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Using a corpus of oral narratives (Norbury & Bishop, 2003), we derived lexical profiles for 6-to-10 year olds with specific language impairment (SLI, n=17), high functioning autism (HFA, n=12), pervasive developmental disorders (PDD, n=21), and normal language development (ND, n=18). The word class profiles of the three clinical groups were similar and all three used fewer nouns and verbs than the ND group. The clinical groups also demonstrated similar profiles of verb and noun types. Compared to ND peers, they used fewer action verbs and inanimate nouns. The SLI group did not over-use light verbs nor did HFA/PDD groups under-use psychological terms. These profiles a) suggest lexical deficits among SLI, HFA, and PDD populations; b) highlight patterns of deficit not previously reported; and c) illustrate behavioral overlap between these populations. Overlap was not absolute. The SLI group used more physical adjectives and fewer unique words than the HFA/PDD groups.
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