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 reuse 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.