Deictic categories in the language of autistic children

Comprehension of Spatial Demonstratives in Mandarin-speaking Children on the Autism Spectrum: The Roles of Theory of Mind and Executive Function

The present study aimed to examine whether Mandarin-speaking children on the autism spectrum showed differences in comprehending spatial demonstratives ("this" and "that", and "here" and "there"), as compared to typically developing (TD) children. Another aim of this study was to investigate the roles of theory of mind (ToM) and executive functions (EF) in the comprehension of spatial demonstratives. Twenty-seven autistic children (mean age 6.86) and 27 receptive-vocabulary-matched TD children (mean age 5.82) were recruited. Demonstrative comprehension was assessed based on participants' ability to place objects in certain locations according to experimenters' instructions which involved these demonstratives in three different conditions (same-, opposite-, and spectator-perspective conditions). Four false-belief tasks were administered to measure ToM, and the word-span task and the dimensional change card sort task were used to measure two subcomponents of EF - working memory and mental flexibility - respectively. Children on the autism spectrum were found to score below TD children in the comprehension of spatial demonstratives. In addition, the results showed that ToM and working memory were conducive to the correct interpretation of spatial demonstratives. The two cognitive abilities mutually influenced their respective roles in spatial demonstrative comprehension in the three different conditions. The findings suggest that the comprehension of spatial demonstratives comprehension is an area of need in Mandarin-speaking children on the autism spectrum, and it might be linked to their differences in cognitive abilities.

Improving the Use of Deictic Verbs in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Background: Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show difficulty in comprehension and production of the deictic verbs "come/go." Objective: To examine whether introducing conditions related to daily conversations into training would improve the use of deictic verbs. Methods: Six Japanese children with ASD participated. We set up multiple scenes where the questioner presented the sentence using "come/go" with/without deictic gestures, and children with ASD replied with "come/go." The conditions such as spatial relations between the two parties (face-to-face or side-by-side) and presentations of the gestures (moving one's arm toward or away from the body or moving one's upper body forward/backward) were introduced. Results: The appropriate use of deictic verbs during training and in daily life situations among children with ASD increased. Conclusions: Training children with ASD to look in the direction indicated by the questioner and to synchronize their bodies with the questioner's movements promotes their acquisition of deictic verbs.

Developmental Language Disorder and Autism: Commonalities and Differences on Language

Language and communication deficits characterize both autism spectrum disorder and developmental language disorder, and the possibility of there being a common profile of these is a matter of tireless debate in the research community. This experimental study addresses the relation of these two developmental conditions in the critical topic of language. Α total of 103 children (79 males, 24 females) participated in the present study. Specifically, the study's sample consisted of 40 children with autism, 28 children with developmental language disorder, and 35 typically developing children between 6 and 12 years old. All children completed language and cognitive measures. The results showed that there is a subgroup inside the autism group of children who demonstrate language difficulties similar to children with developmental language disorder. Specifically, two different subgroups were derived from the autism group; those with language impairment and those without. Both autism and language-impaired groups scored lower than typically developing children on all language measures indicating a common pathology in language ability. The results of this study shed light on the relation between the two disorders, supporting the assumption of a subgroup with language impairment inside the autism spectrum disorder population. The common picture presented by the two developmental conditions highlights the need for further research in the field.

Colorful Semantics in Cypriot-Greek-Speaking Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

OBJECTIVES

The aims of this study were: (1) to investigate the effect of colorful semantics (CS) on the morphosyntactic and semantic development of Cypriot-Greek (CG)-speaking children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to obtain a better understanding of its role in an augmentative communication (AC) intervention program; (2) to address the paucity of intervention tools geared for CG-speaking children with ASD.

PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS

The study included 24 boys and 16 girls with ASD, all preschool-aged 4-6 years. All were verbal but with limited production and minimal mean length of utterance. The study followed a randomized control trial design with equally sized experimental and control groups. The experimental group followed a therapeutic program using the AC with a CS protocol, while the control group's AC intervention did not include the CS protocol.

RESULTS

The use of CS significantly improved the children's semantic and morphosyntactic development.

CONCLUSIONS

The intervention results illustrate the effectiveness of CS in this study; however, generalizability of effectiveness to other similar CG-speaking children with ASD requires further evidence.

