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Updated: Oct 29, 2025

Using the Visual World Paradigm to Study Sentence Comprehension in Mandarin-Speaking Children with Autism
Published on: October 3, 2018
Conversation During a Virtual Reality Task Reveals New Structural Language Profiles of Children with ASD, ADHD, and
Cynthia Boo1, Nora Alpers-Leon2, Nancy McIntyre3
1Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut, 406 Babbidge Road., Unit 1020, Storrs, CT, 06269-1020, USA. cynthia.boo@uconn.edu.
Abstract:
Many studies have utilized standardized measures and storybook narratives to characterize language profiles of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). They report that structural language of these children is on par with mental-age-matched typically developing (TD) peers. Few studies have looked at structural language profiles in conversational contexts. This study examines conversational speech produced in a virtual reality (VR) paradigm to investigate the strengths and weaknesses of structural language abilities of these children. The VR paradigm introduced varying social and cognitive demands across phases. Our results indicate that children from these diagnostic groups produced less complex structural language than TD children. Moreover, language complexity decreased in all groups across phases, suggesting a cross-etiology sensitivity to conversational contexts.
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