Is Grammar Spared in Autism Spectrum Disorder? Data from Judgments of Verb Argument Structure Overgeneralization Errors

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Volumn 45, Issue 10, 2015, Pages 3288-3296

  Ambridge, Ben ^a,b   Bannard, Colin ^a,b   Jackson, Georgina H ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL   (United Kingdom)

^b University of Liverpool and ESRC International Centre for Language and Communicative Development   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Autism spectrum disorders; Grammaticality judgment task; Language development; Verb argument structure overgeneralization errors

Indexed keywords

ADOLESCENT; ARTICLE; AUTISM; CHILD; CLINICAL ARTICLE; CONTROLLED STUDY; DECISION MAKING; FEMALE; GRAMMAR; GROUP DYNAMICS; HUMAN; INTELLIGENCE QUOTIENT; LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT; MALE; PRIORITY JOURNAL; SCHOOL CHILD; TASK PERFORMANCE; WECHSLER INTELLIGENCE SCALE FOR CHILDREN; LEARNING; LINGUISTICS; PATHOPHYSIOLOGY; PSYCHOLOGY;

ADOLESCENT; AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER; CHILD; FEMALE; GENERALIZATION (PSYCHOLOGY); HUMANS; JUDGMENT; LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT; LINGUISTICS; MALE;

EID: 84941937001     PISSN: 01623257     EISSN: 15733432     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10803-015-2487-5     Document Type: Article

References (59)

