No evidence for high inflexible precision of prediction errors in autism during lexical processing.

Researchers tested whether autistic people read and understand words differently than non-autistic people. They looked at how people process letter order in words and word meanings. The study found that autistic and non-autistic readers performed similarly on both tasks, suggesting that basic reading and word understanding processes work the same way for both groups.

This 2023 study examined whether autistic individuals process written language differently than non-autistic individuals, specifically testing theories about 'prediction errors' in autism. Researchers conducted two experiments: one examining how readers process letter positions in words, and another examining semantic (meaning) processing. The study found no differences between autistic and non-autistic readers in either orthographic (spelling pattern) or semantic processing tasks. Results contradict theories suggesting autistic individuals have overly precise and inflexible prediction mechanisms that would affect language processing, at least for these specific lexical tasks.

Findings suggest that reading intervention approaches developed for non-autistic individuals may be equally effective for autistic readers, as basic lexical processing appears similar across groups. However, further research is needed to confirm these findings across different reading tasks and populations.

Sample size not reported, limiting assessment of statistical power. Study design type unclear from abstract. Results may not generalize beyond the specific lexical processing tasks tested. Does not rule out prediction coding differences in other cognitive domains.

Research has shown that information processing differences associated with autism could impact on language and literacy development. This study tested an approach to autistic cognition that suggests learning occurs via prediction errors, and autistic people have very precise and inflexible predictions that result in more sensitivity to meaningless signal errors than non-autistic readers. We used this theoretical background to investigate whether differences in prediction coding influence how orthographic (Experiment 1) and semantic information (Experiment 2) is processed by autistic readers. Experiment 1 used a lexical decision task to test whether letter position information was processed less flexibly by autistic than non-autistic readers.

Three types of letter strings: words, transposed letter and substituted letters nonwords were presented. Experiment 2 used a semantic relatedness task to test whether autistic readers processed words with high and low semantic diversity differently to non-autistic readers. Results showed similar transposed letter and semantic diversity effects for all readers; indicating that orthographic and semantic information are processed similarly by autistic and non-autistic readers; and therefore, differences in prediction coding were not evident for these lexical processing tasks.