False belief and relative clauses in Autism Spectrum Disorders

About the relationship between executive function, theory of mind, and language abilities in children with autism: a systematic review

A systematic review guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) procedure was used to evaluate the assumption that executive functions play a role in the relationship between theory of mind and language abilities in autism spectrum disorder. A total of 141 papers published in English between 2012 and 2023 were selected in databases, and of which 10 articles met inclusion criteria. Results showed that executive functions could be a predictor of theory of mind even when controlling for general language scores and age. However, results on syntactic language were not sufficient to completely validate the hypothesis that syntax could explain the relationship between theory of mind and executive functions in children with autism.

The Acquisition of Relative Clauses in Autism: The Role of Executive Functions and Language

PURPOSE

Relative clauses present a well-known processing asymmetry between object-extracted and subject-extracted dependencies across both typical and atypical populations. The present study aimed at exploring the comprehension of object and subject relative clauses as conceptualized by the Relativized Minimality framework in autistic children and in a group of age- and IQ-matched typically-developing children. The study also explored the way performance in relative clauses would be affected by the children's language and executive function skills.

METHOD

Relative clause comprehension was tested through a sentence-picture matching task and language was tested with a receptive vocabulary task. Executive functions were assessed through backward digit recall and a Flanker test.

RESULTS

Object relative clauses were harder to parse for both groups than subject relatives, while number mismatch between the moved object Noun Phrase and the intervening subject Noun Phrase in object relatives boosted both groups' performances. Typically-developing children's performance in object relatives was predicted by both language and executive functions, while autistic children failed to use language and did not systematically draw on their executive functions in object relative clause comprehension.

CONCLUSION

The findings suggest that relative clause processing in autism follows a normal developmental trajectory, and that difficulty with parsing object relative clauses stems from reduced language and executive functions rather than deficits in the children's morphosyntactic skills.

Language in autism: domains, profiles and co-occurring conditions

This article reviews the current knowledge state on pragmatic and structural language abilities in autism and their potential relation to extralinguistic abilities and autistic traits. The focus is on questions regarding autism language profiles with varying degrees of (selective) impairment and with respect to potential comorbidity of autism and language impairment: Is language impairment in autism the co-occurrence of two distinct conditions (comorbidity), a consequence of autism itself (no comorbidity), or one possible combination from a series of neurodevelopmental properties (dimensional approach)? As for language profiles in autism, three main groups are identified, namely, (i) verbal autistic individuals without structural language impairment, (ii) verbal autistic individuals with structural language impairment, and (iii) minimally verbal autistic individuals. However, this tripartite distinction hides enormous linguistic heterogeneity. Regarding the nature of language impairment in autism, there is currently no model of how language difficulties may interact with autism characteristics and with various extralinguistic cognitive abilities. Building such a model requires carefully designed explorations that address specific aspects of language and extralinguistic cognition. This should lead to a fundamental increase in our understanding of language impairment in autism, thereby paving the way for a substantial contribution to the question of how to best characterize neurodevelopmental disorders.

Linguistic markers of autism spectrum conditions in narratives: A comprehensive analysis

Background & Aims: Narratives are regularly elicited as part of standardized assessments for autism spectrum conditions (ASC) such as the ADOS, but have rarely been utilized as linguistic data in their own right. We here aimed for a specific and comprehensive quantitative linguistic profile of such narratives across nominal, verbal, and clausal domains of grammatical organization, and error patterns. Methods: We manually transcribed and annotated narratives elicited from the ADOS from a sample of bilingual autistic Spanish-Catalan children (n = 18), matched with typically developing controls (n = 18) on vocabulary-based verbal IQ. Results: Results revealed fewer relative clauses and more frequent errors in referential specificity and non-relational content-word choice in ASC. Frequent error types are also discussed qualitatively. Conclusions & Implications: These findings, based on more finegrained linguistically defined variables, help to disentangle previous inconsistencies in the literature, and to better situate language changes in the spectrum of neurocognitive changes in this population.

Language level predicts perceptual categorization of complex reversible events in children

Language plays a well-documented role in perceptual object categorization, but little is known about its role in the categorization of complex events. We explored this here with a perspective from age or developmentally appropriate language capacities in neurotypical children between the ages of two and four years (N = 21), and from delayed language development in a clinical group of children (N = 20), whose verbal mental ages (VMA) often fell far below their chronological ages (CAs). All participants watched two demonstrations of a series of transitive events (e.g. tiger jumps over a girl). The toy agents were then moved out of sight, and participants had to act out the same event type, based on a different tiger and girl that were selected among two distractors. We aimed to determine how mastery of this task relates to CA in the neurotypical group, and whether task performance in the clinical group was predicted by VMA and a standardized measure of grammatical comprehension. Results from a series of logistic mixed-effect regression models showed that neurotypical children start to perform correctly on this task with a chance of around 50% during their third year of CA but reach ceiling performance only during their fourth. A similar pattern emerged for VMA in the clinical group, despite a wide range of CAs and diagnoses. In addition, grammatical comprehension predicted performance. These patterns suggest that language competence plays a role in the perceptual categorization and encoding of complex reversible events.

Verbal mediation of theory of mind in verbal adolescents with autism spectrum disorder

This study tests the role of verbal mediation during theory of mind processing in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Adolescents with ASD or typical development completed a false belief task while simultaneously performing a verbal or nonverbal load task. There was no group difference in false belief accuracy; however, under verbal load, the ASD group was relatively less efficient, with slower reaction times, in false belief compared to true belief trials. Faster false belief task performance under verbal but not nonverbal load was associated with pragmatic language ability for the ASD group only. Results were consistent with the theory that there are two (implicit, nonverbal and explicit, verbal) processes that support cognitive reasoning about other people's minds (Apperly & Butterfill, 2009), and that people with ASD rely more on the explicit system. Verbal mediation may be critical for false belief understanding in individuals with ASD, but not typical development.

Cognitive and Affective Aspects of Theory of Mind in Greek-Speaking Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Substantial research indicates that individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have difficulties with Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities, but rarely have studies used a comprehensive battery to measure both the cognitive and affective aspects of ToM. The present study tested this ability in 24 Greek-speaking children with ASD (ages 7-14), and their performance was compared to 24 age-, gender- and language-matched typically developing controls. Results showed that ASD children's performance was selectively impaired in both ToM aspects, supporting the distinction between ToM components. This is the first study of ToM abilities among Greek-speaking children with ASD, and the findings confirm that children with ASD are experiencing difficulties with socio-emotional understanding across languages and cultures.