Abstract
A recent study questioned the adherence of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) to a linguistic constraint on the use of reflexive pronouns (Principle A) in sentences like Bart's dad is touching himself. This led researchers to question whether children with ASD are able to compute the hierarchical structural relationship of c-command, and raised the possibility that the children rely on a linear strategy for reference assignment. The current study investigates the status of c-command in children with ASD by testing their interpretation of sentences like (1) and (2) that tease apart use of c-command and a linear strategy for reference assignment. The girl who stayed up late will not get a dime or a jewel (C-command)The girl who didn't go to sleep will get a dime or a jewel (Non C-command) These examples both contain negation (not or didn't) and disjunction (or). In (1), negation c-commands the disjunction phrase, yielding a conjunctive entailment. This gives rise to the meaning that the girl who stayed up late won't get a dime and she won't get a jewel. In (2), negation is positioned inside a relative clause and it does not c-command disjunction. Therefore, no conjunctive entailment follows. Thus, (2) is true if the girl just gets a dime or just a jewel, or possibly both. If children with ASD lack c-command, then (1) will not give rise to a conjunctive entailment. In this case, children might rely on a linear strategy for reference assignment. Since negation precedes disjunction in both (1) and (2), they might be interpreted in a similar manner. Likewise, children who show knowledge of c-command should perform well on sentences governed by Principle A. These hypotheses were tested in experiments with 12 Australian children with HFA, aged 5;4 to 12;7, and 12 typically-developing controls, matched on non-verbal IQ. There was no significant difference in the pattern of responses by children with HFA and the control children on either (1) and (2) or the Principle A sentences. The findings provide preliminary support for the proposal that knowledge of c-command and Principle A is intact in HFA children.
Highlights
Individuals with ASD are known to have difficulties with language and communication
The main finding was that the group of children with ASD performed in a similar manner to the typically-developing group of children, rejecting sentences like (7) and accepting ones like (8)10
For example for the test sentence, The boy who is on the bridge will not get a ball or a car, the children would say that the puppet is wrong as the boy on the bridge got a car whereas he was not supposed to get anything
Summary
Individuals with ASD are known to have difficulties with language and communication. They present with little functional communication at one end of the spectrum to relatively welldeveloped language skills at the other (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Durrleman et al (2016) assessed the comprehension of both relative clauses and wh-questions in French and showed that children with ASD had lower performance even on simple structures as compared with their typically-developing (TD) peers who were matched on non-verbal abilities. In an elicitation task for wh-questions, it was reported that Frenchspeaking children diagnosed with autism avoided fronting in their wh-questions (Zebib et al, 2013) These studies all involved movement or structures that encompass relations where the position that a phrase is interpreted differs from the position that the phrase is pronounced, a claim that parallels claims made for SLI (e.g., van der Lely and Pinker, 2014). Since the hierarchical relationship of c-command forms the basis for our experiments, we begin by introducing this abstract notion
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
