The comprehension of passives in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Stephanie Durrleman,Philippe Prévost,Hélène Delage,Laurice Tuller

doi:10.5334/gjgl.205

Stephanie Durrleman, Philippe Prévost + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.205

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Abstract

This study investigates the comprehension of passives in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Subsets of children with ASD have been previously found to present linguistic profiles reminiscent of Specific Language Impairment (SLI), a condition including difficulties with certain constructions displaying noncanonical word orders. However, research on one such construction, passives, is sparse and remains inconclusive. Furthermore, studies on typical development of passives in French are lacking. Twenty French-speaking children with ASD (mean age 9;3), including children with both normal and delayed nonverbal levels, were compared to 20 age-matched typically-developing (TD) children and to 65 younger TD children split into groups of children aged 4–5, 6–7 and 8–9 years. Various passive types were assessed via a sentence-picture matching task: eventive versus psychological, and short versus long. Most children with ASD showed difficulties on passive constructions as compared to age controls, although with the same basic pattern of performance. More subtle delay on passives was evident in a subgroup who was otherwise unimpaired on standardized assessments of vocabulary and morphosyntax, while a pronounced delay on passives was detectable in another subgroup also displaying more general lexical and morphosyntactic impairment. Difficulties with passives were dissociated from nonverbal abilities and working memory. The findings reveal that the syntax of passives is delayed in ASD, not deviant. This delay was attested even in the subgroup with seemingly intact general language skills as revealed by standardized assessments, suggesting that subtle difficulties with this construction may be present and go undetected by global language tests. Performance on passives was unrelated to nonverbal abilities, in line with work suggesting that the linguistic phenotype of some children with ASD resembles SLI. This underscores the importance of careful assessment of the language abilities of children with ASD, including those within normal IQ range.

Highlights

One of the hallmarks of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is impaired communicative skills (DSM-V, APA 2013), with delays and deficits in language often being amongst the first symptoms noticed (Kurita 1985; Short & Schopler 1988; Lord & Paul 1997). Language abilities are highly heterogeneous, ranging from an absence of functional language to fluent speech (Lord et al 2006), throughout the spectrum pragmatic impairments are attested (Tager-Flusberg 1996)
3 Results Since this study aimed to determine how French-speaking children with ASD perform on comprehension of passives compared with chronological-age and younger peers, and in particular whether the dissociations observed in young TD children can be observed in these children, we first wanted to exclude any children whose performance was not above chance, as their results would not be informative for the questions under investigation
The findings revealed that many children with ASD show difficulties for passive constructions as compared to both age-matched TD peers and younger TD children; they show the same basic pattern of performance, i.e. in both TD and ASD groups, actives were better mastered than passives, eventive passives were better mastered than psychological passives, and there were no differences in comprehension of short and long passives

Summary

Introduction

One of the hallmarks of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is impaired communicative skills (DSM-V, APA 2013), with delays and deficits in language often being amongst the first symptoms noticed (Kurita 1985; Short & Schopler 1988; Lord & Paul 1997). Language abilities are highly heterogeneous, ranging from an absence of functional language to fluent speech (Lord et al 2006), throughout the spectrum pragmatic impairments are attested (Tager-Flusberg 1996). That language impairment and nonverbal abilities can be dissociated in ASD is reminiscent of SLI, and some researchers have argued that subgroups on the autistic spectrum may present language profiles reminiscent of SLI, displaying impairments in phonology and syntax (Kjelgaard & Tager-Flusberg 2001; Roberts et al 2004; Tager-Flusberg 2006), possibly because there is a shared etiology (Bishop 2010) In support of this view, one of the hallmarks of SLI, namely difficulty in verbal working memory (Gathercole & Baddeley 1990; Montgomery 2002; Hick et al 2005; Montgomery & Evans 2009; Marinis & Saddy 2013), has been reported in subgroups with ASD as well, and found to relate to syntax (Roberts et al 2004; Eigsti 2009; Kjelgaard & Tager-Flusberg 2010; Riches et al 2010; Durrleman & Delage 2016). We investigated whether such impairment for passives would be dissociated from nonverbal intellectual abilities and related to deficits in working memory, as appears to be the case for grammatical deficits in SLI

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