Investigating syntax in autism: Comparisons with SLI, links with cognition Recent work exploring syntax in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) has identified morphosyntactic deficits and argued that these are independent of non-verbal reasoning. More specifically, researchers have now claimed that subgroups with ASD have syntactic profiles reminiscent of Specific Language Impairment (SLI), the latter showing a dissociation between language deficits and non-verbal intelligence. With this work, we investigate the nature of syntactic impairment in ASD, its parallelism with SLI and its potential relation to other aspects of cognition, namely non-verbal intelligence, working memory and theory of mind (ToM). We focus on a clinical marker of SLI that has scarcely been studied in ASD, namely 3rd person accusative clitic production, which has moreover been hypothesized to solicit working memory Downloaded by [La Trobe University] at 13:53 31 May 2016A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t 2 resources. We also explore 1st person accusative clitic production, largely preserved in SLI but hypothesized to be specifically affected in ASD due to reported difficulties with pronouns of the 1st and 2nd person, arguably related to difficulties in ToM.Our participants included 21 individuals with ASD (aged 5-16), 22 individuals with SLI (aged 5-16) of similar age, as well as age-matched and younger controls. Experimental tasks were conducted to evaluate the production of 1st and 3rd person accusative clitics, the latter being a clinical marker of syntactic impairment. We also administered standardized tasks assessing general morphosyntax, verbal working memory (digit-span tasks and non-word repetition), nonverbal reasoning (Raven's Progressive Matrices) and ToM (Sally-Anne).Overall scores for both clinical groups reveal quantitatively similar deficits for 3rd person accusative clitics and general morphosyntax. However upon closer inspection a significant subgroup of children with ASD showed intact grammatical skills. The only weakness identified across the entire ASD population was for 1st person clitics, which was mastered by children with SLI. However the task used to elicit these required perspective shifting and thus the lower scores which resulted can be accounted for in terms of the well-documented ToM deficits in ASD. This is further supported by the observation that better scores at ToM tasks led to improved performance with 1st person accusative clitics. In addition, difficulties on all working memory measures were revealed for ASD and SLI and crucially found to correlate only with performance on 3rd person clitics in both groups. In contrast, non-verbal reasoning did not correlate with any syntactic measures.

Purpose Our work investigates the production of 3rd-person accusative clitic pronouns in French-speaking typically developing (TD) children and children with developmental language disorder (DLD) following a novel working memory (WM) training program (12 hrs of effective training) that specifically targets the components of WM that have been shown to be impaired in children with DLD and to be directly related to the mastery of clitics ( Delage & Frauenfelder, submitted for publication ; Durrleman & Delage, 2016 ). Method Sixteen TD children aged 5–12 years and 26 age-matched children with DLD completed our 8-week WM training program. Furthermore, an age-matched control group of 16 TD children and 17 children with DLD followed a scholastic training regime matched for intensity and frequency. Syntax and WM were assessed prior to and following the WM/scholastic training. Results Significant posttraining WM gains were found in TD children and children with DLD who took part in the WM training, and the production rate of 3rd-person accusative clitics significantly increased in children with DLD following the WM training. No significant WM or syntax gains were observed in the control group. Conclusion These findings are noteworthy as Melby-Lervåg and Hulme's (2013) meta-analysis concluded that existing WM training programs show short-lived generalized effects to other comparable measures of WM, but that there is no evidence that such training generalizes to less directly related tasks. That our study led to gains in skills that were not trained (i.e., syntax) suggests that a WM training regime that is firmly grounded in theory and that targets the specific mechanisms shown to underpin the acquisition of syntax may indeed provide effective remediation for children with DLD.

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This study investigates effects of syntactic complexity operationalized in terms of movement, intervention, and noun phrase (NP) feature similarity in the development of Aʹ-dependencies in 4-, 6-, and 8-year-old typically developing (TD) French children and children with autism spectrum disorder. Children completed an offline comprehension task testing eight syntactic structures classified in four levels of complexity: Level 0: no movement; Level 1: movement without (configurational) intervention; Level 2: movement with intervention from an element that is maximally different or featurally “disjoint” (mismatched in both lexical NP restriction and number); and Level 3: movement with intervention from an element similar in one feature or featurally “intersecting” (matched in lexical NP restriction, mismatched in number). The results show that syntactic complexity affects TD children across the three age groups, but also indicate developmental differences between these groups. Movement affected all three groups in a similar way, but intervention effects in intersection cases were stronger in younger than in older children, with NP feature similarity affecting only 4-year-olds. Complexity effects created by the similarity in lexical restriction of an intervener thus appear to be overcome early in development, arguably thanks to other differences of this intervener (which was mismatched in number). Children with autism spectrum disorder performed less well than the TD children although they were matched on nonverbal reasoning. Overall, syntactic complexity affected their performance in a similar way as in their TD controls, but their performance correlated with nonverbal abilities rather than age, suggesting that their grammatical development does not follow the smooth relation to age that is found in TD children.

Linguistic deficits attested in children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) have been explained in terms of limitations in working memory (WM). The goal of this research is to assess whether a tailored WM program can improve the syntactic abilities of children with DLD and those with typical development (TD). We created a novel iPad application consisting of five activities specifically designed to train the components of WM that have been shown to be the most predictive of performance on tests assessing complex syntax. Thirty-two children with DLD (M = 9;0) and 18 with TD (M = 8;5) followed the WM training (lasting 12 hours). Results show significant improvement in verbal WM (direct effects) in both TD and DLD groups, and in sentence repetition (transfer effects) in the DLD group, with the most pronounced improvements observed for complex syntactic structures. This progression is not observed for 38 age-matched children of the same age who followed an alternative, global scholastic training (20 DLD, 18 TD), which proves the specific efficacy of our WM training. The logical next step will be to incorporate the training into the therapy of children with DLD in order to reinforce the potential benefit of their interventions.

Refining intervention: The acquisition of featural relations in object A-bar dependencies The presence of a [+NP] feature (representing a 'lexical restriction') on both the moved DP and the intervening subject is assumed to hinder children's comprehension of object A-bar dependencies (Friedmann et al. 2009). In order to better understand the nature and impact of this feature and its interaction with animacy, we assessed comprehension of object relative clauses and wh-questions in French-speaking children aged 5 to 11 using a character-selection task. Furthermore, we explored the link between processing of featural relations and working memory abilities through digit-span tasks. Results on questions straightforwardly confirm the role of the [+NP] feature; results on relatives suggest that the locality effect is sensitive to the formal similarity in D+NP shape of the target and the intervener. An animacy mismatch facilitates processing (as of age 7) only in the [+NP] condition, suggesting that the computation of locality draws on the structural expression of features, not just their mere semantic value. We argue in favor of a restrictive structural approach to intervention, and of a hierarchical organization of features. The link between accuracy and memory scores illustrates that limitations of computational resources affect processing of A-bar dependencies.

This study reveals subtle grammatical difficulties remaining in adult individuals with ASD within normal IQ range as compared with age-matched peers. Even in the absence of a history of language delay in childhood, the results suggest that a slight deficit may nevertheless be present and go undetected by standardized language assessments. Both groups with and without language delay have a similar global performance on relative clause comprehension; however, the study also indicates that the participants with reported language delay show more difficulty with subject relatives than the participants without language delay, suggesting the presence of differences in linguistic abilities between these subgroups of ASD.