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

Comprehension of Spatial Demonstratives in Mandarin-speaking Children on the Autism Spectrum: The Roles of Theory of Mind and Executive Function

The present study aimed to examine whether Mandarin-speaking children on the autism spectrum showed differences in comprehending spatial demonstratives ("this" and "that", and "here" and "there"), as compared to typically developing (TD) children. Another aim of this study was to investigate the roles of theory of mind (ToM) and executive functions (EF) in the comprehension of spatial demonstratives. Twenty-seven autistic children (mean age 6.86) and 27 receptive-vocabulary-matched TD children (mean age 5.82) were recruited. Demonstrative comprehension was assessed based on participants' ability to place objects in certain locations according to experimenters' instructions which involved these demonstratives in three different conditions (same-, opposite-, and spectator-perspective conditions). Four false-belief tasks were administered to measure ToM, and the word-span task and the dimensional change card sort task were used to measure two subcomponents of EF - working memory and mental flexibility - respectively. Children on the autism spectrum were found to score below TD children in the comprehension of spatial demonstratives. In addition, the results showed that ToM and working memory were conducive to the correct interpretation of spatial demonstratives. The two cognitive abilities mutually influenced their respective roles in spatial demonstrative comprehension in the three different conditions. The findings suggest that the comprehension of spatial demonstratives comprehension is an area of need in Mandarin-speaking children on the autism spectrum, and it might be linked to their differences in cognitive abilities.

Autistic and non-autistic adults use discourse context to determine a speaker's intention to request

The current study focuses on how autistic adults utilize context to determine whether ambiguous utterances (e.g., "I'm thirsty") are intended as indirect requests or as literal comment/questions. Two questions are addressed: (1) How do autistic adults compare to neurotypical adults in using context to interpret an utterance's intention as either literal or a request? (2) What cognitive mechanisms correlate with indirect request interpretation, and are these different for participants in each group? Twenty-six autistic and 26 neurotypical college students participated, engaging in an online experiment where they read narratives that ended with utterances open to literal or request interpretations, based on context. After each narrative, participants selected the best paraphrase of the utterance from two options, literal versus request. Following this task, participants completed two mentalizing measures (a false belief and emotion-identification task) and several executive functioning tests. The best model for predicting paraphrase choice included scores on the emotion-identification task and context as main effects, along with the interaction between both. Participants with higher emotion-identification test scores were more likely to provide correct paraphrases. Models including group as a main effect and/or interaction were not better at fitting the data, nor were any models that included executive functioning measures as main effects or interactions. Emotion-identification test scores, but not autism diagnosis, predict how adults infer whether an utterance is a request. Findings suggest that autistic adults use context similarly to neurotypical adults when interpreting requests, and that similar processes underlie performance for each group.

How language affects social cognition and emotional competence in typical and atypical development: A systematic review

BACKGROUND

The ability to understand the mental state of others (social cognition), as well as language, is crucial for children to have good social adaptation. Social cognition (SC) has been shown to be a hierarchical model of three factors (Cognitive, intermediate and affective SC) interrelated with linguistic processes. Children on the autism spectrum and children with developmental language disorder (DLD) or social communication disorder (SCD) manifest language and SC difficulties, albeit in different ways.

AIMS

This systematic review aims to find how language and SC interact with each other and identify linguistic and socio-affective profiles in the target population.

METHODS

About 1593 articles were systematically reviewed according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guide in November 2022, obtaining, through inclusion/exclusion criteria, a total of 38 articles for qualitative assessment. The majority of them were on autism (26) or DLD (14) and to a lesser extent SCD (3).

MAIN CONTRIBUTION

Although SC is related to all components of language, SC is strongly related to narrative and morphosyntax and partially related to lexicon. Pragmatics shows a complex relation with SC due to greater sensitivity to other factors such as age or task, and prosody appears to be more related to emotional processes. Besides, autistic, SCD and DLD children showed differences in their language and socio-affective performance. Mainstream DLD children have lower performance in general language, where autistic and SCD children have more linguistic variation and are lower in pragmatic and SC tasks, SCD children being more associated with language production difficulties and autistic children with both receptive and productive language.

CONCLUSION

Each language component has a different interaction with SC. Likewise, different linguistic profiles are partially found for each disorder. These results are important for future lines of research focusing on specific components of interaction and socio-emotional processes, as well as for clinical and educational treatment.

WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS

What is already known on the subject The hierarchical model of Schurz et al. (2021), divide social cognition into three brain constructs: cognitive social cognition (CSC), affective social cognition (ASC) and intermediate social cognition (ISC). They observe a large relationship between language and ISC, a fact that has been corroborated with some other studies. Studies have also found lower linguistic and socio-affective abilities in children with autism and language and communication disorders compared with children with neurotypical development, and large behavioural and neurocognitive overlaps between these disorders (Durrleman et al., 2019; Löytömäki et al., 2019). What this paper adds to existing knowledge This is the first review that relates all linguistic components (narrative, lexicon, morphosyntax, pragmatic and prosody) with the three constructs of social cognition (Cognitive, intermediate and affective). Moreover, it is the first review that studies the socio-linguistic factors comparing autism, developmental language disorder and social communication disorder with each other and with neurotypical development in children aged from 4 to 9 years. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? Understanding how language and social cognition interact with each other in autism spectrum disorder, developmental language disorder and social communication disorder allows us to trace socio-linguistic profiles for each of the studied disorders, understand better children with these difficulties, and, with this, find specific potential intervention points to improve and prevent these difficulties.

