Abstract
The current study investigated the production of third-person subject and object pronouns in monolingual and bilingual children with High Functioning Autism (HFA) and typical language development (TLD). Furthermore, it evaluated the underlying linguistic and non-linguistic prerequisites of pronoun use, by assessing the role of morpho-syntactic skills, Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities, working memory and inhibition on pronoun use. A total of 85 children aged 4 to 9 years participated in four groups: 27 children with HFA [14 monolingual (monoHFA) and 13 bilingual (biHFA)], and 58 children with TLD [28 monolingual (monoTLD) and 30 bilingual (biTLD)]. All children spoke Hebrew and the bilingual children spoke Russian as their Heritage Language. Third-person subject and object pronouns were elicited in Hebrew. The results yielded no effect of bilingualism, and a robust effect of HFA on the use of pronouns. Bilingual Russian-Hebrew speaking children paired up with their monolingual Hebrew-speaking peers in pronominal use in Hebrew. Monolingual and bilingual children with TLD showed nearly ceiling performance on pronoun use. The facilitative effect of pronominal acquisition in Hebrew among bilingual children was attributed to similarities in the pronominal systems of the two languages of bilingual children. Age was found to be a predictive factor of pronoun use in children with TLD. Conversely, children with HFA had a lower rate of pronoun production compared to the TLD groups. Both third-person subject and object pronouns were largely predicted by morpho-syntactic abilities of children with HFA. In addition, subject pronoun use was predicted by ToM skills and working memory confirming that pronoun use is a complex phenomenon, which requires integration of multiple linguistic and non-linguistic components. To conclude, our findings suggest that morpho-syntactic development is a prerequisite for third-person subject and object pronoun use in children with HFA, and ToM and working memory are involved in third-person subject pronoun use. In addition, we show that pronoun use is not compromised by dual language exposure in children with TLD and with HFA.
Highlights
The current study explored the use of Hebrew third-person subject and object pronouns in monolingual Hebrew-speaking and bilingual Russian-Hebrew speaking children, in a subgroup of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), i.e., children with High Functioning Autism who have nonverbal IQ scores within the normal range, and in children with typical language development (TLD)
To address our first research question regarding the effects of bilingualism and High Functioning Autism (HFA) on the use third-person subject and object pronouns, we explored the performance of the child groups, using a generalized linear mixed logistic regression
Based on the hypothesis that linguistic and non-linguistic components might be associated with pronoun use, we explored the role of morpho-syntax, Theory of Mind (ToM), working memory, and inhibition on pronoun use among children with HFA and TLD
Summary
The current study explored the use of Hebrew third-person subject and object pronouns in monolingual Hebrew-speaking and bilingual Russian-Hebrew speaking children, in a subgroup of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), i.e., children with High Functioning Autism (hereafter HFA) who have nonverbal IQ scores within the normal range, and in children with typical language development (TLD). Bilingual children with and without HFA in the current study were acquiring Hebrew as their Societal Language and Russian as their Heritage Language. Despite being typologically different languages, Hebrew and Russian show some similarities in their pronominal systems. Pronominal elements of Hebrew and Russian are presented in greater detail in subsection 1.3. We ran a series of ANOVAs with group (monoHFA, biHFA, monoTLD, biTLD) as an independent variable and morpho-syntactic abilities, ToM skills, working memory and inhibition as dependent variables. Gender (girls/boys) Age (months) Mothers’ education (years) Raven (raw score) ADOS (raw score) Age at onset of the Societal Language (months) Length of exposure to the Societal Language (months) Current exposure to the Societal Language (%)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
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 call
