The Use of Linguistic Cues in Sentence Comprehension by Mandarin-Speaking Children with High-Functioning Autism.
Two studies were conducted to investigate how high-functioning children with autism use different linguistic cues in sentence comprehension. Two types of linguistic cues were investigated: word order and morphosyntactic cues. The results show that children with autism can use both types of cues in sentence comprehension. However, compared to age-matched typically developing peers, children with autism relied significantly more on word order cues and exhibited significantly more difficulties in interpreting sentences in which there was a conflict between the morphosyntactic cue and the word order cue. We attribute the difficulties exhibited by children with autism to their deficits in executive function. We then discuss the implications of the findings for understanding the nature of the sentence processing mechanism in autism.
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China. zhoupeng1892@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn.
Peng
P
Zhou
Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, 2109, Australia.
Stephen
S
Crain
Beijing Language and Culture University, Beijing, 100083, China.
Liqun
L
Gao
Peking University Sixth Hospital, Beijing, 100083, China.
Meixiang
M
Jia
D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D032882:Comprehension; D003463:Cues; D056344:Executive Function; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007807:Language Tests; D008037:Linguistics / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male
Autism; Child language; Executive function; Linguistic cues; Sentence comprehension; Word order