Dissociating language and thought in large language models

Large language models (LLMs) have come closest among all models to date to mastering human language, yet opinions about their linguistic and cognitive capabilities remain split. Here, we evaluate LLMs using a distinction between formal linguistic competence (knowledge of linguistic rules and patterns) and functional linguistic competence (understanding and using language in the world). We ground this distinction in human neuroscience, which has shown that formal and functional competence rely on different neural mechanisms. Although LLMs are surprisingly good at formal competence, their performance on functional competence tasks remains spotty and often requires specialized fine-tuning and/or coupling with external modules. We posit that models that use language in human-like ways would need to master both of these competence types, which, in turn, could require the emergence of separate mechanisms specialized for formal versus functional linguistic competence.

Divergent social communication between autistic and non-autistic individuals revisited: unraveled via an Integrated Model of Pragmatic Competence

Some current studies call for the adoption of the theory of the Double Empathy Problem (DEP) to reappraise autistic individuals' problematic social communications with non-autistic individuals from the perspectives of both sides, rather than exclusively focusing on the social cognition of individuals with autism. However, there is no specific proposal that explicates how such reframed social communications proceed. Herein, we adopt two subcomponents of the Integrated Model of Pragmatic Competence (IMPC) to clarify the main factors leading to the divergent social interactions between the two groups. Internal Pragmatic Competence (IPC), revealing how they both independently think about internal linguistic and communicative issues, echoes DEP's reference to different mindsets and elucidates why uncooperative social communications happen. Pragmatic Competence for External Communication (PCEC) explains how the impaired communications among organism-internal submodules and/or their unsuccessful interactions with outside contexts impede the external sociopragmatic communications between the two sides. Put together, the operation of the two components helps to interpret the cognitive pragmatic mechanism underlying social communications and suggests a potential holistic perspective to improve such communications in terms of both sides.

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.

Theory of mind in naturalistic conversations between autistic and typically developing children and adolescents

LAY ABSTRACT

Conversation is a key part of everyday social interactions. Previous studies have suggested that conversational skills are related to theory of mind, the ability to think about other people's mental states, such as beliefs, knowledge, and emotions. Both theory of mind and conversation are common areas of difficulty for autistic people, yet few studies have investigated how people, including autistic people, use theory of mind during conversation. We developed a new way of measuring cToM using two rating scales: cToM Positive captures behaviors that show consideration of a conversation partner's mental states, such as referring to their thoughts or feelings, whereas cToM Negative captures behaviors that show a lack of theory of mind through violations of neurotypical conversational norms, such as providing too much, too little, or irrelevant information. We measured cToM in 50 pairs of autistic and typically developing children (ages 8-16 years) during 5-min "getting to know you" conversations. Compared to typically developing children, autistic children displayed more frequent cToM Negative behaviors but very similar rates of cToM Positive behaviors. Across both groups, cToM Negative (but not Positive) ratings were related to difficulties in recognizing emotions from facial expressions and a lower tendency to talk about others' mental states spontaneously (i.e., without being instructed to do so), which suggests that both abilities are important for theory of mind in conversation. Altogether, this study highlights both strengths and difficulties among autistic individuals, and it suggests possible avenues for further research and for improving conversational skills.

Pragmatic Language Development: Analysis of Mapping Knowledge Domains on How Infants and Children Become Pragmatically Competent

New-borns are capable of recognising and producing sounds as they become phonologically competent. Following this, infants develop a system for connecting these sounds, which helps them become increasingly lexically competent over time. Their knowledge of these words grows as they develop, using words to form phrases, turning them into sentences, and ultimately becoming syntactically competent. By making sense of these linguistic elements, these three competencies are enhanced, and this is how infants become semantically competent. As infants continue to develop linguistic and non-linguistic communication behaviours, this miraculous language development becomes even more complex, enabling them to perfect their linguistic abilities while being pragmatically competent. In this study, a scientometric approach was used to examine past, present, and future trends in pragmatic language development (PLD). A total of 6455 documents were analysed from the Scopus, WOS, and Lens databases between 1950 and 2022. The analysis involved the visualisation and tabulation of eight bibliometric and eight scientometric indicators using CiteSpace 5.8.R3 and VOSviewer 1.6.18 software for data analysis. In this study, we highlight the major patterns and topics directing the research on PLD between 1950 and 2022. The themes and topics included (1) analysing PLD as a social behaviour through the lens of executive functions; (2) studying PLD as a social behaviour based on social understanding; (3) examining PLD as a social behaviour associated with autism spectrum disorder; (4) developing an understanding of PLD in academic settings through the examination of executive functions; (5) identifying pragmatic competence versus communicative competence as a social behaviour; (6) analysing pragmatic language skills in aphasic patients via epistemic stances (i.e., attitudes towards knowledge in interaction); (7) investigating PLD as a behavioural problem in the context of a foreign language; (8) assessing PLD as a behavioural problem in individuals with autism spectrum disorder; (9) assessing PLD in persons with traumatic brain injury and closed head injury as a behavioural problem; (10) identifying the role of the right hemisphere in executive functions as a cognitive substrate; (11) assessing the impact of pragmatic failure in speech acts on pragmatic competence; and (12) investigating the patterns of PLD among learning-disabled children.

