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PMID: 2606887 Published · ppublish English Journal Article Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Emotion-related and abstract concepts in autistic people: evidence from the British Picture Vocabulary Scale.

Journal of autism and developmental disorders ·Vol. 19 ·No. 4 ·1989-12-00 ·Pages 601-23

Hobson RP, Lee A

Abstract

Autistic and nonautistic retarded adolescents and young adults, individually matched for chronological age and performance on the British Picture Vocabulary Scale (BPVS; Dunn, Dunn, & Whetton, 1982), were compared on those items of the BPVS that independent raters judged (a) emotion-related and (b) highly abstract. Compared to control subjects, autistic individuals scored lower on emotion-related vis-à-vis emotion-unrelated items, an effect that could not be attributed to the "social content" of the items. However, autistic and nonautistic subjects achieved similar scores when responding to highly abstract vis-à-vis "concrete" words of the BPVS. The findings suggest that autistic individuals have specific impairments in grasping emotion-related concepts. They also suggest the need for further study of autistic and nonautistic retarded subjects' difficulties in abstracting. The results have a bearing on the interpretation of the BPVS and on the use of this test as a matching procedure.

MeSH Terms
Adolescent Adult Autistic Disorder/psychology Child Concept Formation Emotions Humans Intellectual Disability/psychology Semantics Vocabulary
Authors & Affiliations
2 authors, click to expand affiliations / ORCID
Hobson R P
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, London.
Lee A
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Article Info
Journal
Journal of autism and developmental disorders
Abbr.
J Autism Dev Disord
ISSN
0162-3257
DOI
10.1007/BF02212860
Published
1989-12-00
Pages
601-23
Language
English
Region
United States
NLM ID
7904301
Subset
IM
External Links
PubMed source DOI: 10.1007/BF02212860 View journal details
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