Comprehension of grammatical aspect markers le and zai in a diverse sample of Mandarin-exposed preschool children with autism spectrum disorder

Vulnerability of morphosyntactic production, including grammatical aspect, has been identified in at least some children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exposed to typologically different languages. However, Tovar et al. ( 2015 ) found strengths in comprehending grammatical aspect in English-exp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Reading & writing 2023-06, Vol.36 (6), p.1369-1392
Main Authors: Su, Yi (Esther), Naigles, Letitia R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age Differences
Autism
Autism Spectrum Disorders
Autistic children
Barriers
Comparative Analysis
Comprehension
Delayed Speech
Education
English (Second Language)
English language
Eye Movements
Grammar
Grammatical aspect
Infants
Language Acquisition
Language and Literature
Language Classification
Language Processing
Language Proficiency
Linguistic Competence
Linguistic performance
Linguistics
Literacy
Mandarin
Mandarin Chinese
Morphemes
Morphology (Languages)
Morphosyntax
Neurology
Pragmatics
Preferences
Preschool Children
Psycholinguistics
Second Language Learning
Social Sciences
Vocabulary Development
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Summary:Vulnerability of morphosyntactic production, including grammatical aspect, has been identified in at least some children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exposed to typologically different languages. However, Tovar et al. ( 2015 ) found strengths in comprehending grammatical aspect in English-exposed children with ASD, suggesting that the challenges in production are pragmatically based. Using the eye-movement measures of Intermodal Preferential Looking, this study further explored whether Mandarin-exposed preschoolers with ASD were able to map aspect morphemes onto their distinct meanings in comprehension, despite their apparent impairments in aspect production. The results revealed that a diverse sample of 2–6-year-old Mandarin-exposed children with ASD demonstrated similar patterns of comprehending the perfective morpheme le and the progressive morpheme zai as younger 1–3-year-old TD children, even though the children with ASD’s vocabulary production scores were dramatically delayed. Specifically, both groups of children associated the perfective morpheme le with the completed action and the progressive morpheme zai with the ongoing action. Our findings suggest that despite their apparent deficits of using/producing grammatical aspect, comprehension of grammatical aspect is a strength in children with ASD across languages. Moreover, grammatical aspect appears to be preserved in children with ASD, despite their pragmatic deficits and vocabulary disadvantages. The experimental findings shed light on the sharp contrast between linguistic competence versus linguistic performance in autistic grammatical acquisition. Furthermore, the results highlight the dissociation between the grammatical vs. the pragmatic and lexical language modules in children with ASD.
ISSN:0922-4777
1573-0905
DOI:10.1007/s11145-021-10214-w