Spontaneous Expressive Language Profiles in a Clinically Ascertained Sample of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have varying degrees of language impairment across multiple domains, which may include deficits in syntactic, pragmatic, and/or semantic skills. The heterogeneity of language profiles within ASD, coupled with the limited scope of existing standardized language measures, makes a comprehensive assessment of language impairments in ASD challenging. The Observation of Spontaneous Expressive Language (OSEL) is a new measure developed to capture children's spontaneous use of language in a naturalistic setting. The current study used the OSEL to examine the patterns of spontaneous expressive language abilities of 87 clinically ascertained children with ASD from 2 to 12 years. As expected, children with ASD were significantly more impaired in their spontaneous use of language compared to typically developing peers. Syntax and narrative skills continued to increase with age from toddler to elementary school years in cross-sectional comparisons. Pragmatic skills improved form toddler to preschool years but remained stable from preschool to elementary school years. Preliminary data also demonstrated significant improvements in OSEL syntax scores over time for a subset of children followed longitudinally (n = 8). Children with ASD consistently showed more impairments in spontaneous expressive language captured on the OSEL compared to language skills measured by other more structured standardized assessments, despite moderate convergent validity among those measures. Results suggest that impairments in the spontaneous and functional use of expressive language persist into middle childhood for many children with ASD, and a comprehensive assessment approach can lead to more precisely targeted treatment addressing specific language profiles. LAY SUMMARY: This study aimed to examine the variable language profiles in children with ASD. Children with ASD were shown to have impairments in the structure, meaning, and social use of language. These challenges were captured best by a measure that was created to assess the spontaneous use of language in a naturalistic environment. The results of this study emphasize the importance of a comprehensive assessment of language in ASD to inform treatment. Autism Res 2021, 14: 720-732. © 2020 International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals LLC.

Social Communication and Structural Language of Girls With High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder

Purpose The purpose of this study was to characterize social communication and structural language of school-age girls with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (HF-ASD) compared to a matched group of girls who are typically developing (TD). Method Participants were 37 girls between 7;5 and 15;2 (years;months)-18 HF-ASD and 19 TD. Children completed the Test of Pragmatic Language-Second Edition (TOPL-2) and Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Fifth Edition. Parents completed the Children's Communication Checklist-2 United States Edition (CCC-2) and Receptive and Expressive Communication subdomains of the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales-Second Edition. Results In the area of social communication, girls with HF-ASD earned significantly lower scores and were more often classified as having an impairment on the TOPL-2 and the CCC-2. However, 28% and 33% earned average scores on the TOPL-2 and the CCC-2, respectively. In the area of structural language, no significant differences were found between groups on Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Fifth Edition indexes. In contrast, girls with HF-ASD earned significantly lower scores and were more often classified as having an impairment on the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales-Second Edition. Sixty-one percent and 83% scored below average on the Receptive and Expressive Communication subdomains, respectively. Conclusions It has been argued that girls with HF-ASD, when compared to boys with HF-ASD, may have advantages for social communication and structural language that mask their impairments. However, when compared to girls who are TD, girls with HF-ASD demonstrated impaired social communication and structural language. Clinicians should include and carefully examine multiple sources of information when assessing girls with HF-ASD.

The Locus Preservation Hypothesis: Shared Linguistic Profiles across Developmental Disorders and the Resilient Part of the Human Language Faculty

Grammatical markers are not uniformly impaired across speakers of different languages, even when speakers share a diagnosis and the marker in question is grammaticalized in a similar way in these languages. The aim of this work is to demarcate, from a cross-linguistic perspective, the linguistic phenotype of three genetically heterogeneous developmental disorders: specific language impairment, Down syndrome, and autism spectrum disorder. After a systematic review of linguistic profiles targeting mainly English-, Greek-, Catalan-, and Spanish-speaking populations with developmental disorders (n = 880), shared loci of impairment are identified and certain domains of grammar are shown to be more vulnerable than others. The distribution of impaired loci is captured by the Locus Preservation Hypothesis which suggests that specific parts of the language faculty are immune to impairment across developmental disorders. Through the Locus Preservation Hypothesis, a classical chicken and egg question can be addressed: Do poor conceptual resources and memory limitations result in an atypical grammar or does a grammatical breakdown lead to conceptual and memory limitations? Overall, certain morphological markers reveal themselves as highly susceptible to impairment, while syntactic operations are preserved, granting support to the first scenario. The origin of resilient syntax is explained from a phylogenetic perspective in connection to the "syntax-before-phonology" hypothesis.

