye movements during real-time sentence comprehension. No difference was observed between the ASD and TD groups in the time course of their eye gaze patterns, indicating that Mandarin-speaking preschool children with ASD are able to use verb information as effectively and rapidly as TD peers to predict the upcoming linguistic input.
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