Peristeri Eleni, Andreou Maria, Tsimpli Ianthi M
Language Development Lab, Department of English Studies, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece.
Department of English, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2017 Nov 20;8:2027. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02027. eCollection 2017.
Although language impairment is commonly associated with the autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the Diagnostic Statistical Manual no longer includes language impairment as a necessary component of an ASD diagnosis (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). However, children with ASD and no comorbid intellectual disability struggle with some aspects of language whose precise nature is still outstanding. Narratives have been extensively used as a tool to examine lexical and syntactic abilities, as well as pragmatic skills in children with ASD. This study contributes to this literature by investigating the narrative skills of 30 Greek-speaking children with ASD and normal non-verbal IQ, 16 with language skills in the upper end of the normal range (ASD-HL), and 14 in the lower end of the normal range (ASD-LL). The control group consisted of 15 age-matched typically-developing (TD) children. Narrative performance was measured in terms of both microstructural and macrostructural properties. Microstructural properties included lexical and syntactic measures of complexity such as subordinate vs. coordinate clauses and types of subordinate clauses. Macrostructure was measured in terms of the diversity in the use of internal state terms (ISTs) and story structure complexity, i.e., children's ability to produce important units of information that involve the setting, characters, events, and outcomes of the story, as well as the characters' thoughts and feelings. The findings demonstrate that high language ability and syntactic complexity pattern together in ASD children's narrative performance and that language ability compensates for autistic children's pragmatic deficit associated with the production of Theory of Mind-related ISTs. Nevertheless, both groups of children with ASD (high and low language ability) scored lower than the TD controls in the production of Theory of Mind-unrelated ISTs, modifier clauses and story structure complexity.
尽管语言障碍通常与自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）相关，但《诊断统计手册》不再将语言障碍视为ASD诊断的必要组成部分（美国精神病学协会，2013年）。然而，没有合并智力残疾的ASD儿童在语言的某些方面存在困难，其确切性质仍不明确。叙事已被广泛用作一种工具，用于检查ASD儿童的词汇和句法能力以及语用技能。本研究通过调查30名希腊语ASD儿童和非言语智商正常儿童的叙事技能，为该文献做出了贡献，其中16名儿童的语言技能处于正常范围的上限（ASD-HL），14名儿童的语言技能处于正常范围的下限（ASD-LL）。对照组由15名年龄匹配的发育正常（TD）儿童组成。叙事表现通过微观结构和宏观结构属性来衡量。微观结构属性包括词汇和句法复杂性的度量，如从属从句与并列从句以及从属从句的类型。宏观结构通过内部状态术语（ISTs）使用的多样性和故事结构复杂性来衡量，即儿童产生涉及故事背景、人物、事件和结果以及人物思想和情感的重要信息单元的能力。研究结果表明，ASD儿童的叙事表现中，高语言能力和句法复杂性呈现出共同的模式，并且语言能力弥补了自闭症儿童与心理理论相关的ISTs产生相关的语用缺陷。然而，两组ASD儿童（高语言能力和低语言能力）在心理理论无关的ISTs、修饰从句和故事结构复杂性的产生方面得分均低于TD对照组。