Pragmatic Language Markers of Autism Diagnosis and Severity

Purpose

Assessment of pragmatic language difficulties is limited with conventional tests but can be performed with informant reports. We evaluated the performance of a parent-completed language scale in differentiating autism from typical development (TD) and another neurodevelopmental disorder. Specifically, we aimed to gauge the respective values of structural and pragmatic language scores for diagnostic discrimination and for predicting severity of social impairment in autistic children.

Method

174 children aged 7 to 17 (101 with autism, 45 with ADHD, 28 with TD) were evaluated with the ADOS-2 and an abbreviated version of the WISC. Parents completed the Children's Communication Checklist, 2nd Edition (CCC-2) and the Social Responsiveness Scale. CCC-2 mean differences across diagnostic groups were tested with analysis of variance and covariance. Multiple linear regression was used to compare the structural and pragmatic CCC-2 scores in predicting autism symptom severity.

Results

Both structural and pragmatic language scores discriminated between the three diagnostic groups, with stronger effects for the pragmatic scores. Pragmatic scores remained robust predictors of ADHD and ASD diagnoses even after accounting for cognitive and structural linguistic differences. Among autistic children, social impairment severity was associated with pragmatic, but not structural, language profiles.

Conclusions

In order to characterize pragmatic language, easy to administer parent questionnaires such as the CCC-2 may support clinicians who are considering an autism diagnosis and needing to evaluate and monitor social communication.

Does the autism phenotype differ when selecting groups by neurodevelopmental versus genetic diagnosis? An observational study comparing autism and sex chromosome trisomy

Background: Autism is diagnosed on the basis of social and non-social behavioural features that are assumed to cluster together, and assumed to be distinct from other aspects of development, such as language ability. It is unclear, however, if these assumptions are valid. This study presents a novel approach to answering this question by investigating whether correlations between autism features are similar for groups selected on behavioural versus genetic diagnosis. Methods: The autism phenotype was assessed by diagnostic interview in young people aged 7 to 14 diagnosed with autism ( N=61) or sex chromosome trisomy (SCT; N=49). Data were analysed by confirmatory factor analysis and MANOVA. Results: Autism features showed a similar factor structure and were distinct from language ability in both groups. However, the SCT group was more likely to show clinically-significant difficulties in just some aspects of autism and a lower level of non-social autism features for their social-communication disabilities. Conclusions: We suggest the group differences emerged because autism diagnostic criteria do not map exactly on the autism phenotype as it manifests "naturally". Conventional diagnostic criteria for autism miss those with uneven profiles of difficulty and those with relatively low levels of restricted and repetitive behaviours and interests.

Combining voice and language features improves automated autism detection

Variability in expressive and receptive language, difficulty with pragmatic language, and prosodic difficulties are all features of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Quantifying language and voice characteristics is an important step for measuring outcomes for autistic people, yet clinical measurement is cumbersome and costly. Using natural language processing (NLP) methods and a harmonic model of speech, we analyzed language transcripts and audio recordings to automatically classify individuals as ASD or non-ASD. One-hundred fifty-eight participants (88 ASD, 70 non-ASD) ages 7 to 17 were evaluated with the autism diagnostic observation schedule (ADOS-2), module 3. The ADOS-2 was transcribed following modified SALT guidelines. Seven automated language measures (ALMs) and 10 automated voice measures (AVMs) for each participant were generated from the transcripts and audio of one ADOS-2 task. The measures were analyzed using support vector machine (SVM; a binary classifier) and receiver operating characteristic (ROC). The AVM model resulted in an ROC area under the curve (AUC) of 0.7800, the ALM model an AUC of 0.8748, and the combined model a significantly improved AUC of 0.9205. The ALM model better detected ASD participants who were younger and had lower language skills and shorter activity time. ASD participants detected by the AVM model had better language profiles than those detected by the language model. In combination, automated measurement of language and voice characteristics successfully differentiated children with and without autism. This methodology could help design robust outcome measures for future research. LAY SUMMARY: People with autism often struggle with communication differences which traditional clinical measures and language tests cannot fully capture. Using language transcripts and audio recordings from 158 children ages 7 to 17, we showed that automated, objective language and voice measurements successfully predict the child's diagnosis. This methodology could help design improved outcome measures for research.

Stage 2 registered report: investigating a preference for certainty in conversation among autistic adults

Social communication difficulties are a diagnostic feature in autism. These difficulties are sometimes attributed, at least in part, to impaired ability in making inferences about what other people mean. In this registered report, we tested a competing hypothesis that the communication profile of adults on the autism spectrum can be more strongly characterised by reduced confidence in making inferences in the face of uncertain information. We tested this hypothesis by comparing the performance of 102 autistic and 109 non-autistic adults on a test of implied meaning, using a test of grammaticality judgements as a control task. We hypothesised that autistic adults would report substantially lower confidence, allowing for differences in accuracy, than non-autistic adults on the test of implied meaning compared to the grammaticality test. However, our results did not suggest this. Instead, we found that accuracy and confidence were both reduced to a similar extent on the test of implied meaning in the autistic group compared to the control group, although these were only subtle differences. This pattern of results was specific to inference-making, as the autistic and non-autistic groups did not differ on the grammar test. This supports the idea that specific differences in pragmatic language processing can exist in autism in the absence of core language problems. Importantly, this pattern of results (differences on the test of implied meaning and no differences on the grammar test) was reversed in a group with self-reported reading difficulties, indicating that the differences in inference-making were specific to the autistic group. Lastly, we found relationships between Intolerance of Uncertainty, performance on the test of implied meaning, and self-reported social communication challenges. This supports the idea that discomfort with uncertainty plays a role in the pragmatic language and communication challenges in autism.