The linguistics of schizophrenia: thought disturbance as language pathology across positive symptoms

We hypothesize that linguistic (dis-)organization in the schizophrenic brain plays a more central role in the pathogenesis of this disease than commonly supposed. Against the standard view, that schizophrenia is a disturbance of thought or selfhood, we argue that the origins of the relevant forms of thought and selfhood at least partially depend on language. The view that they do not is premised by a theoretical conception of language that we here identify as 'Cartesian' and contrast with a recent 'un-Cartesian' model. This linguistic model empirically argues for both (i) a one-to-one correlation between human-specific thought or meaning and forms of grammatical organization, and (ii) an integrative and co-dependent view of linguistic cognition and its sensory-motor dimensions. Core dimensions of meaning mediated by grammar on this model specifically concern forms of referential and propositional meaning. A breakdown of these is virtually definitional of core symptoms. Within this model the three main positive symptoms of schizophrenia fall into place as failures in language-mediated forms of meaning, manifest either as a disorder of speech perception (Auditory Verbal Hallucinations), abnormal speech production running without feedback control (Formal Thought Disorder), or production of abnormal linguistic content (Delusions). Our hypothesis makes testable predictions for the language profile of schizophrenia across symptoms; it simplifies the cognitive neuropsychology of schizophrenia while not being inconsistent with a pattern of neurocognitive deficits and their correlations with symptoms; and it predicts persistent findings on disturbances of language-related circuitry in the schizophrenic brain.

Inflectional morphology in high-functioning autism: Evidence for speeded grammatical processing

Autism is characterized by language and communication deficits. We investigated grammatical and lexical processes in high-functioning autism by contrasting the production of regular and irregular past-tense forms. Boys with autism and typically-developing control boys did not differ in accuracy or error rates. However, boys with autism were significantly faster than controls at producing rule-governed past-tenses (slip-slipped, plim-plimmed, bring-bringed), though not lexically-dependent past-tenses (bring-brought, squeeze-squeezed, splim-splam). This pattern mirrors previous findings from Tourette syndrome attributed to abnormalities of frontal/basal-ganglia circuits that underlie grammar. We suggest a similar abnormality underlying language in autism. Importantly, even when children with autism show apparently normal language (e.g., in accuracy or with diagnostic instruments), processes and/or brain structures subserving language may be atypical in the disorder.

Morphological and syntactic skills in language samples of pre school aged children with autism: atypical development?

This study investigated whether children with autism have atypical development of morphological and syntactic skills, including whether they use rote learning to compensate for impaired morphological processing and acquire grammatical morphemes in an atypical order. Participants were children aged from 3-6 years who had autism (n = 17), developmental delay without autism (n = 7), and typically-developing children (n = 19). Language samples were taken from participants during the administration of the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, and transcripts were coded using the Index of Productive Syntax, and for usage of Brown's grammatical morphemes. Participants were also administered an elicitation task requiring the application of inflections to non-words; the Wugs Task. The main finding of this study was that children with autism have unevenly developed morphological and syntactic sub-skills; they have skills which are a combination of intact, delayed, and atypical. It was also found that children with autism and children with developmental delays can acquire and use morphological rules. The implications of these findings are that, in order to maximize language acquisition for these children, clinicians need to utilize comprehensive language assessment tools and design interventions that are tailored to the child's strengths and weaknesses.

No neural evidence of statistical learning during exposure to artificial languages in children with autism spectrum disorders

BACKGROUND

Language delay is a hallmark feature of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The identification of word boundaries in continuous speech is a critical first step in language acquisition that can be accomplished via statistical learning and reliance on speech cues. Importantly, early word segmentation skills have been shown to predict later language development in typically developing (TD) children.

METHODS

Here we investigated the neural correlates of online word segmentation in children with and without ASD with a well-established behavioral paradigm previously validated for functional magnetic resonance imaging. Eighteen high-functioning boys with ASD and 18 age- and IQ-matched TD boys underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while listening to two artificial languages (containing statistical or statistical + prosodic cues to word boundaries) and a random speech stream.