1. Alarcon, M., Yonan, A. L., Gilliam, T. C., Cantor, R. M., & Geschwind, D. H. (2005). Quantitative genome scan and ordered-subsets analysis of autism endophenotypes support language QTLs. Molecular Psychiatry,10(8), 747–757.
2. Allen, D. A., & Rapin, I. (1980). Language disorders in preschool children: Predictors of outcome—a preliminary report. Brain and Development,2(1), 73–80.
3. Ambridge, B., Pine, J. M., Rowland, C. F., Jones, R. L., & Clark, V. (2009). A semantics-based approach to the “no negative evidence” problem. Cognitive Science,33(7), 1301–1316.
4. Ambridge, B., Pine, J. P., Rowland, C. F., & Young, C. R. (2008). The effect of verb semantic class and verb frequency (entrenchment) on children’s and adults’ graded judgements of argument–structure overgeneralisation errors. Cognition,106, 87–129.
5. Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., Scahill, V., Lawson, J., & Spong, A. (2001). Are intuitive physics and intuitive psychology independent? A test with children with Asperger Syndrome. Journal of Developmental and Learning Disorders,5, 47–78.
6. Bates, D., Maechler, M., & Bolker, B. (2012). lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using S4 classes (statistical package).
7. Bennetto, L., Pennington, B. F., & Rogers, S. J. (1996). Intact and impaired memory functions in autism. Child Development,67(4), 1816–1835.
8. Blackwell, A., & Bates, E. (1995). Inducing agrammatic profiles in normals: Evidence for the selective vulnerability of morphology under cognitive resource limitations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience,7, 228–257.
9. Botting, N., & Conti-Ramsden, G. (2003). Autism, primary pragmatic difficulties, and specific language impairment: Can we distinguish them using psycholinguistic markers? Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology,45, 515–524.
10. Boucher, J. (1976). Articulation in early childhood autism. Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia,6, 297–302.
11. Boucher, J. (1988). Word fluency in high functioning autistic children. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders,18, 637–645.
12. Bradford, Y., Haines, J., Hutcheson, H., Gardiner, M., Braun, T., Sheffield, V., et al. (2001). Incorporating language phenotypes strengthens evidence of linkage to autism. American Journal of Medical Genetics,105(6), 539–547.
13. Brock, J., Norbury, C., Einav, S., & Nation, K. (2008). Do individuals with autism process words in context? Evidence from language-mediated eye-movements. Cognition,108(3), 896–904.
14. Brooks, P. J., & Tomasello, M. (1999). How children constrain their argument structure constructions. Language,75(4), 720–738.
15. Brooks, P. J., Tomasello, M., Dodson, K., & Lewis, L. B. (1999). Young children’s overgeneralizations with fixed transitivity verbs. Child Development,70(6), 1325–1337.
16. Brooks, P. J., & Zizak, O. (2002). Does preemption help children learn verb transitivity? Journal of Child Language,29, 759–781.
17. Conti-Ramsden, G., Simkin, Z., & Botting, N. (2006). The prevalence of autistic spectrum disorders in adolescents with a history of specific language impairment (SLI). Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry,47(6), 621–628.
18. Eaves, L., & Ho, H. (2004). The very early identification of autism: Outcome at age 4½–5. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders,34, 367–378.
19. Eigsti, I. G., & Bennetto, L. (2009). Grammaticality judgements in autism: Deviance or delay. Journal of Child Language,36, 999–1021.
20. Eigsti, I. M., Bennetto, L., & Dadlani, M. (2007). Beyond pragmatics: Morpho-syntactic development in autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders,37(6), 1007–1023.
21. Fombonne, E., Bolton, P., Prior, J., Jordan, H., & Rutter, M. (1997). A family study of autism: Cognitive patterns and levels in parents and siblings. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry,38(6), 667–683.
22. Goodwin, A., Fein, D., & Naigles, L. R. (2012). Comprehension of wh-questions precedes their production in typical development and autism spectrum disorders. Autism Research,5(2), 109–123.
23. Happé, F. (1999). Autism: cognitive deficit or cognitive style? Trends in Cognitive Sciences,3(6), 216–222.
24. Howlin, P. (1984). The acquisition of grammatical morphemes in autistic children: A critique and replication of the findings of Bartolucci, Pierce, and Streiner, 1980. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders,14(2), 127–136.
25. Jarrold, C., Boucher, J., & Russell, J. (1997). Language profiles in children with autism: Theoretical and methodological implications. Autism,1, 57–76.
26. Kjelgaard, M. M., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (2001). An investigation of language impairment in autism: Implications for genetic subgroups. Language and Cognitive Processes,16(2/3), 287–308.
27. Kulage, K. M., Smaldone, A. M., & Cohn, E. G. (2014). How will DSM-5 affect autism diagnosis? A systematic literature review and meta-analysis. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders,44(8), 1918–1932.
28. Lord, C., Risi, S., & Pickles, A. (2004). Trajectory of language development in autistic spectrum disorders. In M. Rice & S. F. Warren (Eds.), Developmental language disorders: From phenotypes to etiologies (pp. 1–38). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
29. Luyster, R., Kadlec, M., Carter, A., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (2008). Language assessment and development in toddlers with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders,39, 1305–1320.
