Barsotti Jessica, Mangani Gloria, Nencioli Roberta, Pfanner Lucia, Tancredi Raffaella, Cosenza Angela, Sesso Gianluca, Narzisi Antonio, Muratori Filippo, Cipriani Paola, Chilosi Anna Maria
IRCCS Stella Maris Foundation, Calambrone, 56018 Pisa, Italy.
Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Pisa, Via Savi, 10, 56126, Pisa, Italy.
Brain Sci. 2020 Aug 2;10(8):510. doi: 10.3390/brainsci10080510.
Language deficits represent one of the most relevant factors that determine the clinical phenotype of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The main aim of the research was to study the grammatical comprehension of children with ASD. A sample of 70 well-diagnosed children (60 boys and 10 girls; aged 4.9-8 years) were prospectively recruited. The results showed that language comprehension is the most impaired language domain in ASD. These findings have important clinical implications, since the persistence of grammatical receptive deficits may have a negative impact on social, adaptive and learning achievements. As for the grammatical profiles, persistent difficulties were found during the school-age years in morphological and syntactic decoding in children with relatively preserved cognitive and expressive language skills. These data and the lack of a statistically significant correlation between the severity of ASD symptoms and language skills are in line with the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition) perspective that considers the socio-communication disorder as a nuclear feature of ASD and the language disorder as a specifier of the diagnosis and not as a secondary symptom anymore. The presence of receptive difficulties in school-age ASD children with relatively preserved non-verbal cognitive abilities provides important hints to establish rehabilitative treatments.
语言缺陷是决定自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）儿童临床表型的最相关因素之一。该研究的主要目的是研究ASD儿童的语法理解能力。前瞻性招募了70名确诊的儿童（60名男孩和10名女孩；年龄在4.9至8岁之间）。结果表明，语言理解是ASD中受损最严重的语言领域。这些发现具有重要的临床意义，因为语法接受缺陷的持续存在可能会对社交、适应和学习成绩产生负面影响。至于语法概况，在学龄期，认知和表达语言技能相对保留的儿童在形态和句法解码方面存在持续困难。这些数据以及ASD症状严重程度与语言技能之间缺乏统计学上的显著相关性，与《精神疾病诊断与统计手册》第五版（DSM-5）的观点一致，该观点认为社会沟通障碍是ASD的核心特征，语言障碍是诊断的一个特定因素，而不再是次要症状。在非语言认知能力相对保留的学龄期ASD儿童中存在接受困难，为建立康复治疗提供了重要线索。