RESULTS

Consistent with prior findings, in TD control subjects, activity in fronto-temporal-parietal networks decreased as the number of cues to word boundaries increased. The ASD children, however, did not show this facilitatory effect. Furthermore, statistical contrasts modeling changes in activity over time identified significant learning-related signal increases for both artificial languages in basal ganglia and left temporo-parietal cortex only in TD children. Finally, the level of communicative impairment in ASD children was inversely correlated with signal increases in these same regions during exposure to the artificial languages.

CONCLUSIONS

This is the first study to demonstrate significant abnormalities in the neural architecture subserving language-related learning in ASD children and to link the communicative impairments observed in this population to decreased sensitivity to the statistical and speech cues available in the language input.

Personal pronouns and communicative engagement in autism

In three experimental conditions, we tested matched children with and without autism (n = 15 per group) for their comprehension and use of first person plural ('we') and third person singular ('he') pronouns, and examined whether such linguistic functioning related to their social interaction. The groups were indistinguishable in their comprehension and use of 'we' pronouns, although within each group, such usage was correlated with ratings of interpersonal connectedness with the collaborator. On the other hand, participants with autism were less likely to use third person pronouns or to show patterns of eye gaze reflecting engagement with an interlocutor's stance vis-à-vis a third person. In these settings, atypical third person pronoun usage seemed to reflect limited communicative engagement, but first person pronouns were relatively spared.

On the origins of self and the case of autism

This article examines what it means to have a self. My focus is on the essential components of self-experience, the kind of psychological architecture required to construct a self, rather than on the configurations or qualities of individual “selves.” I adopt a developmental perspective and indicate how early childhood autism may afford unique insights into the role of perceptual-affective and interpersonal experience in determining the normal child's developing awareness of self.

Beyond pragmatics: morphosyntactic development in autism

Language acquisition research in autism has traditionally focused on high-level pragmatic deficits. Few studies have examined grammatical abilities in autism, with mixed findings. The present study addresses this gap in the literature by providing a detailed investigation of syntactic and higher-level discourse abilities in verbal children with autism, age 5 years. Findings indicate clear language difficulties that go beyond what would be expected based on developmental level; specifically, syntactic delays, impairments in discourse management and increased production of non-meaningful words (jargon). The present study indicates a highly specific pattern of language impairments, and importantly, syntactic delays, in a group of children with autism carefully matched on lexical level and non-verbal mental age with children with developmental delays and typical development.

A systems neuroscience approach to autism: biological, cognitive, and clinical perspectives

Autism is a behaviorally defined disorder characterized by a broad constellation of symptoms. Numerous studies directed to the biological substrate demonstrate clear effects of neurodevelopmental differences that will likely point to the etiology, course, and long-term outcomes of the disorder. Consistently replicated research on the neural underpinnings of autism is reviewed. In general, results suggest several main conclusions: First, autism is a heterogeneous disorder and is likely to have multiple possible etiologies; second, structural brain studies have indicated a variety of diffuse anatomical differences, reflective of an early developmental change in the growth or pruning of neural tissue, rather than localized lesions; similarly, neurochemical studies suggest early, neuromodulatory discrepancies rather than gross or localized abnormalities; and finally, there are a number of limitations on studies of brain activity that to date preclude definitive answers to questions of how the brain functions differently in autism. The large number of active research programs investigating the cognitive neuroscience of autism spectrum disorders, in combination with the exciting development of new methodologies and tools in this area, indicates the drama and excitement of work in this area.

Symbol use by developmentally disabled children

13 children with a diagnosis of autism and 20 children with a diagnosis of childhood schizophrenia or a variant thereof were compared for skill in symbol use across modalities of expressive language, drawing, gesture, and play. The children were also given the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test—Revised as a measure of receptive comprehension. Analysis showed that the autistic children had poorer receptive language than the schizophrenic children. The autisic children were poorer in symbol use, as predicted, across all expressive modalities except play, when receptive language was treated as a covariate. Implications of these results for differential identification of children with severe developmental disturbance are discussed.

