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. 2020 May;50(5):1816-1821.
doi: 10.1007/s10803-018-3736-1.

Brief Report: "Um" Fillers Distinguish Children With and Without ASD

Karla K McGregor  1   2 , Rex R Hadden  3   4
Affiliations

Brief Report: "Um" Fillers Distinguish Children With and Without ASD

Karla K McGregor et al. J Autism Dev Disord. 2020 May.

Abstract

Two laboratories have reported that children with ASD are less likely than their typical peers to fill pauses with um but their use of uh is unaffected (Irvine et al., J Autism Dev Disord 46(3):1061-1070, 2016; Gorman et al., Autism Res 9(8):854-865, 2016). In this brief report, we replicated this finding by comparing the discourse of 7-to-15-year-olds with ASD (N = 31) to that of their typically developing same-age peers (N = 32). The robustness of this easily documented difference in discourse suggests a potentially useful clinical marker of ASD.

Keywords: Autism Spectrum Disorder; Discourse; Disfluency; Fillers.

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Conflict of interest statement

Karla McGregor declares that she has no conflict of interest. Rex Hadden declares that he has no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Comparison of filler use by sex and diagnostic category expressed as Mdn, −/+ quartile, and outliers. The scores of the two girls with ASD are plotted individually.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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