Child Language Lab, School of Foreign Languages, Central South University, Changsha, China.
Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut, Mansfield, Connecticut.
Autism Res. 2019 Dec;12(12):1829-1844. doi: 10.1002/aur.2190. Epub 2019 Aug 11.
Grammatical comprehension remains a strength in English-exposed young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), yet limited research has investigated how preschool children with ASD process grammatical structures in real time, in any language. Using the eye-movement measures of Intermodal Preferential Looking, we assessed online processing of subject-verb-object (SVO) order in seventy 2- to 5-year-old children with ASD exposed to Mandarin Chinese across the spectrum, whose vocabulary production scores were dramatically delayed compared with the typical controls. With this Mandarin-exposed sample, we tested the extent to which children with ASD require (a) highly consistent input and/or (b) good discourse/pragmatics for acquiring grammatical structures. Children viewed side-by-side videos depicting reversible actions (e.g., a bird pushing a horse vs. a horse pushing a bird), and heard an audio matching only one of those actions; their eyegaze to each video was coded and analyzed. Both typically developing children and children with ASD demonstrated comprehension of SVO word order, suggesting that core grammatical structures such as basic word order may be preserved in children with ASD across languages despite radical differences in language environment, social/pragmatic abilities, and neurological organization. However, children with ASD were less efficient in online sentence processing than typical children, and the efficiency of their online sentence processing was related to their standardized language assessment scores. Of note is that across both Mandarin Chinese and English, some proportion of minimally verbal children with ASD exhibited SVO comprehension despite their profoundly impaired expressive language skills. Autism Res 2019, 12: 1829-1844. © 2019 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: Grammar is a strength in the language comprehension of young English learners with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Eye-movement data from a diverse sample of Chinese preschoolers with ASD indicated similar grammatical strength of basic word order in Chinese (e.g., to understand sentences like "The bird is pushing the horse"). Moreover, children's proficiency of sentence processing was related to their language assessment scores. Across languages, such knowledge is even spared in some minimally verbal children with ASD.
语法理解能力仍然是自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）儿童的强项，尤其是在英语环境中，但很少有研究调查过 ASD 学龄前儿童如何实时处理语法结构，无论是哪种语言。我们使用视听偏好眼动测量法，评估了 70 名 2 至 5 岁 ASD 儿童对普通话的语法结构在线处理能力，这些儿童的词汇生成分数与典型对照组相比明显延迟。在这个使用普通话的样本中，我们测试了 ASD 儿童需要（a）高度一致的输入和/或（b）良好的话语/语用学来学习语法结构的程度。儿童观看并排的视频，描绘可反转的动作（例如，一只鸟推马与马推鸟），并听到与其中一个动作匹配的音频；他们对每个视频的注视被编码和分析。无论是典型发展的儿童还是 ASD 儿童，都表现出对 SVO 词序的理解，这表明核心语法结构，如基本词序，可能在 ASD 儿童中跨越语言保留下来，尽管语言环境、社会/语用能力和神经组织存在巨大差异。然而，与典型儿童相比，ASD 儿童在在线句子处理方面效率较低，其在线句子处理的效率与他们的标准化语言评估分数相关。值得注意的是，在普通话和英语中，一些语言表达能力严重受损的 ASD 轻度言语儿童表现出 SVO 理解能力。自闭症研究 2019，12:1829-1844。© 2019 自闭症国际研究协会，威利期刊，公司。
语法是自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）儿童英语语言理解的强项。来自 ASD 中国学龄前儿童的多样化样本的眼动数据表明，在中文中（例如，理解“鸟在推马”这样的句子）基本词序的语法结构具有相似的优势。此外，儿童的句子处理能力与他们的语言评估分数有关。在各种语言中，这种知识甚至在一些语言表达能力轻度受损的 ASD 儿童中也有保留。