30. Luyster, R., Lopez, K., & Lord, C. (2007). Characterizing communicative development in children referred for autism spectrum disorders using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI). Journal of Child Language,34, 623–654.
31. McDaniel, D., & Cairns, H. (1996). Eliciting judgements of grammaticality and reference. In D. McDaniel, C. McKee, & H. Cairns (Eds.), Methods for assessing children’s syntax (pp. 233–255). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
32. Naigles, L. R., Kelty, E., Jaffery, R., & Fein, D. (2011). Abstractness and continuity in the syntactic development of young children with autism. Autism Research,4(6), 422–437.
33. Naigles, L. R., & Tovar, A. T. (2012). Portable intermodal preferential looking (IPL): Investigating language comprehension in typically developing toddlers and young children with autism. Journal of Visualized Experiments: JoVE, 70, e4331. doi:10.3791/4331
34. Park, C. J., Yelland, G. W., Taffe, J. R., & Gray, K. M. (2012). Brief report: The relationship between language skills, adaptive behaviour, and emotional and behaviour problems in pre-schoolers with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders,42(12), 2761–2766.
35. R Core Team. (2012). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. ISBN 3-900051-07-0. http://www.R-project.org/
36. Rapin, I., & Dunn, M. (2003). Update on the language disorders of individuals on the autistic spectrum. Brain and Development,25(3), 166–172.
37. Rescorla, L. (2002). Language and reading outcomes to age 9 in late-talking toddlers. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research,45, 360–371.
38. Roberts, J. E., Mirrett, P., & Burchinal, M. (2001). Receptive and expressive communication development of young males with fragile X syndrome. American Journal on Mental Retardation,106(3), 216–230.
39. Roberts, J. A., Rice, M. L., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (2004). Tense marking in children with autism. Applied Psycholinguistics,25, 429–448.
40. Rutter, M., Bailey, A., & Lord, C. (2003). The Social Communication Questionnaire: Manual. Los Angeles: Western Psychological Services.
41. Sorace, A., & Keller, F. (2005). Gradience in linguistic data. Lingua,115(11), 1497–1524.
42. Swensen, L. D., Kelley, E., Fein, D., & Naigles, L. R. (2007). Processes of language acquisition in children with autism: Evidence from preferential looking. Child Development,78(2), 542–557.
43. Tager-Flusberg, H. (1981). On the nature of linguistic functioning in early infantile autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders,11(1), 45–56.
44. Tager-Flusberg, H. (1985). Sentence comprehension in autistic children. Applied Psycholinguistics,2, 5–24.
45. Tager-Flusberg, H., Calkins, S., Nolin, T., Baumberger, T., Anderson, M., & Chadwick-Dias, A. (1990). A longitudinal study of language acquisition in autistic and Down syndrome children. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders,20(1), 1–21.
46. Tager-Flusberg, H., Lord, C., & Paul, R. (1997). Language and Communication in autism. In D. J. Cohen & F. R. Volkmar (Eds.), Handbook of autism and pervasive development disorders (2nd ed., pp. 335–365). New York: Wiley.
47. Tek, S., Mesite, L., Fein, D., & Naigles, L. (2014). Longitudinal analyses of expressive language development reveal two distinct language profiles among young children with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders,44(1), 75–89.
48. Thurm, A., Lord, C., Lee, L., & Newschaffer, C. (2007). Predictors of language acquisition in preschool children with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders,37, 1721–1734.
49. Tomblin, B. (2011). Co-morbidity of autism and SLI: Kinds, kin and complexity. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders,46(2), 127–137.
50. Tomblin, J. B., Hafeman, L. L., & O’Brien, M. (2003). Autism and autism risk in siblings of children with specific language impairment. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders,38(3), 235–250.
51. Van der Lely, H. K. (1996). Specifically language impaired and normally developing children: Verbal passive vs. adjectival passive sentence interpretation. Lingua,98(4), 243–272.
52. Wechsler, D. (2004). The Wechsler Intelligence scale for children (4th ed.). London: Pearson Assessment.
53. Weismer, S. E., Lord, C., & Esler, A. (2010). Early language patterns of toddlers on the autism spectrum compared to toddlers with developmental delay. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders,40, 1259–1273.
54. Wexler, K., & Rice, M. (1996). Toward tense as a clinical marker of specific language impairment in English-speaking children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research,39, 1239–1257.
55. Whitehouse, A. J. O., Barry, J. G., & Bishop, D. V. M. (2007). The broader language phenotype of autism: A comparison with specific language impairment. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry,48, 822–830.
56. Whitehouse, A. J. O., Barry, J. G., & Bishop, D. V. M. (2008). Further defining the language impairment of autism: Is there a specific language impairment subtype? Journal of Communication Disorders,41, 319–336.
57. Williams, D., Botting, N., & Boucher, J. (2008). Language in autism and specific language impairment: Where are the links? Psychological Bulletin,134, 944–963.
58. Wulfeck, B. (1993). A reaction time study of grammaticality judgements in children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research,36, 1208–1215.
59. Wulfeck, B., Bates, E., Krupa-Kwiatkowski, M., & Saltzman, D. (2004). Grammaticality sensitivity in children with early focal brain injury and children with specific language impairment. Brain and Language,88(2), 215–228.