title: Subject pronoun use by children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD).
abstract: In the current study, storytelling and story retelling by children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were analyzed to explore ambiguous third-person pronoun use in narratives. Twenty-three children diagnosed with ASD aged 6;1 to 14;3 and 17 typically-developing (TD) children aged 5;11 to 14;4 participated in the study. In the retelling task, no significant difference between the groups was found, suggesting that in less challenging tasks, children with ASD produce third-person subject pronouns appropriately. In the storytelling task, children with ASD produced more ambiguous third-person subject pronouns than did the TD children. The findings suggest a model in which children with ASD show deficits in the pragmatic domain of producing narratives.
authors.affiliation: Programs in Deaf Studies, Center for the Study of Communication and the Deaf, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA. ramanovo@gmail.com
authors.forename: Rama
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Novogrodsky
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002659:Child Development Disorders, Pervasive / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D033262:Narration; D012660:Semantics; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D014825:Vocabulary