Work

Children with ASD use joint attention and linguistic skill in pronoun development

Year: 2020

Type: article

Abstract: Producing pronouns involves linguistic and social-cognitive knowledge because children must learn words and understand pronouns’ changing referents. This study examined pronoun production longitudinally in young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; n = 15), whose social-cognition might impair pronoun use, and in typically developing (TD; n = 18) children. Modeling the effect of joint attention (JA; a social-cognitive factor) and a name bias (NB; a linguistic factor) revealed a positive relation between NB and second- and third-person pronouns for all children and a positive relation between JA and those pronouns in just the ASD group. Social-cognitive and linguistic processes affected the ability of children with ASD to use pronouns; TD children’s pronouns were related to linguistic skill and unaffected by JA.

Source: Language Acquisition

DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2020.1769626

Authors: Emma Kelty-Stephen, Deborah A. Fein, Letitia R. Naigles

Institutions: Grinnell College, University of Connecticut

Language: English

Topic: Language Development and Disorders

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: University of Connecticut, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders

Award: Language Development and Outcome in Children with Autism