Rashid S, Nimehchisalem V, Geok Imm L, Price J, Ronderos CR. What second-language speakers can tell us about pragmatic processing

Upon hearing the phrase Some cats meow, a listener might pragmatically infer that 'Some but not all cats meow'. This is known as a scalar implicature and it often arises when a speaker produces a weak linguistic expression instead of a stronger one. Several L2 studies claim that pragmatic inferences are generated by default and their comprehension presents no challenges to L2 learners. However, the evidence obtained from these studies largely stems from offline-based tasks that provide limited information about how scalar implicatures are processed. This study investigated scalar implicature processing among L2 speakers of English and the degree to which differences in L2 proficiency and Theory of Mind abilities would modulate pragmatic responding. The experiment used an online sentence verification paradigm that required participants to judge, among multiple control items, the veracity of under-informative sentences, such as Some cats are mammals, and to respond as quickly as possible. A true response to this item is indicative of a logical some and perhaps all reading and a false response to a pragmatic some but not all reading. Our results showed evidence that scalar inferences are not generated by default. The answer linked to the pragmatic reading some but not all took significantly longer to make relative to the answer that relies on the logical interpretation some and perhaps all. This processing slowdown was also significantly larger among participants with lower English proficiency. Further exploratory analyses of participants' Theory of Mind, as measured by the Social Skill subscale in the Autism Spectrum Quotient, revealed that socially inclined participants are more likely than the socially disinclined to derive a scalar inference. These results together provide new empirical insights into how L2 learners process scalar implicatures and thus implications for processing theories in experimental pragmatics and second language acquisition.

A novel online assessment of pragmatic and core language skills: An attempt to tease apart language domains in children

It remains unclear whether pragmatic language skills and core language skills (grammar and vocabulary) are distinct language domains. The present work aimed to tease apart these domains using a novel online assessment battery administered to almost 400 children aged 7 to 13 years. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that pragmatic and core language domains could be measured separately, but that both domains were highly related (r = .79). However, zero-order correlations between pragmatic tests were quite small, indicating that task-specific skills played an important role in performance, and follow-up exploratory factor analysis suggested that pragmatics might be best understood as a family of skills rather than a domain. This means that these different pragmatic skills may have different cognitive underpinnings and also need to be assessed separately. However, our overall results supported the idea that pragmatic and core aspects of language are closely related during development, with one area scaffolding development in the other.

Factors influencing resilience of parents with children with neurodevelopmental disorders: The role of structural language, social cognition, and social support

BACKGROUND

Resilience allows a more positive coping and improves parents' wellbeing when they face a difficult situation like having a child with a neurodevelopmental disorder (NDD). We aim to analyze the development of resilience in parents of children with different NDD (ASD, DLD and ADHD) with different levels of structural language and social cognition, as well as the social support available for their families, and compare it to children with typical development (TD).

METHOD

We analyzed the level of resilience of 156 parents, 73 with children with TD and 73 with three different NDD, taking into account variables such as age, structural language (receptive grammar) and social cognition (emotional understanding) of the children, and also the type of social support available to them.

RESULTS

Children with DLD and ASD showed lower receptive grammar and emotional comprehension skills, although only parents of children with ASD obtained better resilience scores. Moreover, age of children and formal support variables predicted the resilience of the parents according to the type of NDD.

DISCUSSION

The severity of social cognition and structural language difficulties of children with NDD and the fact of having support from professionals and family associations have a significant influence on the development of parental resilience.

Linking metaphor comprehension with analogical reasoning: Evidence from typical development and autism spectrum disorder

We examined the relationship between metaphor comprehension and verbal analogical reasoning in young adults who were either typically developing (TD) or diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The ASD sample was highly educated and high in verbal ability, and closely matched to a subset of TD participants on age, gender, educational background, and verbal ability. Additional TD participants with a broader range of abilities were also tested. Each participant solved sets of verbal analogies and metaphors in verification formats, allowing measurement of both accuracy and reaction times. Measures of individual differences in vocabulary, verbal working memory, and autistic traits were also obtained. Accuracy for both the verbal analogy and the metaphor task was very similar across the ASD and matched TD groups. However, reaction times on both tasks were longer for the ASD group. Additionally, stronger correlations between verbal analogical reasoning and working memory capacity in the ASD group indicated that processing verbal analogies was more effortful for them. In the case of both groups, accuracy on the metaphor and analogy tasks was correlated. A mediation analysis revealed that after controlling for working memory capacity, the inter-task correlation could be accounted for by the mediating variable of vocabulary knowledge, suggesting that the primary common mechanisms linking the two tasks involve language skills.

