Children with Autism Understand Indirect Speech Acts: Evidence from a Semi-Structured Act-Out Task

Abstract

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder are often said to present a global pragmatic impairment. However, there is some observational evidence that context-based comprehension of indirect requests may be preserved in autism. In order to provide experimental confirmation to this hypothesis, indirect speech act comprehension was tested in a group of 15 children with autism between 7 and 12 years and a group of 20 typically developing children between 2:7 and 3:6 years. The aim of the study was to determine whether children with autism can display genuinely contextual understanding of indirect requests. The experiment consisted of a three-pronged semi-structured task involving Mr Potato Head. In the first phase a declarative sentence was uttered by one adult as an instruction to put a garment on a Mr Potato Head toy; in the second the same sentence was uttered as a comment on a picture by another speaker; in the third phase the same sentence was uttered as a comment on a picture by the first speaker. Children with autism complied with the indirect request in the first phase and demonstrated the capacity to inhibit the directive interpretation in phases 2 and 3. TD children had some difficulty in understanding the indirect instruction in phase 1. These results call for a more nuanced view of pragmatic dysfunction in autism.

Selective Pragmatic Impairment in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Indirect Requests Versus Irony

“…The first clear-cut result of this paper is that comprehending indirect requests is not out of reach for individuals with ASD, confirming previous findings by Kissine et al (2015Kissine et al ( , 2012. Interrogative Can you _?…”

“…By contrast, in a naturalistic study, Kissine et al (2012) observed that 4-12-year-old children with ASD (and nonverbal IQ scores below typical range) comply as much with direct as with indirect requests. Furthermore, Kissine et al (2015) found that 7-12-year-old children with ASD accurately interpret (9) as a request to put a hat on a Mr. Potato Head™ by one speaker, and as a comment on a picture in a magazine by another speaker.…”

The Contribution of Grammar, Vocabulary and Theory of Mind in Pragmatic Language Competence in Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders

“…This view has also been supported by empirical research in children with and without communication disorders, suggesting that, for some kinds of pragmatics, a sentence may be fully interpretable based on pragmatic norms and the context as provided from the listeners' egocentric point of view, without the need to infer the speakers' mental state (de Villiers et al, 2007; Kissine, 2012; O'Neill, 2012; Kissine et al, 2015; Janke and Perovic, 2016). …”

The Role of Speech and Language Therapist in Autism Spectrum Disorders Intervention – An Inclusive Approach

“…In general, the formal, standardised assessment is problematic as the performance of the child misses the advantage of the natural setting observation analysis. The influence of the examiner´s instruction or contextual cues and the structuring of the environment t may have also a specific effect [34,35]. The other explanation could be a much more intensive focus on linguistic than nonlinguistic context of the pragmatic situation and the verbal instruction given by the evaluator during testing.…”