Social communication in children with autism

Abstract

This longitudinal study investigated the developmental trajectory of discourse skills and theory of mind in 57 children with autism. Children were tested at two time points spaced 1 year apart. Each year they provided a natural language sample while interacting with one parent, and were given standardized vocabulary measures and a developmentally sequenced battery of theory of mind tasks. The language samples were coded for conversational skills, specifically the child's use of topic-related contingent utterances. Children with autism made significant gains over 1 year in the ability to maintain a topic of discourse. Hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that theory of mind skills contributed unique variance to individual differences in contingent discourse ability and vice versa, when measured concurrently; however, they did not predict longitudinal changes. The findings offer some empirical support for the hypothesis that theory of mind is linked to communicative competence in children with autism.

Examination of script and non-script based narrative retellings in children with autism spectrum disorders

“…This finding provides further support for the ToM account of ASD. Likewise, these findings are consistent with Hale and Tager-Flusberg (2005) who found, using hierarchical regressions, that independent of age, language, and IQ, ToM contributes unique variance in discourse skills among children with ASD. The only narrative measure that ToM did not uniquely predict was cohesion of the script-based story, which may have been due to the reduced variability among cohesion scores in children with ASD on this task in comparison to the non-script based story.…”

Longitudinal Analyses of Expressive Language Development Reveal Two Distinct Language Profiles Among Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

“…According to Brown, a morpheme is acquired when it is used correctly in 90% of obligatory contexts (Brown, 1973). Because we were concerned with children’s initial usage and developmental trajectory of these morphemes, and not necessarily when they had reached adult-like levels, we coded for number of correctly used morphemes rather than their use in obligatory contexts (Capps, Kehres, & Sigman, 1998; Hale & Tager-Flusberg, 2005). For example, an utterance such as “I goed to the zoo,” which is an incorrect usage of the irregular past went , was not included in our analysis as a regular past tense marker.…”

Going ‘Above and Beyond’: Are Those High in Autistic Traits Less Pro-social?

“…Individuals who fail false belief tasks (Baron-Cohen et al 1985) have been found to show less insightful social behaviour and poorer verbal communication skills (Frith 1994). Furthermore, performance on measures of perspective-taking have been associated with skills required for appropriate social behaviour, including ability to maintain conversation and respond appropriately (Hale and Tager-Flusberg 2005), to contribute novel information (Capps et al 1998), to understand non-literal language (Martin and MacDonald 2004), and to identify others’ embarrassment (Hiller and Allinson 2002). Individuals with ASD have been found to be impaired in all of these areas.…”