The comprehension of grammaticalized implicit meanings in SPCD and ASD children: A comparative study

BACKGROUND

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and social pragmatic communication disorder (SPCD) are two neurodevelopmental disorders with many similarities in affected individuals' impairments in social-communicative and pragmatic development. A central question pertaining to their differentiation concerns whether the distinction is truly qualitative or, instead, quantitative in nature, and indeed, defining the boundary between SPCD and ASD with IQ in the normal range often presents differential-diagnostic difficulties. While deficits in the comprehension of certain linguistically systematic implicit verbal meanings have been targeted by experimental research in ASD, to date they have not been investigated in controlled experiments in SPCD.

AIMS

The empirical objectives of our study are twofold. First, it is explored whether the comprehension of a set of highly systematic, grammaticalized implicit meanings is impaired in ASD and SPCD children compared to their typically developing (TD) peers, and whether ASD and SPCD children differ from each other in accessing these verbal meanings. Second, it is investigated whether receptive grammatical competence and first-order ToM abilities are associated with children's performance in any way and whether there is a difference in this regard between the ASD and the SPCD group.

METHODS & PROCEDURES

Our main experiment, using a sentence-picture verification task, tested the comprehension of highly systematic implicit verbal meanings, including grammaticalized implicatures, presuppositions, and entailments. The experiment was complemented with a false-belief (ToM) task and a test of receptive grammar, among other measures. Seventy-one 4-to-9-year-old children participated in the study (ASD: n=19, SPCD: n=13, TD controls: n=39).

OUTCOMES & RESULTS

While both children with SPCD and children with ASD performed significantly more poorly than the TD group, only the comprehension profile of the SPCD group differed significantly from that of the TD group. Importantly, while ASDs' performance exhibited an association with their ToM results, the performance of SPCDs showed a correlation with their receptive grammar skills. By contrast, the performance of TDs correlated with neither.

CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS

These findings reveal potential divergences in the cognitive developmental mechanisms that underlie the semantic-pragmatic difficulties in the two clinical groups, suggesting that the communicative impairments in ASD and in SPCD differ qualitatively, rather than quantitatively. Specific implications for theories of pragmatic impairments in ASD and in SPCD are discussed.

WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS

What is already known on the subject Linguistically systematic implicit meanings are understudied both in ASD and in SPCD. Within this domain of verbal meaning, the majority of relevant experimental work on ASD, concentrated on generalized (mostly: scalar) implicatures, has yielded somewhat divergent results, while the comprehension difficulties in SPCD have remained barely charted territory. Linguistically more highly conventionalized implicit verbal meanings have not been experimentally investigated in either neurodevelopmental disorder. What this study adds A primary finding of our study is that although both the SPCD and the ASD group show significant deficit in the comprehension of highly conventional, grammaticalized implicit meanings, SPCD children may diverge more in their comprehension profile from their TD peers than ASD children. Another key result is that the comprehension of grammaticalized implicit meanings is linked with different cognitive functions in ASD and in SPCD. While comprehension performance is associated with ToM in ASD but not in SPCD or in TD, it is correlated with receptive grammar skills in SPCD but not in ASD or in TD. Clinical implications of this study These findings provide potential support for the hypothesis that the difference between ASD and SPCD is qualitative rather than quantitative in nature, thereby casting doubt on the conception that pragmatic limitations in SPCD are to be approached as a less severe form of similar deficits in ASD. Uncovering differences in the underlying cognitive sources and in the comprehension deficits of children with ASD and SPCD are critical for the improvement of the accuracy of SPCD children's early diagnosis and timely therapeutic intervention.

Understanding indirect requests for information in high-functioning autism

Few works have addressed the processing of indirect requests in High-Functioning Autism (HFA), and results are conflicting. Some studies report HFA individuals’ difficulties in indirect requests comprehension; others suggest that it might be preserved in HFA. Furthermore, the role of Theory of Mind in understanding indirect requests is an open issue. The goal of this work is twofold: first, assessing whether comprehension of indirect requests for information is preserved in HFA; second, exploring whether mind-reading skills predict this ability. We tested a group of (n = 14; 9–12 years) HFA children and two groups of younger (n = 19; 5–6 years) and older (n = 28; 9–12 years) typically developing (TD) children in a semi-structured task involving direct, indirect and highly indirect requests for information. Results suggested that HFA can understand indirect and highly indirect requests, as well as TD children. Yet, while Theory of Mind skills seem to enhance older TD children understanding, this is not the case for HFA children. Therefore, interestingly, they could rely on different interpretative strategies.

Evaluating atypical language in autism using automated language measures

Measurement of language atypicalities in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is cumbersome and costly. Better language outcome measures are needed. Using language transcripts, we generated Automated Language Measures (ALMs) and tested their validity. 169 participants (96 ASD, 28 TD, 45 ADHD) ages 7 to 17 were evaluated with the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule. Transcripts of one task were analyzed to generate seven ALMs: mean length of utterance in morphemes, number of different word roots (NDWR), um proportion, content maze proportion, unintelligible proportion, c-units per minute, and repetition proportion. With the exception of repetition proportion (p [Formula: see text]), nonparametric ANOVAs showed significant group differences (p[Formula: see text]). The TD and ADHD groups did not differ from each other in post-hoc analyses. With the exception of NDWR, the ASD group showed significantly (p[Formula: see text]) lower scores than both comparison groups. The ALMs were correlated with standardized clinical and language evaluations of ASD. In age- and IQ-adjusted logistic regression analyses, four ALMs significantly predicted ASD status with satisfactory accuracy (67.9-75.5%). When ALMs were combined together, accuracy improved to 82.4%. These ALMs offer a promising approach for generating novel outcome measures.

