The effect of theory of mind impairment on language: Referring after right-hemisphere damage

Balaban, Noga; Friedmann, Naama; Ariel, Mira

doi:10.1080/02687038.2015.1137274

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…Of these responses, 32 responses were cases in which the ASD participants used a pronoun to explain a sentence, even though there was no way for the experimenter to know to which NP this pronoun was referring (Example 21). We found this kind of response especially interesting because the use of pronouns without establishing a reference in discourse is a landmark of the discourse of individuals with Theory of Mind (ToM) impairment (Balaban et al, 2016 ). In other cases, some ASD participants chose an avoidance strategy of saying “ I don't know ” even when asked guiding questions to see if they understood the sentence.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They compared Dutch-speaking ASD and DLI participants using a lexical-syntactic task of mass-count distinction, and a pragmatic task that tested the use of definite markers. The ASD participants outperformed the DLI participants on the grammatical mass-count task, in which they performed at the TD level, but performed below the DLI when they had to provide a definite determiner, a task that requires pragmatic abilities (Armon-Lotem and Avram, 2005 ; Balaban et al, 2016 ; Schaeffer, 2016 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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ASD Is Not DLI: Individuals With Autism and Individuals With Syntactic DLI Show Similar Performance Level in Syntactic Tasks, but Different Error Patterns

Sukenik

Friedmann

2018

Front. Psychol.

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Do individuals with autism have a developmental syntactic impairment, DLI (formerly known as SLI)? In this study we directly compared the performance of 18 individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) aged 9;0–18;0 years with that of 93 individuals with Syntactic-Developmental Language Impairment (SyDLI) aged 8;8–14;6 (and with 166 typically-developing children aged 5;2–18;1). We tested them using three syntactic tests assessing the comprehension and production of syntactic structures that are known to be sensitive to syntactic impairment: elicitation of subject and object relative clauses, reading and paraphrasing of object relatives, and repetition of complex syntactic structures including Wh questions, relative clauses, topicalized sentences, sentences with verb movement, sentences with A-movement, and embedded sentences. The results were consistent across the three tasks: the overall rate of correct performance on the syntactic tasks is similar for the children with ASD and those with SyDLI. However, once we look closer, they are very different. The types of errors of the ASD group differ from those of the SyDLI group—the children with ASD provide various types of pragmatically infelicitous responses that are not evinced in the SyDLI or in the age equivalent typically-developing groups. The two groups (ASD and SyDLI) also differ in the pattern of performance—the children with SyDLI show a syntactically-principled pattern of impairment, with selective difficulty in specific sentence types (such as sentences derived by movement of the object across the subject), and normal performance on other structures (such as simple sentences). In contrast, the ASD participants showed generalized low performance on the various sentence structures. Syntactic performance was far from consistent within the ASD group. Whereas all ASD participants had errors that can originate in pragmatic/discourse difficulties, seven of them had completely normal syntax in the structures we tested, and were able to produce, understand, and repeat relative clauses, Wh questions, and topicalized sentences. Only one ASD participant showed a syntactically-principled deficit similar to that of individuals with SyDLI. We conclude that not all individuals with ASD have syntactic difficulties, and that even when they fail in a syntactic task, this does not necessarily originate in a syntactic impairment. This shows that looking only at the total score in a syntactic test may be insufficient, and a fuller picture emerges once the performance on different structures and the types of erroneous responses are analyzed.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

ASD Is Not DLI: Individuals With Autism and Individuals With Syntactic DLI Show Similar Performance Level in Syntactic Tasks, but Different Error Patterns

Sukenik

Friedmann

2018

Front. Psychol.

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“…The results showed that the ASD participants perform better than the DLD participants on the grammatical mass-count task, similar to the TD level. They performed, however, worse than the DLD group when they were asked to provide a definite determiner, a task that requires pragmatic abilities [ 102 , 103 ].…”

Section: Theoretical Premisesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developmental Language Disorder and Autism: Commonalities and Differences on Language

Georgiou

Spanoudis

2021

Brain Sciences

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Language and communication deficits characterize both autism spectrum disorder and developmental language disorder, and the possibility of there being a common profile of these is a matter of tireless debate in the research community. This experimental study addresses the relation of these two developmental conditions in the critical topic of language. A total of 103 children (79 males, 24 females) participated in the present study. Specifically, the study’s sample consisted of 40 children with autism, 28 children with developmental language disorder, and 35 typically developing children between 6 and 12 years old. All children completed language and cognitive measures. The results showed that there is a subgroup inside the autism group of children who demonstrate language difficulties similar to children with developmental language disorder. Specifically, two different subgroups were derived from the autism group; those with language impairment and those without. Both autism and language-impaired groups scored lower than typically developing children on all language measures indicating a common pathology in language ability. The results of this study shed light on the relation between the two disorders, supporting the assumption of a subgroup with language impairment inside the autism spectrum disorder population. The common picture presented by the two developmental conditions highlights the need for further research in the field.

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“…Second, all trials involve the same scenario (in contrast with other story-scenario ToM tasks 30,31,55 ). Attention, memory, executive functioning, and language input processing demands are consistent across ToM subcomponent trials, thus controlling confounds that could otherwise contribute to performance differences between ToM subcomponents 56,57 .…”

Section: Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding Others Requires Right Temporoparietal and Inferior Frontal Regions

Ding

Blake

2021

Preprint

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The human ability to infer other people's knowledge and beliefs, known as 'theory of mind', is an essential component of social interactions. Theory of mind tasks activate frontal and temporoparietal regions of cortex in fMRI studies. However, it is unknown whether these regions are critical. We examined this question using multivariate voxel-based lesion symptom mapping in 22 patients with acute right hemisphere brain damage. Studies of acute patients eliminate questions of recovery and reorganization that plague long-term studies of lesioned patients. Damage to temporoparietal and inferior frontal regions impaired thinking about others' perspectives. This impairment held even after adjustment for overall extent of brain damage and language comprehension, memory, comprehension, and attention abilities. These results provide evidence that right temporoparietal and inferior frontal regions are necessary for the human ability to reason about the knowledge and beliefs of others.

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The effect of theory of mind impairment on language: Referring after right-hemisphere damage

Cited by 11 publications

References 68 publications

ASD Is Not DLI: Individuals With Autism and Individuals With Syntactic DLI Show Similar Performance Level in Syntactic Tasks, but Different Error Patterns

ASD Is Not DLI: Individuals With Autism and Individuals With Syntactic DLI Show Similar Performance Level in Syntactic Tasks, but Different Error Patterns

Developmental Language Disorder and Autism: Commonalities and Differences on Language

Understanding Others Requires Right Temporoparietal and Inferior Frontal Regions

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