Chen Lijun, He Xiaowei, Durrleman Stephanie
Faculty of English Language and Culture, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, 2 Baiyun Avenue, Baiyun District, Guangzhou, China.
ABCCD-Autism, Bilingualism, Cognitive and Communicative Development Lab, Faculty of Science and Medicine, Chem. du Musée 5, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland.
Int J Lang Commun Disord. 2023 Sep-Oct;58(5):1697-1716. doi: 10.1111/1460-6984.12897. Epub 2023 May 25.
Mandarin-speaking children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have difficulties producing aspect markers. The difficulties were explained in terms of pragmatic deficits since these children demonstrated strength in the comprehension of aspect markers using the Intermodal Preferential Looking (IPL) task.
To verify whether this dissociation between production and comprehension could be replicated using another technique to the IPL, and if all children with ASD show difficulties in the production of aspect markers.
METHODS & PROCEDURES: A total of 34 children with ASD without cognitive delay, half with language impairment (ALI; mean age = 61.25 months old) and half with normal language (ALN, mean age = 61.52 months old), as well as 17 age-matched typically developing (TD) children (mean age = 61.38 months old) participated in a sentence-picture-matching task and a priming picture-description task to investigate their comprehension and production of Mandarin aspect markers zai-, -le and -zhe.
OUTCOMES & RESULTS: In the comprehension task, children in the ALN group performed similarly to their TD peers, but those in the ALI group were less accurate on zai- and -le than TD children; children in all groups received higher accuracy when zai- was combined with Activity rather than Accomplishment verbs, and those in the ALI group was also more accurate when -le occurred with Achievement verbs, in contrast to Activity verbs. In the production task, children in the ALI group produced fewer targets and more irrelevant sentences with zai- than their TD peers, and they tended to produce bare verbs for -le and -zhe than TD children; children in all groups tended to combine zai- with Activity verbs, and those in the ALN group also tended to combine -le with Achievement verbs.
CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: The comprehension and production of Mandarin aspect markers by children with ASD are linked to general language abilities, and interactions between lexical and grammatical aspect. Patterns of performance are similar to those of TD peers only for the subgroup with spared global language, while pragmatic deficits are pervasive throughout the spectrum. Therefore, training on formal language, with a specific emphasis on aspectual rather than pragmatic abilities, may be more effective at enhancing the production of aspect markers.
What is already known on this subject Mandarin-speaking children with ASD have difficulties producing aspect markers but demonstrate strengths in aspectual comprehension via the IPL task. Therefore, it has been proposed that their 'specific' difficulties in aspectual production should be ascribed to their pragmatic deficits. However, pragmatic deficits are highly pervasive in children with ASD while only a subgroup of children with ASD who are impaired in language development (children with ALI) show difficulties in producing tense/aspect morphology. Pursuing this reasoning, pragmatic deficits might not be the critical factor impacting the performance of children with ASD in aspectual production. What this study adds Children with ASD were divided into one group with ALI and the other with normal language (ALN). Results of a sentence-picture-matching and a priming picture-description task illustrated that both groups preserved the comprehension of Mandarin aspect markers zai-, -le and -zhe. However, children with ALI performed worse than age-matched TD children, while children with ALN demonstrated similar performance to TD children in aspectual production. These findings, coupled with the fact that pragmatic challenges affect individuals throughout the spectrum, suggest that general language abilities rather than pragmatics better explain the performance of children with ASD on aspectual production. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? Since general language abilities rather than pragmatic deficits of children with ASD determine their performance on the production of aspect markers, direct training on the use of aspect markers or more global language therapy could benefit children with ASD in the production of aspect markers.
患有自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的讲普通话儿童在使用体貌标记方面存在困难。由于这些儿童在使用多模态优先注视（IPL）任务理解体貌标记方面表现出优势，因此这些困难被解释为语用缺陷。
验证是否可以使用IPL之外的另一种技术来复制这种产出与理解之间的分离，以及是否所有患有ASD的儿童在使用体貌标记方面都存在困难。
共有34名无认知延迟的ASD儿童参与研究，其中一半有语言障碍（ALI；平均年龄=61.25个月），另一半语言正常（ALN，平均年龄=61.52个月），还有17名年龄匹配的发育正常（TD）儿童（平均年龄=61.38个月）参与了句子-图片匹配任务和启动图片描述任务，以研究他们对普通话体貌标记“在”“了”和“着”的理解与产出。
在理解任务中，ALN组儿童的表现与TD组同龄人相似，但ALI组儿童在“在”和“了”的理解上比TD儿童更不准确；当“在”与活动动词而非完成动词搭配时，所有组的儿童理解准确率更高，并且与活动动词相比，当“了”与成就动词搭配时，ALI组儿童的理解也更准确。在产出任务中，ALI组儿童产出的目标更少，使用“在”时产出的无关句子比TD组同龄人更多，并且他们倾向于比TD儿童更多地使用光杆动词来表示“了”和“着”；所有组的儿童都倾向于将“在”与活动动词搭配，ALN组儿童也倾向于将“了”与成就动词搭配。
患有ASD的儿童对普通话体貌标记的理解和产出与一般语言能力以及词汇和语法体貌之间的相互作用有关。只有语言能力未受损的亚组在表现模式上与TD同龄人相似，而语用缺陷在整个谱系中普遍存在。因此，针对形式语言的训练，特别是强调体貌能力而非语用能力，可能在提高体貌标记的产出方面更有效。
关于该主题的已知信息 患有ASD的讲普通话儿童在使用体貌标记方面存在困难，但通过IPL任务在体貌理解方面表现出优势。因此，有人提出他们在体貌产出方面的“特定”困难应归因于语用缺陷。然而，语用缺陷在患有ASD的儿童中非常普遍，而只有一部分语言发育受损的ASD儿童（ALI儿童）在产出时态/体貌形态方面存在困难。按照这种推理，语用缺陷可能不是影响ASD儿童体貌产出表现的关键因素。本研究补充内容 将患有ASD的儿童分为ALI组和语言正常（ALN）组。句子-图片匹配任务和启动图片描述任务的结果表明，两组儿童都能理解普通话体貌标记“在”“了”和“着”。然而，ALI组儿童的表现比年龄匹配的TD儿童差，而ALN组儿童在体貌产出方面的表现与TD儿童相似。这些发现，再加上语用挑战影响整个谱系个体的事实，表明一般语言能力而非语用学更能解释ASD儿童在体貌产出方面的表现。这项工作的潜在或实际临床意义是什么？由于ASD儿童的一般语言能力而非语用缺陷决定了他们在体貌标记产出方面的表现，因此直接训练体貌标记的使用或更全面的语言治疗可能会使ASD儿童在体貌标记产出方面受益。
