The shape bias in Mandarin-exposed young autistic children: The role of abstract shape representation

The shape bias is an important word learning strategy in children’s language development. Although some studies have observed an absent or atypical shape bias in autistic children, there is no converging evidence regarding its underlying bases. Moreover, previous research has been exclusively conducted in learners of Indo-European languages, yet it is unclear whether the shape bias is a universal word learning constraint across languages. This study aims to investigate the shape bias and its association with shape representation ability in 40 1–3-year-old non-autistic children, and 41 2–6-year-old autistic children, exposed to Mandarin Chinese. The results suggested that Mandarin-exposed non-autistic children exhibited a shape bias, while autistic children did not. Further, a positive correlation was found between the shape representation accuracy and shape bias performance in the autistic group. These findings provide cross-linguistic evidence for the shape bias as a word learning constraint in non-autistic toddlers but challenges in utilizing this constraint in word learning by young autistic children. Importantly, these results shed new light on the critical role of abstract representations of object shape in facilitating shape bias knowledge in autistic children.