Abstract

Compared to typically developing children, children with autism (ASD) show delayed production of wh-questions. It is currently controversial the degree to which such deficits derive from social-pragmatic requirements and/or because these are complex grammatical structures. The current study employed the intermodal preferential looking (IPL) paradigm, which reduces social-pragmatic demands. The IPL paradigm can help distinguish these proposals, as successful comprehension promotes the “pragmatics-origins” argument whereas comprehension difficulties would implicate a “grammatical-origins” argument. Additionally, we tested both the linguistic and social explanations by assessing the contributions of children's early grammatical knowledge (i.e., SVO word order) and their social-pragmatic scores on the Vineland to their later wh-question comprehension. Fourteen children with ASD and 17 TD children, matched on language level, were visited in their homes at 4-month intervals. Comprehension of wh-questions and SVO word order were tested via IPL: the wh-question video showed a costumed horse and bird serving as agents or patients of familiar transitive actions. During the test trials, they were displayed side by side with directing audios (e.g., “What did the horse tickle?”, “What hugged the bird?”, “Where is the horse/bird?”). Children's eye movements were coded offline; the DV was their percent looking to the named item during test. To show comprehension, children should look longer at the named item during a where-question than during a subject-wh or object-wh question. Results indicated that TD children comprehended both subject and object wh-questions at 32 months of age. Comprehension of object-wh questions emerged chronologically later in children with ASD compared to their TD peers, but at similar levels of language. Moreover, performance on word order and social-pragmatic scores independently predicted both groups' later performance on wh-question comprehension. Our findings indicate that both grammar and social-pragmatics are implicated in the comprehension of wh-questions. The “grammatical-origins” argument is supported because the ASD group did not reveal earlier and stable comprehension of wh-questions; furthermore, their performance on SVO word order predicted their later success in linguistic processing of wh-questions. The “pragmatic-origins” argument is also supported because children's earlier socialization and communication scores strongly predicted their successful performance on wh-question comprehension.

Highlights

  • According to the DSM-V (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized as a developmental disorder with persistent deficits in social interaction and social communication, and with restricted and repetitive patterns of behaviors

  • We addressed two main questions: (a) Viewing these new wh-question videos, which included animate agents and familiar actions and verbs, did children with ASD demonstrate comprehension of subject- and object-wh-questions at the same visit or language level as the typically developing (TD) children? (b) Did children’s

  • 0.215 earlier grammatical knowledge and their social competence predict their later comprehension of wh-questions? Addressing our first question, with these new videos, we found overall significant comprehension of wh-questions by both groups

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Summary

Introduction

According to the DSM-V (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized as a developmental disorder with persistent deficits in social interaction and social communication, and with restricted and repetitive patterns of behaviors. One way to investigate the extent of social-pragmatic difficulties and grammatical deficits in ASD is to examine their acquisition of wh-questions. The acquisition of wh-questions seems challenging for children with ASD, as prior research has shown delays in both production and comprehension (Tager-Flusberg, 1994; Goodwin et al, 2012). Some researchers have argued that children with ASD have particular difficulties with wh-questions because these are complex grammatical structures (Eigsti et al, 2007) while others have proposed that their impairments are more related to pragmatics (Tager-Flusberg, 1994). We examine whether there is a grammatical deficit by investigating whether children with ASD comprehend subject-wh and object wh-questions during the same developmental period as their TD peers, using a paradigm that minimizes social-pragmatic demands. To further explore the grammaticalorigins argument, we examined the relationships between earlier grammatical and social competences and later wh-question comprehension

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