The use of primary sentence stress by normal, aphasic, and autistic children

Primary sentence stress is an important aspect of the English prosodic system. Its adequate use is a prerequisite in the development of normal intonation patterns. This study examined the use of primary sentence stress in autistic children with mean length of utterance (MLU) scores between 1.9 and 4.1 morphemes. Normal and aphasic subjects at similar MLU levels served as contrast groups. The primary sentence task required that the subjects verbally respond to a request for information and provide a description of a play situation. Toy manipulation was used to elicit the desired responses. Listener judgment served as the basis for analyzing results. Although all subjects were able to perform the task, differences were seen in the number of correct responses and in the pattern of stress misassignment. These results are at variance with a prediction of stress placement on grammatical grounds. An explanation is offered, based on pragmatic considerations and cognitive developmental trends in young children.

Joint attention and language in autism and developmental language delay

The relationship of gestural joint attention behaviors and the development of effective communication skills in autism and developmental language delay (DLD) was investigated. Autistic and DLD children matched for MA and MLU were compared on measures of gestural joint attention behavior, personal pronoun use, and spontaneous communicative behavior. DLD children responded correctly to joint attention interactions more often than autistic children, and their spontaneous gestural behavior was more communicative and developmentally advanced. Correct production of "I/you" pronouns was related to number of spontaneous initiations for autistic but not for DLD children. Measures of spontaneous joint attention behaviors were in general not related to MA, CA, or MLU for either group. DLD children's performance suggests no special impairment of joint attention skills, whereas autistic children's performance suggests a joint attention deficit in addition to a language deficit.

Objectively defined linguistic parameters in children with autism and other developmental disabilities

The language of children with autism and other developmental disabilities was examined systematically according to a set of objectively defined linguistic parameters. These criteria were drawn from clinical observations reported in the literature and from developmental norms of language acquisition. Data analysis identified sets of parameters that were correlated with psychiatrists' clinical diagnoses but failed to isolate individual parameters (such as echolalia or noncommunicativeness) that have been suggested to be pathonomic.

Cross-sectional studies of grammatical morphemes in autistic and mentally retarded children

The frequency of occurrence of functors in obligatory contexts was studied in verbal autistic and mentally retarded children matched for nonverbal mental age, and the percentages of correct use of functors were rank-ordered. The grammatical complexity of their language was also described using a transformational grammar. The data were compared to those obtained in a normal group matched for mental age and to the data presented by Brown (1973) and deVilliers and deVilliers (1973) in younger children. The autistic subjects omitted functors frequently and independently of the grammatical complexity of their language. The rank ordering of morphemes was consistent within both the autistic and mentally retarded groups but showed no correlation between the two groups or to the rank ordering described by deVilliers and deVilliers. It is suggested that functors in autistic subjects may develop in an atypical but consistent order and that this may be due to specific semantic deficits, particularly in the areas of person and time deixis.

Personal pronouns and the autistic child

The long-recognized difficulties of the speaking autistic child with the use and nonuse of personal pronouns ["reversals" and "avoidance"] have been generally attributed either to the nondifferentiation of the self or to the frequently coexisting symptom of echolalia. These explanations are reconsidered in this eclectic analysis from the perspective of current theory and research in development of self and of language. Emphasis is on studies of normal development of personal pronouns and the roles played in that process by listening, echoic memory, mitigated echolalia [recoding], and person deixis. It is concluded that multiple developmental obstacles of a social, cognitive, and grammatical nature underlie the more obvious symptoms and militate against the child's resolution of labels and their referents. Treatment alternatives that de-emphasize the primacy of I are offered.

Phonological investigation of verbal autistic and mentally retarded subjects

A review of the pertinent literature indicates that autistic children are likely to show normal but delayed development of speech sounds. In contrast, atypical phonological development is suggested by experiments demonstrating that autistic subjects are deficient in their ability to extract the components of structured auditory input. A systematic investigation of the speech sound systems of verbal autistic and mentally retarded children reveals a delay in phoneme acquisition, as well as a relative uniformity of error types in both groups. The autistic subjects, however, differ significantly from the mentally retarded in the phonemic substitutions which they make. Autistic subjects are also characterized by a high correlation between frequency of phonological errors and level of overall language development. The findings are interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that the autistic group shows a more global delay in language development.