This study investigated how autism spectrum disorder (ASD) impacts children's ability to identify ownership from linguistic cues (proper nouns vs. possessive pronouns) and their awareness of ownership rights. In comparison to typically developing (TD) children matched on receptive language (M age equivalents: 53-56 months), children with ASD were…

Purpose: Most children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have below-age lexical knowledge and lexical representation. Our goal is to examine ways in which difficulties with social communication and language processing that are often associated with ASD may constrain these children's abilities to learn new words and to explore whether minimizing…

This study addresses the question as to what cognitive abilities influence performance on article choice and direct object scrambling in high-functioning Dutch-speaking children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Schaeffer (2016/2018) shows that a group of 27 high-functioning Dutch-speaking children with ASD, aged 5-14, overgenerates the…

This study examines the discourse basis for referent accessibility and its relation to the choice of referring expressions by children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and typically developing children. The aim is to delineate how the linguistic and extra-linguistic context affects referent accessibility to the speaker. The study also examines…

Purpose: The inclusion of an increasing number of high-functioning ASD children in mainstream classrooms demands for adequate awareness of autism and effective teaching methods from teachers to ensure that learning takes places efficiently. Hence, this study investigated the atypical language performance of a high-functioning Malay girl with…

This study investigates the referential choice of Mandarin-speaking children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The data consist of narratives from 16 children with ASD and 16 typically-developing (TD) children. The narratives were elicited using the wordless picture book "Frog, where are you?" Participants' referential expressions…

In order to study problems of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) with morphosyntax, we investigated twenty high-functioning Greek-speaking children (mean age: 6;11) and twenty age- and language-matched typically developing children on environments that allow or forbid object clitics or their corresponding noun phrase. Children with…

Purpose: How do children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) extend a noun to the category of objects it labels? Given their tendency to perceive locally, their extensions might be too narrow. Given their social-communicative deficits and a context in which the knowledge of a social-communicative partner promotes narrow extensions, their…

This study reports data on form classes (e.g., nouns, verbs, modifiers) of the early vocabulary of an English-speaking boy with autism, to determine whether his language acquisition was referential or expressive. Results are compared with norms for normal and Down's syndrome populations. The predominance of nominals suggests a referential language…