Linguistic and Cognitive Abilities in Children with Specific Language Impairment as Compared to Children with High-Functioning Autism

Schaeffer, Jeannette

doi:10.1080/10489223.2016.1188928

Cited by 34 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…In this section, we present the results on article choice as also reported by Schaeffer (2016). The results on the indefinite nonreferential condition and the indefinite referential condition of the article choice experiment are given in Figures 1 and 2, respectively.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 79%

“…The results of studies investigating verbal working memory in ASD, including HFA, are inconsistent. Some studies find evidence of working memory deficits (Joseph, Steele, Meyer, & Tager-Flusberg, 2005; Schuh & Eigsti, 2012), whereas others report normal performance (Griffith, Pennington, Wehner, & Rogers, 1999; Koshino et al, 2005; Ozonoff & Strayer, 2001; Russell, Jarrold, & Henry, 1996; Schaeffer, 2016), or mixed performance (e.g., Bennetto, Pennington, & Rogers, 1996). Similarly, the investigation of nonverbal (visuospatial) working memory in individuals with ASD, including HFA, renders mixed results as well (Benetto et al, 1996; Luna et al, 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As for HFA, Schaeffer (2016) explores the question as to what extent children with SLI and children with HFA differ from each other and resemble each other in terms of grammar, pragmatics, and extralinguistic cognition, and includes an article choice test in her large test battery. She reports that both the children with SLI and the children with HFA overgenerate indefinite articles in definite contexts, but neither elaborates on this result, nor provides an explanation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Article choice, theory of mind, and memory in children with high-functioning autism and children with specific language impairment

Schaeffer

Witteloostuijn

Creemers

2017

Applied Psycholinguistics

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Previous studies show that young, typically developing (TD) children (<age 5) and children with specific language impairment (SLI; >age 5) make errors in the choice between a definite and an indefinite article. Suggested explanations for overgeneration of the definite article include failure to distinguish speaker from hearer assumptions, and for overgeneration of the indefinite article failure to draw scalar implicatures, and weak working memory. However, no direct empirical evidence for these accounts is available. In this study, 27 Dutch-speaking children with high-functioning autism, 27 children with SLI, and 27 TD children aged 5–14 were administered a pragmatic article choice test, a nonverbal theory of mind test, and three types of memory tests (phonological memory, verbal, and nonverbal working memory). The results show that the children with high-functioning autism and SLI (a) make similar errors, that is, they overgenerate the indefinite article; (b) are TD-like at theory of mind, but (c) perform significantly more poorly than the TD children on phonological memory and verbal working memory. We propose that weak memory skills prevent the integration of the definiteness scale with the preceding discourse, resulting in the failure to consistently draw the relevant scalar implicature. This in turn yields the occasional erroneous choice of the indefinite articleain definite contexts.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 79%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Article choice, theory of mind, and memory in children with high-functioning autism and children with specific language impairment

Schaeffer

Witteloostuijn

Creemers

2017

Applied Psycholinguistics

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“…In addition, researchers to date have mainly focused on English-speaking individuals with ASD (although see e.g. Fortunato-Tavares, 2012;Zebib et al, 2013;Terzi et al, 2012Terzi et al, , 2014Schaeffer, to appear).…”

Section: Grammatical Abilities In Children With Asd: An Overviewmentioning

confidence: 98%

Autism Spectrum Disorder and Specific Language Impairment: Overlaps in Syntactic Profiles

Durrleman

Delage

2016

Language Acquisition

102

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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.

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“…The tasks reported here were part of a larger test battery administered to children with SLI, children with high-functioning autism and TD children (see Schaeffer 2016). Participants were tested individually in a quiet room in their school or home in three or four sessions that lasted approximately 60 minutes each.…”

Section: General Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

The mass-count distinction in Dutch-speaking children with specific language impairment

Witteloostuijn

Schaeffer

2018

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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This study reports experimental data on the acquisition of the mass-count distinction by Dutch-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI). While verbal morphosyntax is known to be impaired in SLI, nominal morphosyntax has received less attention. The mass-count distinction provides an interesting test ground: count can have a plural morpheme: bal-en ('balls'), but mass cannot: *deeg-en ('doughs'). Flexible nouns can easily occur in either mass or count syntax (pizza/pizza-s). Finally, object-mass nouns (e.g. furniture) are syntactically mass, but quantify over individuals, and are hypothesized to have a lexical [+individual] feature (Bale & Barner 2004). Typically developing (TD) Dutch-acquiring children become sensitive to the mass-count distinction around age 6 (van Witteloostuijn 2013).Hypothesizing that the primary impairment of SLI is in morphosyntax, and not in lexical-semantics, we predict that Dutch-speaking children with SLI older than 6 have most problems with the interpretation of flexible nouns (relying solely on morphosyntax), some problems interpreting classical count and mass nouns (supported by convention/world knowledge), and least problems interpreting object-mass nouns (relying solely on their lexical [+individual] feature).Quantity judgments based on count and mass nouns were collected from 28 Dutch children with SLI aged between 6 and 14 years old and 28 individually age-matched TD children. Confirming our predictions, the children with SLI scored significantly lower than their TD controls on flexible nouns, and, albeit to a lesser extent, on classical nouns. This underscores the (nominal) morphological deficit in SLI. In contrast, no difference between groups was found on object-mass nouns.

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Linguistic and Cognitive Abilities in Children with Specific Language Impairment as Compared to Children with High-Functioning Autism

Cited by 34 publications

References 29 publications

Article choice, theory of mind, and memory in children with high-functioning autism and children with specific language impairment

Article choice, theory of mind, and memory in children with high-functioning autism and children with specific language impairment

Autism Spectrum Disorder and Specific Language Impairment: Overlaps in Syntactic Profiles

The mass-count distinction in Dutch-speaking children with specific language impairment

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