The Role of Working Memory in the Processing of Scalar Implicatures of Patients With Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders

A number of studies have demonstrated pragmatic language difficulties in people with Schizophrenia Spectrum and Other Psychotic Disorders. However, research about how people with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders understand scalar implicatures (SIs) is surprisingly rare, since SIs have generated much of the most recent literature. Scalar implicatures are pragmatic inferences, based on linguistic expressions like some, must, or, which are part of a scale of informativeness (e.g., some/many/all). Logically, the less informative expressions imply the more informative ones, but pragmatically people usually infer that the presence of a less informative term implies that the more informative term was not applicable. In one of the few existing studies with people with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders, Wampers et al. (2018) observed that in general, people with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders were less likely to derive SIs than controls. The current study has three main aims. First, we want to replicate the original finding with the scalar terms some-all. Second, we want to investigate how these patients deal with different scalar terms, that is, we want to investigate if scalar diversity is also observed in this clinical group. Third, we investigate the role of working memory, often seen as another important mechanism to enable inferring SIs. Twenty-one individuals with a psychotic disorder and 21 matched controls answered 54 under-informative statements, in which seven different pairs of scalar terms were used. In addition, working memory capacity was measured. Patients with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders did not make more logical interpretations when processing quantifiers, disconfirming Wampers et al. (2018). However, certain scalar scales elicited more pragmatic interpretations than others, which is in line with the scalar diversity hypothesis. Additionally, we observed only partial evidence for the role of working memory. Only for the scalar scale and-or, a significant effect of working memory was observed. The implications of these results for patients with schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders are discussed, but also the role of working memory for pragmatic inferences, as well as the place of SIs in experimental pragmatics.

Association between CCC-2 and Structural Language, Pragmatics, Social Cognition, and Executive Functions in Children with Developmental Language Disorder

(1) Background: Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is diagnosed when the child experiences problems in language with no known underlying biomedical condition and the information required for its correct evaluation must be obtained from different contexts. The Children's Communication Checklist (CCC-2) covers aspects of a child's communication related to structural language and pragmatic skills, which are linked to social cognition or executive functions. The aim of this article is to examine parents' reports using the Spanish version of the CCC-2 questionnaire and its association with different formal assessments related to communication. (2) Methods: 30 children with DLD (3; 10-9 years old) and 39 age-matched (AM) children with typical development were assessed using formal measures of structural language, pragmatics, social cognition, and executive functions. Parents of children with DLD answered the Spanish version of the CCC-2. (3) Results: The performance of children with DLD was lower in all the formal assessments in comparison to AM children. The CCC-2 was significantly correlated with all the direct child assessments, although only formal measures of structural language predicted both the structural language and pragmatics scales of the CCC-2. (4) Conclusions: The CCC-2 answered by parents was consistent with formal assessments in children with DLD, and structural language seemed to be the best predictor of all the subscales.

Comprehension of the Presupposition Trigger Ye "Also" by Mandarin-Speaking Preschoolers With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorders

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been reported to be widely impaired in their understanding of linguistic expressions that rely on elements of the context or norms of communication. The accurate interpretation of sentences conveying presuppositions often relies on such content, however, little previous research has investigated the ASD population’s understanding of these sentences. The present study attempts to remedy this by exploring the understanding that Mandarin-speaking preschoolers with ASD and their typically developing (TD) peers have of sentence containing the presupposition trigger ye “also”. We used a Picture Selection Task and found that Mandarin-speaking preschool children with ASD performed significantly worse than their TD peers with regard to their understanding of the presuppositional content of sentences containing this presupposition trigger. Additionally, in contrast with previous results, TD preschoolers’ understanding of this presupposition trigger was found to be adult-like. We attribute this to an improved experimental design.

Verbal and Figural Creativity in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder and Typical Development

Previous studies have shown that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate lower performance on creativity tasks. Yet, recent findings suggest that individuals with ASD are not necessarily impaired in verbal creativity, as measured by the novel metaphor generation task. The current study investigates verbal and figural creativity in 40 children with ASD (aged 11–14 years) and 39 peers with typical development (TD) (aged 11–15 years). We also tested the contribution of executive functions to the creative performance. A sentence completion questionnaire was used to test creative verbal generation, while a task of drawing non-existent objects was used to assess figural abilities. The results indicate that children with ASD generated a greater quantity of creative metaphors and showed greater use of a specific kind of representational change on the figural creativity task: cross-category insertions (e.g., a house with a tail). However, no correlation was found between the metaphor generation task and the use of cross-category insertions for either group. Results also showed that, whereas phonemic fluency contributed to the explained variance in novel metaphor generation in the ASD group, fluid intelligence, although only marginally, contributed to variance in novel metaphor generation in the TD group. These findings suggest that verbal creativity and figural creativity are two separate abilities relying on different cognitive resources. Our results show that those with ASD and TD differ in the cognitive abilities they use to perform the metaphor generation task. The research points to a unique creative cognition profile among children with ASD.

Pragmatic Language in Children and Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Do Theory of Mind and Executive Functions Have a Mediating Role?

