Abd El-Raziq Muna, Meir Natalia, Saiegh-Haddad Elinor
Department of English Literature and Linguistics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel.
Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel.
Clin Linguist Phon. 2024 Sep 11:1-25. doi: 10.1080/02699206.2024.2391904.
Non-Word Repetition (NWR) tasks effectively identify language impairments and assess phonological skills across diverse populations and languages, including Arabic. Prior research revealed heterogeneity of performance in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) on NWR tasks. The current study is the first to evaluate phonological skills of Palestinian-Arabic-speaking children with and without ASD, employing a Palestinian-Arabic NWR task. A total of 142 Palestinian-Arabic-speaking children, aged 5-11 participated in the study, including 75 children with Typical Language Development (TLD) and 67 children with ASD. The NWR task included 18 non-words of varying length (1-4 syllables) and complexity (with and without consonant clusters). Quantitative analysis examined the effects of length and phonological complexity on the NWR accuracy scores in children with TLD and ASD. Error pattern analysis accounting for phoneme and syllable substitutions/deletions/additions and lexicalisations aimed to shed light on the phonological representations of children with and without ASD. Within the ASD group, two subgroups emerged: 72% exhibited age-appropriate NWR performance, while 28% showed performance at-risk for phonological impairment. Non-word length, rather than complexity, significantly influenced the children's performance. Consonant substitution was the most frequent error pattern across all groups. On the theoretical side, these findings extend cross-linguistic evidence of phonological skill heterogeneity in children with ASD to Arabic-speaking children. Additionally, they highlight an overall delayed but qualitatively similar pattern of phonological development in children with ASD. On the clinical side, results underscore the importance of comprehensive language assessment in children with ASD.
非词重复（NWR）任务能够有效识别语言障碍，并评估包括阿拉伯语在内的不同人群和语言的语音技能。先前的研究揭示了自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）儿童在NWR任务中的表现存在异质性。本研究首次采用巴勒斯坦阿拉伯语NWR任务，评估有和没有ASD的讲巴勒斯坦阿拉伯语儿童的语音技能。共有142名年龄在5至11岁之间讲巴勒斯坦阿拉伯语的儿童参与了这项研究，其中包括75名具有典型语言发展（TLD）的儿童和67名患有ASD的儿童。NWR任务包括18个不同长度（1 - 4个音节）和复杂度（有和没有辅音群）的非词。定量分析考察了长度和语音复杂度对TLD儿童和ASD儿童NWR准确性分数的影响。错误模式分析考虑了音素和音节的替换/删除/添加以及词汇化，旨在揭示有和没有ASD儿童的语音表征。在ASD组中，出现了两个亚组：72%表现出与年龄相符的NWR表现，而28%表现出有语音损伤风险的表现。非词长度而非复杂度对儿童的表现有显著影响。辅音替换是所有组中最常见的错误模式。在理论方面，这些发现将ASD儿童语音技能异质性的跨语言证据扩展到了讲阿拉伯语的儿童。此外，它们突出了ASD儿童语音发展总体延迟但质量上相似的模式。在临床方面，结果强调了对ASD儿童进行全面语言评估的重要性。
