Objective Language Feature Analysis in Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders During Autism Assessment
Abstract
Lexical planning is an important part of communication and is reflective of a speaker’s internal state that includes aspects of affect, mood, as well as mental health. Within the study of developmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), language acquisition and language use have been studied to assess disorder severity and expressive capability as well as to support diagnosis. In this paper, we perform a language analysis of children focusing on word usage, social and cognitive linguistic word counts, and a few recently proposed psycho-linguistic norms. We use data from conversational samples of verbally fluent children obtained during Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) sessions. We extract the aforementioned lexical cues from transcripts of session recordings and demonstrate their role in differentiating children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder from the rest. Further, we perform a correlation analysis between the lexical norms and ASD symptom severity. The analysis reveals an increased affinity by the interlocutor towards use of words with greater feminine association and negative valence.