Pragmatic language (PL) is defined as the ability to use language effectively in communicative exchanges. Previous findings showed that deficits in PL are a core characteristic of the communicative profile of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). While different lines of research have revealed a close link between PL and theory of mind (ToM), and between PL and executive functions (EFs), to our knowledge, few studies have explored the relationship between these three domains in children with ASD, and their results have been contradictory. The present study thus aimed to contribute to our understanding of PL in children with ASD and to analyze the underlying mediating role of ToM and EFs. PL is a complex and multifaceted construct. In the present study, we focused on two specific aspects, such as the comprehension of nonliteral language, and the ability to make inferences. After testing 143 participants (73 with ASD), our results confirmed that impairments in PL are a crucial feature of the ASD profile. Children with ASD were also more impaired than their typically developing peers in both ToM and EFs. When the mediating role of ToM and EFs on PL was considered, it emerged that only ToM contributed significantly to the relationship between group and PL. We discussed the potential importance of interventions not focused exclusively on PL, but also involving ToM. LAY SUMMARY: In everyday life, we use pragmatic language to interact successfully with others. Individuals with autism experience significant difficulty in pragmatic language, showing consequent impairments in communication. This study compared the comprehension of nonliteral language, and the ability to make inferences of children with autism and children with typical development, focusing on the role of social and cognitive abilities. Children with autism had difficulties in pragmatic language compared to children with typical development. In addition, the capacity to consider the perspective, intentions and beliefs of other people contributed significantly to the pragmatic language. Autism Res 2021, 14: 932-945. © 2020 International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals LLC.

A Distinction Between Linguistic and Social Pragmatics Helps the Precise Characterization of Pragmatic Challenges in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders and Developmental Language Disorder

Purpose Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and children with developmental language disorder (DLD) face challenges with pragmatics, but the nature and sources of these difficulties are not fully understood yet. The purpose of this study was to compare the competence of children with ASD and children with DLD in two pragmatics tasks that place different demands on theory of mind (ToM) and structural language. Method Twenty Spanish-speaking children with ASD, 20 with DLD, and 40 age- and language-matched children with neurotypical development were assessed using two pragmatics tasks: a linguistic pragmatics task, which requires competence with structural language, and a social pragmatics task, which requires competence with ToM as well. Results For linguistic pragmatics, the ASD group performed similarly to the DLD and language-matched groups, and performance was predicted by structural language. For social pragmatics, the ASD group performed lower than the DLD and language-matched groups, and performance was predicted both by structural language and ToM. Conclusions Children with ASD and children with DLD face difficulties in linguistic pragmatics tasks, in keeping with their structural language. Children with ASD face exceptional difficulties with social pragmatics tasks, due to their difficulties with ToM. The distinction between linguistic and social pragmatic competences can inform assessment and intervention for pragmatic difficulties in different populations.

"If you catch my drift...": ability to infer implied meaning is distinct from vocabulary and grammar skills

Background: Some individuals with autism find it challenging to use and understand language in conversation, despite having good abilities in core aspects of language such as grammar and vocabulary. This suggests that pragmatic skills (such as understanding implied meanings in conversation) are separable from core language skills. However, it has been surprisingly difficult to demonstrate this dissociation in the general population. We propose that this may be because prior studies have used tasks in which different aspects of language are confounded.

Methods: The present study used novel language tasks and factor analysis to test whether pragmatic understanding of implied meaning, as part of a broader domain involving social understanding, is separable from core language skills. 120 adult participants were recruited online to complete a 7-task battery, including a test assessing comprehension of conversational implicature.

Results: In confirmatory analysis of a preregistered model, we compared whether the data showed better fit to a two-factor structure (including a “social understanding” and “core language” factor) or a simpler one-factor structure (comprising a general factor). The two-factor model showed significantly better fit.

Conclusions: This study supports the view that interpreting context-dependent conversational meaning is partially distinct from core language skills. This has implications for understanding the pragmatic language impairments reported in autism.

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

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is often described as being characterised by a uniform pragmatic impairment. However, recent evidence suggests that some areas of pragmatic functioning are preserved. This study seeks to determine to which extent context-based derivation of non-linguistically encoded meaning is functional in ASD. We compare the performance of 24 adults with ASD, and matched neuro-typical adults in two act-out pragmatic tasks. The first task examines generation of indirect request interpretations, and the second the comprehension of irony. Intact contextual comprehension of indirect requests contrasts with marked difficulties in understanding irony. These results suggest that preserved pragmatics in ASD is limited to egocentric processing of context, which does not rely on assumptions about the speaker's mental states.

"If you catch my drift...": ability to infer implied meaning is distinct from vocabulary and grammar skills

Background: Some individuals with autism find it challenging to use and understand language in conversation, despite having good abilities in core aspects of language such as grammar and vocabulary. This suggests that pragmatic skills (such as understanding implied meanings in conversation) are separable from core language skills. However, it has been surprisingly difficult to demonstrate this dissociation in the general population. We propose that this may be because prior studies have used tasks in which different aspects of language are confounded. Methods: The present study used novel language tasks and factor analysis to test whether pragmatic understanding of implied meaning, as part of a broader domain involving social understanding, is separable from core language skills. 120 adult participants were recruited online to complete a 7-task battery, including a test assessing comprehension of conversational implicature. Results: In confirmatory analysis of a preregistered model, we compared whether the data showed better fit to a two-factor structure (including a "social understanding" and "core language" factor) or a simpler one-factor structure (comprising a general factor). The two-factor model showed significantly better fit. Conclusions: This study supports the view that interpreting context-dependent conversational meaning is partially distinct from core language skills. This has implications for understanding the pragmatic language impairments reported in autism.

