Intact grammar in HFA? Evidence from control and binding

Abstract

4This study contributes original results to the topical issue of the degree to which 5 grammar is intact in high-functioning children with autism (HFA). We examine the 6 comprehension of binding and obligatory control in 26 HFA children, mean age=12;02, 7 compared with two groups of younger typically developing (TD) children: one matched 8 on non-verbal mental age (MA), mean age=9;09, and the other on verbal MA, mean 9 age=8;09. On the binding task, our HFA group showed a good performance on 10 reflexives on a par with TD matched children, in line with recent reports of intact 11 knowledge of reflexive binding in higher but not lower-functioning children with autism. 12Their comprehension of personal pronouns was somewhat poorer, with no difference 13 observed between the groups, again supporting the existing literature. Results on the 14 control task, which probed mastery of syntactic relations never previously examined 15 in autism, revealed that both HFA children and the two matched TD groups were at 16 ceiling on single-complement subject control (try) and object control (persuade). 17However, a considerably poorer attainment on double-complement subject control 18 (promise) was present equally in the HFA group and the verbal MA-matched TD group 19 but not in the non-verbal MA-matched group. Performance on promise correlated with 20 age only in the verbal MA-matched group, whilst in HFA it correlated with general 21 cognitive and language abilities. 22These novel findings demonstrate that regular obligatory control and reflexive binding 23 are preserved in HFA. We contrast these results with previous literature that has 24 demonstrated deficiencies with passives and raising in HFA populations. The 25 emerging bifurcation suggests different analyses for the principles underlying these 26 constructions: whereas the latter incorporate movement, control and binding do not. 27The poor performance on promise supports all previous literature on this lexically and 28 syntactically idiosyncratic construction. Its breaking of locality, which in turn results in 29 a conflict between lexical and syntactic requirements, is exceptional and introduces 30 an extra step of learning. This step appears to be related to maturation in TD children, 31 and to stronger language and cognitive skills in HFA children. 32 33

C-Command in the Grammars of Children with High Functioning Autism

“…Our findings are in accord with the latest findings reported by Janke and Perovic (2015). This recent study showed that 26 British HFA children (non-verbal IQ > 80 as assessed by the Matrices subtest of the KBIT) had intact comprehension of reflexives.…”

“…This is because studies report different results for HFA children and LFA (Boucher, 2009), or for children classified as ALI vs. ALN (Tager-Flusberg, 2006). Nevertheless, the findings from our English-speaking sample of children concur with the findings of English-speaking British children for binding (Janke and Perovic, 2015). These investigations all suggest that children at the high end of the spectrum may not have any kind of syntactic deficiency (e.g., Terzi et al, 2016a,b).…”

“…Most importantly, reflexivity is not just expressed through reflexive pronouns but it is also expressed through special verbal morphology. The results from the Greek-speaking children are more in line with recent results obtained for 26 British HFA children who showed good comprehension of reflexives (Janke and Perovic, 2015) on a two-choice picture selection task.…”

“… 11 Our sample of HFA children had a low mean SS (76.58) on the TROG while the HFA children examined by Janke and Perovic (2015) had a mean score of 91.73 and those examined by Perovic et al (2013b) had a mean score of 94.50 on the TROG. However, our children were chronologically younger than those examined by Janke and Perovic (2015) and Perovic et al (2013b).…”

“…We did not divide our children into a language intact or language impaired category due to the comparatively smaller size of the sample that was only tested on the TROG, although language scores for 6 children from our sample could be considered to be in the impaired range 11 as they scored below the 10th percentile (e.g., Whitehouse et al, 2008). Thus in the interim, we hypothesize that children with HFA form a distinct linguistic phenotype with respect to intact grammatical functioning (see Perovic et al, 2013b; Janke and Perovic, 2015). It remains to be seen whether children with low-functioning autism (LFA) or those with ALI show any improvements of performance on a different task which has not been usually used, i.e., TVJT 12 .…”