Do focused interests support word learning? A study with autistic and nonautistic children

Although focused interests are often associated with a diagnosis of autism, they are common in nonautistic individuals as well. Previous studies have explored how these interests impact cognitive, social, and language development. While some research has suggested that strong interests can detract from learning (particularly for autistic children), newer research has indicated that they can be advantageous. In this pre‐registered study, we asked whether focused interests support word learning in 44 autistic children and a vocabulary‐matched sample of 44 nonautistic children (mean ages 58 and 34 months respectively). In a word‐learning task administered over Zoom, children were exposed to an action labeled by a novel word. The action was either depicted by their focused interest or by a neutral image; stimuli were personalized for each child. At test, they were asked to identify the referent of the novel word, and their eye gaze was evaluated as a measure of learning. The preregistered analyses revealed an effect of focused interests, and post‐hoc analyses clarified that autistic children learned the novel word in both the focused interest and neutral conditions, while nonautistic children only showed evidence of learning in the neutral condition. These results suggest that focused interests are not disruptive for vocabulary learning in autism, and thus they could be utilized in programming that supports early language learning in this population. Lay Summary Although focused interests are often associated with a diagnosis of autism, they are common in nonautistic individuals as well. Previous studies have explored how these interests impact cognitive, social, and language development. While some research has suggested that strong interests can detract from learning (particularly for autistic children), newer research has indicated that they can support learning. In this study, we asked whether focused interests support word learning in 44 autistic children and 44 nonautistic children with similar language skills (average ages 58 and 34 months respectively). In an online task, children were taught a new word for an action. The action was either demonstrated by their focused interest or by a neutral image. At test, they were asked to identify the meaning of the new word. Results indicated that autistic children learned the word in both the focused interest and neutral conditions, while nonautistic children only learned in the neutral condition. These results