Washington, October 18 (ANI): Children with autism may recognize socially inappropriate behaviour, but they have difficulty using spoken language to explain why the behaviours are considered inappropriate, according to a research from Carnegie Mellon University.
Elizabeth Carter from the University and colleagues said the results of their functional MRI studies support previous behavioural studies that reached similar conclusions about language impairment in children with autism.
In the current study, the researchers asked children with autism and children with typical development to identify in which of two pictures a boy was being bad (social judgment), or which of two pictures was outdoors (physical judgment).
Both groups successfully performed the task, but the children with autism showed activity in fewer brain regions involving social and language networks while performing the task.
Even though language was not required for the task, the children with typical development recruited language areas of the brain while making their decisions.
According to the researchers, their results support the hypothesis that children with autism may recognize socially inappropriate behaviour, but have difficulty using spoken language to explain why the behaviour is considered wrong.
They suggested that this decreased use of language might also make generalization of the knowledge more difficult.
"These results indicate that it is important to work with these children on translating their knowledge into language", said Carter.
The study was published in the open access journal PLOS ONE. (ANI)