Language and Theory of Mind in Autism Spectrum Disorder: The Relationship Between Complement Syntax and False Belief Task Performance

Abstract

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Exploring links between language and cognition in autism spectrum disorders: Complement sentences, false belief, and executive functioning

“…This suggests that it is not complementation in general which is crucial for verbal FB success but rather the subset of complement sentences that allows for the representation of two levels of reality. While correlational analyses cannot prove a causal relation between variables, these findings are nevertheless compatible with the view that specific types of complement clause knowledge may play a special role in figuring out solutions to verbal FB tasks for individuals on the autistic spectrum as well as their typically developing peers (Tager-Flusberg, 2000;Tager-Flusberg & Joseph, 2005;Lind & Bowler, 2009). However the difficulty that children with ASD meet in the verbal false belief task does not seem to be attributable to some general knowledge of syntax or lexicon as measured by the standardized BILO and EVIP: Importantly, no correlation is found between verbal ToM and more general measures of lexical and syntactic abilities, suggesting that the link found with complementation is selective.…”

“…The intermingling of notions such as deceit in the complement clause task may prove problematic for children with ASD independently of their linguistic abilities. This may explain why success at this complement clause task correlates with success at theory of mind abilities assessed via a verbal false-belief task in children with ASD (TagerFlusberg, 2000;Tager-Flusberg & Joseph, 2005;Lind & Bowler, 2009). It is therefore unclear that this correlation shows that the population with ASD relies on the linguistic/syntactic specificity of complement structures to hack out accurate responses to FB tasks 2 .…”

“…Children with autism have been reported to produce few complements in their spontaneous speech (Durrleman & Zufferey, 2013) and to have an impaired comprehension of complement clauses with verbs of cognition, although not with verbs of communication (Tager-Flusberg, 2000;Lind & Bowler, 2009). Other types of complements such as those occurring with verbs of perception (e.g.…”

Correlatos estructurales de las alteraciones cognitivas en niños con TEA

“…Hay bastantes estudios que apoyan la relación existente entre ambos (Farrar & Maag, 2002;Lind & Bowler, 2009;Milligan, Astington & Dack, 2007;Slade & Ruffman, 2005, Thirion-Marissiaux & Nader-Grosbois, 2008. Los resultados obtenidos en algunos estudios sobre el tema indican que los niños bilingües tienen mejor ToM que los niños monolingües (Goetz, 2003), los niños sordos presentan un retraso en el desarrollo de la ToM (Peterson, Wellman & Liu, 2005;Schick, Villiers, Villiers & Hoffmeister, 2007) y los niños con TEA que realizan adecuadamente las tareas de creencias falsas presentan un nivel de inteligencia verbal más alto que aquellos que fallan en la realización de las mismas (Happé, 1995).…”

“…La habilidad temprana del lenguaje es un factor importante que predice la capacidad posterior de entender las creencias falsas (Slade & Ruffman, 2005). Por tanto, algunas personas con TEA pueden utilizar sus habilidades de razonamiento cognitivo-lingüístico para compensar los déficits en la capacidad de ToM y así lograr la respuesta correcta en tareas explícitas (Lind & Bowler, 2009). Las personas con TEA y con deterioro del funcionamiento intelectual y verbal muestran más déficits en las habilidades de ToM con la edad que aquellas con un funcionamiento cognitivo y verbal más avanzado (Hamilton, Hoogenhout & Malcolm-Smith, 2016).…”