"If you catch my drift...": ability to infer implied meaning is distinct from vocabulary and grammar skills

Background: Some individuals with autism find it challenging to use and understand language in conversation, despite having good abilities in core aspects of language such as grammar and vocabulary. This suggests that pragmatic skills (such as understanding implied meanings in conversation) are separable from core language skills. However, it has been surprisingly difficult to demonstrate this dissociation in the general population. We propose that this may be because prior studies have used tasks in which different aspects of language are confounded. Methods: The present study used novel language tasks and factor analysis to test whether pragmatic language skills are separable from core language skills. 120 adult participants were recruited online to complete a 7-task battery, including a test assessing comprehension of conversational implicature. Results: In confirmatory analysis of a preregistered model, we compared whether the data showed better fit to a two-factor structure (including a pragmatic conversation comprehension and core language factor) or a simpler one-factor structure (comprising a general language factor). The two-factor model showed significantly better fit. Conclusions: This study supports the view that interpreting context-dependent conversational meaning is partially distinct from core language skill. This has implications for understanding the pragmatic language impairments reported in autism.

Interpreting physical and mental metaphors: Is Theory of Mind associated with pragmatics in middle childhood?

We investigated the association between individual differences in metaphor understanding and Theory of Mind (ToM) in typically developing children. We distinguished between two types of metaphors and created a Physical and Mental Metaphors task, echoing a similar distinction for ToM. Nine-year-olds scored lower than older age-groups in ToM as well as in the interpretation of mental, but not physical, metaphors. Moreover, nine-year-olds (but not older children) who are better in ToM are also better in interpreting mental, but not physical, metaphors. This suggests that the link between metaphor and ToM is stronger when metaphorical interpretation involves mental aspects, and it is more evident in early rather than later childhood.

The Understanding of Scalar Implicatures in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Dichotomized Responses to Violations of Informativeness

This study investigated the understanding of underinformative sentences like "Some elephants have trunks" by children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The scalar term 'some' can be interpreted pragmatically, 'Not all elephants have trunks,' or logically, 'Some and possibly all elephants have trunks.' Literature indicates that adults with ASD show no real difficulty in interpreting scalar implicatures, i.e., they often interpret them pragmatically, as controls do. This contrasts with the traditional claim of difficulties of people with ASD in other pragmatic domains, and is more in line with the idea that pragmatic problems are not universal. The aim of this study was to: (a) gain insight in the ability of children with ASD to derive scalar implicatures, and (b) do this by assessing not only sensitivity to underinformativeness, but also different degrees of tolerance to violations of informativeness. We employed a classic statement-evaluation task, presenting optimal, logical false, and underinformative utterances. In Experiment 1, children had to express their judgment on a binary option 'I agree' vs. 'I disagree.' In Experiment 2, a ternary middle answer option 'I agree a bit' was also available. Sixty-six Flemish-speaking 10-year-old children were tested: 22 children with ASD, an IQ-matched group, and an age-matched group. In the binary judgment task, the ASD group gave more pragmatic answers than the other groups, which was significant in the mixed effects logistic regression analysis, although not in the non-parametric analysis. In the ternary judgment task, the children with ASD showed a dichotomized attitude toward the speaker's meaning, by tending to either fully agree or fully disagree with underinformative statements, in contrast with TD children, who preferred the middle option. Remarkably, the IQ-matched group exhibited the same pattern of results as the ASD group. Thanks to a fine-grained measure such as the ternary judgment task, this study highlighted a neglected aspect of the pragmatic profile of ASD, whose struggle with social communication seems to affect also the domain of informativeness. We discuss the implications of the dichotomized reaction toward violations of informativeness in terms of the potential role of ASD and of cognitive and verbal abilities.

Comprehension of Generalized Conversational Implicatures by Children With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder

This study evaluates the comprehension of generalized conversational implicatures (GCI) in children with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD), using a GCI test constructed based on the Levinson model, which distinguishes between three types of implicatures: type Q (or scalar: "what is not referred to does not occur"); type I ("by default, it is not necessary to say what can be assumed"); and type M ("if someone is expressing something in a not very simple or marked way, it is because s/he is describing a situation that is not very typical, frequent, or prototypical"). In addition to the ASD group (n = 22), two comparison groups were utilized: a group matched on chronological age with the ASD group, but with a higher linguistic age (TCD group, n = 22), and a group matched on linguistic age with the ASD group, but with a lower chronological age (TLD group, n = 22). In all cases, linguistic age was assessed with the Peabody test. The performance of the three groups on the GCI test was compared (overall and on each type of implicature), and performance on the three types of implicature was compared within each group. The ASD group obtained worse performance than the other two groups, both overall and for each implicature type, without also obtaining differences in performance on the three implicature types. The TCD group obtained better performance than the TLD group on overall performance, but not on each implicature type, and both groups obtained lower performance on the type M heuristics than on the type I. Based on these results, the children with ASD in our study presented limitations in the comprehension of the three types of GCI, but it was not possible to obtain evidence for an inferential continuum of the three types of GCI. However, in the two typical development groups, this evidence was obtained, leading us to propose an inferential continuum model based on the different levels of dependence on the context of each of the three types of implicatures, with type M implicatures being more contextually dependent.