Comprehension of the Presupposition Trigger Ye "Also" by Mandarin-Speaking Preschoolers With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Shasha An,Qi Yang,Cory Bill

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.570453

Abstract

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been reported to be widely impaired in their understanding of linguistic expressions that rely on elements of the context or norms of communication. The accurate interpretation of sentences conveying presuppositions often relies on such content, however, little previous research has investigated the ASD population’s understanding of these sentences. The present study attempts to remedy this by exploring the understanding that Mandarin-speaking preschoolers with ASD and their typically developing (TD) peers have of sentence containing the presupposition trigger ye “also”. We used a Picture Selection Task and found that Mandarin-speaking preschool children with ASD performed significantly worse than their TD peers with regard to their understanding of the presuppositional content of sentences containing this presupposition trigger. Additionally, in contrast with previous results, TD preschoolers’ understanding of this presupposition trigger was found to be adult-like. We attribute this to an improved experimental design.

Highlights

Over the last few decades, a great many studies have revealed that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are impaired in their ability to accurately comprehend certain types of linguistic meaning (Lord and Paul, 1997; Tager-Flusberg and Cooper, 1999; Tager-Flusberg, 2000; Loukusa and Moilanen, 2009; among many others)
A number of recent studies have found that there are a few types of linguistic meaning that individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) appear to understand as readily as their typically developing (TD) peers, despite them being thought to rely on contextual/social knowledge
After controlling for the effect of the variables, we found that TD children provided significantly more -correct answers than ASD children group (p = 0.006)

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Over the last few decades, a great many studies have revealed that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are impaired in their ability to accurately comprehend certain types of linguistic meaning (Lord and Paul, 1997; Tager-Flusberg and Cooper, 1999; Tager-Flusberg, 2000; Loukusa and Moilanen, 2009; among many others) These tended to be types of linguistic meaning that rely on contextual/social knowledge to be accurately derived. The performance of people with ASD has been found to match their TD peers when it comes to accurately interpreting indirect requests and scalar implicatures (Pijnacker et al, 2009; Chevallier et al, 2010; Su and Su, 2015; Deliens et al, 2018) Considered together, these findings raise the possibility that the ability to understand language in context may only be selectively impaired in individuals with ASD. This investigation has the potential to provide important insights into the linguistic competence of children with ASD as well as the ASD population more generally

LITERATURE REVIEW

Participants and Procedures

RESULTS

DISCUSSION

CONCLUSION

ETHICS STATEMENT