The interpretations of scalar implicatures, presuppositions, and implicated presupposition by Thai children with autism

Abstract

Using the negated universal quantifiernot every, the study investigates the interpretations of scalar implicatures, lexical presuppositions, and implicated presuppositions by Thai children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs; n= 32), comparedto their typically-developing (TD) peers (n= 70) and adults (n= 40). The results provide further empirical evidence to the literature (Chevallier et al. 2010, Hochstein et al. 2017, Pijnacker et al. 2009) that not only do adolescents with ASD perform on par with TD adolescents,children with ASD are also age-appropriate in their performance on deriving scalar implicatures. Despite the children with ASD's ability to compute scalar implicature, they still tend to give more logical, literal responses, compared to their peers. Compared to adults, both children with ASD and TD children still have a higher tendency to rely on the logical meaning rather than pragmatically inferred meaning. They are also less likely than adults to derive scalar implicatures, but equally likely to derive lexical presuppositions. No additive effects of implicated presuppositions are found in any group of the participants.

Utterance Structure of Autistic Children From the Age of 3 to 6 Years: A Comparative Study in Vietnam

“…In terms of semantics, most children with autism can only understand literal and logical meanings. They need help to receive abstract words (Bedford et al, 2013;Chanchaochai, Nattanun, 2019). The vocabulary of autistic children is still small (Thao, 2015; Phuong, 2018).…”