scholarly journals Attention during social interaction in children with autism: Comparison to specific language impairment, typical development, and links to social cognition

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 908-924 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Hanley ◽  
Deborah M. Riby ◽  
Teresa McCormack ◽  
Clare Carty ◽  
Lisa Coyle ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Children With Autism ◽  
Typical Development ◽  
Specific Language

scholarly journals Pragmatic versus structural difficulties in the production of pronominal clitics in French-speaking children with autism spectrum disorder

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 239694151879964 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Prévost ◽  
Laurice Tuller ◽  
Racha Zebib ◽  
Marie Anne Barthez ◽  
Joëlle Malvy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Children With Autism ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
First Person ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Structural Language

Background and aims Impaired production of third person accusative pronominal clitics is a signature of language impairment in French-speaking children. It has been found to be a prominent and persistent difficulty in children and adolescents with specific language impairment. Previous studies have reported that many children with autism spectrum disorder also have low performance on these clitics. However, it remains unclear whether these difficulties in children with autism spectrum disorder are due to structural language impairment or to pragmatic deficits. This is because pragmatics skills, notoriously weak in children with autism spectrum disorder, are also needed for appropriate use of pronouns. Use of pronouns without clear referents and difficulty with discourse pronouns (first and second person), which require taking into account the point of view of one’s interlocutor (perspective shifting), have frequently been reported for autism spectrum disorder. Methods We elicited production of nominative, reflexive and accusative third and first person pronominal clitics in 19 verbal children with autism spectrum disorder (aged 6–12, high and low functioning, with structural language impairment, or with normal language) and 19 age-matched children with specific language impairment. If pragmatics is behind difficulties on these elements, performance on first-person clitics would be expected to be worse than performance on third person clitics, since it requires perspective shifting. Furthermore, worse performance for first person clitics was expected in the children with autism spectrum disorder compared to the children with specific language impairment, since weak pragmatics is an integral part of impairment in the former, but not in the latter. More generally, different error patterns would be expected in the two groups, if the source of difficulty with clitics is different (a pragmatic deficit vs. a structural language deficit). Results Similar patterns of relative difficulties were found in the autism spectrum disorder language impairment and specific language impairment groups, with third person accusative clitics being produced at lower rates than first-person pronouns and error patterns being essentially identical. First-person pronouns did not pose particular difficulties in the children with autism spectrum disorder (language impairment or normal language) with respect to third-person pronouns or to the children with specific language impairment. Performance was not related to nonverbal intelligence in the autism spectrum disorder group. Conclusions The elicitation task used in this study included explicit instruction, and focus on perspective shifting (both visual and verbal), allowing for potential pragmatic effects to be controlled. Moreover, the task elicited a variety of types of clitics in morphosyntactic contexts of varying complexity, providing ample opportunities for employment of perspective shifting, which may have also curtailed perseveration of third person over first person. These properties of the task allowed for the grammatical nature of children’s difficulties with third-person accusative clitics to emerge unambiguously. Implications Assessment of structural language abilities in children with autism spectrum disorder requires careful consideration of task demands. The influence of pragmatic abilities on structural language performance can be circumvented by making the pragmatic demands of the task explicit and salient. Filtering out this potential influence on structural language performance is fundamental to understanding language profiles in children with autism spectrum disorder and thus which children could benefit from which kinds of language intervention.

scholarly journals Parental perception of stress and emotional-behavioural difficulties of children with autism spectrum disorder and specific language impairment

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 239694152097150
Author(s):  
Magda Di Renzo ◽  
Federico Bianchi di Castelbianco ◽  
Elena Vanadia ◽  
Massimiliano Petrillo ◽  
Lidia Racinaro ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Children With Autism ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Sensory Profile ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Specific Language

Background and aims The daily challenges of caring for a child with autism spectrum disorder affect many areas of everyday life and parental well-being, as well as parents’ ability to manage the needs of the family and the child concerned. A better understanding of parents’ perception of their child’s characteristics can allow better support for them and individualize intervention protocols in a more accurate way. The main objective of this study is the evaluation of the perception of stress by parents of children with autism compared to parents of children with specific language impairment. Methods The parents of 87 children aged between 2 and 6 years were included in this study, 34 children with a specific language impairment diagnosis and 53 children with an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis (ASD) or at risk of developing it. They were asked to complete a self-report on perceived stress and rating scales on adaptive/problematic behaviours, executive functions and sensory profile of the child. Results The results reveal that parents of ASD children, compared to the control group, showed significantly higher levels of stress, mainly due to the difficulty of managing unexpected events, the feeling of loss of control over one's life and the fear of not being able to cope with the adversities they were experiences. The most critical area, both for ASD and control group, concern the executive function related to emotional reactions. Conclusions Thus, we argue that the difficulties in self-control, sensory modulation and emotional regulation, represent an element of stress for parents of children with developmental disorders. Implications: Regarding the difficulties of children with ASD, supporting the ways in which caregivers adapt to the signals of children is an important strategy, which has now become a key element of treatments for autism mediated by parents.

Acquisition of verb meaning through syntactic cues: A comparison of children with autism, children with specific language impairment (SLI) and children with typical language development (TLD)

2007 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 411-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
CORY SHULMAN ◽  
AINAT GUBERMAN
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Children With Autism ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Primary Language ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Underlying Mechanisms ◽  
Syntactic Cues

The ability to extract meaning through the use of syntactic cues, adapted from Naigles' (1990) paradigm, was investigated in Hebrew-speaking children with autism, those with specific language impairment (SLI) and those with typical language development (TLD), in an attempt to shed light on similarities and differences between the two diagnostic categories, both defined by primary language deficits. Thirteen children with autism and 13 with SLI were matched on chronological age, level of language functioning and gender, and 13 children with TLD were matched to the children in the two clinical groups according to language level, as measured by the CELF-P. Children with autism and children with TLD learned novel words using the syntactical cues in the sentences in which they were presented, whereas children with SLI experienced more difficulty, learning only that which would be expected from chance according to the binomial test. Only 4 of the 13 children with SLI (31%) learned the new words, whereas 11 children with autism and 10 children with TLD learned the novel verb using syntactical cues from the sentence frame. The results are analyzed in terms of possible underlying mechanisms in language acquisition. Children with autism seem to rely on relatively intact syntactic abilities, while children with SLI seem to have marked impairment in using this mechanism in acquiring word meaning. Implications for future research and intervention with preschool children with primary language disorders are discussed.

Production and comprehension of French wh-questions by children with autism spectrum disorder: A comparative study with specific language impairment

2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 1095-1131 ◽  
Author(s):  
PHILIPPE PRÉVOST ◽  
LAURICE TULLER ◽  
MARIE ANNE BARTHEZ ◽  
JOËLLE MALVY ◽  
FRÉDÉRIQUE BONNET-BRILHAULT
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Language Impairment ◽  
Specific Language Impairment ◽  
Qualitative Difference ◽  
Children With Autism ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Structural Language

ABSTRACTThe nature of structural language difficulties in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was explored in a comparative study with specific language impairment (SLI) through investigation of the frequently reported ASD weakness in receptive skills relative to expressive skills. Twenty French-speaking children with ASD aged 6 to 12 were compared to age-matched children with SLI on production and comprehension of wh-questions. The two groups displayed similar effects of the complexity of the different wh-strategies. In the ASD group (as in the SLI group), these effects were not greater in comprehension compared to production; moreover, nonverbal ability (which varied from normal to impaired) was not related to language performance. Observed ASD-SLI differences are argued to largely be due to ASD pragmatic deficits, rather than to a qualitative difference in structural language skills.

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