biostudies-literaturePomper REunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human DevelopmentNICHD NIH HHSNIDCD NIH HHSNational Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders104799https://www.ebi.ac.uk/biostudies/studies/S-EPMC8324542biostudies-literatureUnknown214Many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are delayed in learning language. The mechanisms underlying these delays are not well understood but may involve differences in how children process language. In the current experiment, we compared how 3- to 4-year-old children with ASD (n = 58) and 2- to 3-year-old children who are typically developing (TD, n = 44) use phonological information to incrementally process speech. Children saw pictures of objects displayed on a screen and heard sentences labeling one of the objects (e.g., Find the ball). For some sentences, the determiner the contained coarticulatory information about the onset of the target word. For other sentences, the determiner the did not contain any coarticulatory information. Children were faster to fixate the target object for sentences with vs. without coarticulation. This effect of coarticulation was the same for children with ASD compared to their TD peers. When controlling for group differences in receptive language ability, the effect of coarticulation was stronger for children with ASD compared to their TD peers. These results suggest that phonological processing is an area of relative strength for children with ASD.CognitionCoarticulation facilitates lexical processing for toddlers with autism.PMC8324542F31 HD091969R01 DC017974U54 HD090256RO1 DC012513R01 DC012513Ellis Weismer SPomper REdwards JSaffran JfalseCoarticulation facilitates lexical processing for toddlers with autism.Many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are delayed in learning language. The mechanisms underlying these delays are not well understood but may involve differences in how children process language. In the current experiment, we compared how 3- to 4-year-old children with ASD (n = 58) and 2- to 3-year-old children who are typically developing (TD, n = 44) use phonological information to incrementally process speech. Children saw pictures of objects displayed on a screen and heard sentences labeling one of the objects (e.g., Find the ball). For some sentences, the determiner the contained coarticulatory information about the onset of the target word. For other sentences, the determiner the did not contain any coarticulatory information. Children were faster to fixate the target object for sentences with vs. without coarticulation. This effect of coarticulation was the same for children with ASD compared to their TD peers. When controlling for group differences in receptive language ability, the effect of coarticulation was stronger for children with ASD compared to their TD peers. These results suggest that phonological processing is an area of relative strength for children with ASD.2021-01-01T00:00:00Z2021 Sep2025-04-27T00:08:07.053Z2025-04-06T17:49:07.134ZS-EPMC83245423413947810.1016/j.cognition.2021.104799