ERIC Number: EJ1436641
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2024-Jul
Pages: 19
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1092-4388
EISSN: EISSN-1558-9102
Sentence Production and Sentence Repetition in Autistic Adolescents and Young Adults: Linguistic Sensitivity to Finiteness Marking
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, v67 n7 p2297-2315 2024
Purpose: Despite the clinical utility of sentence production and sentence repetition to identify language impairment in autism, little is known about the extent to which these tasks are sensitive to potential language variation. One promising method is strategic scoring, which has good clinical utility for identifying language impairment in nonautistic school-age children across variants of English. This report applies strategic scoring to analyze sentence repetition and sentence production in autistic adolescents and adults. Method: Thirty-one diverse autistic adolescents and adults with language impairment (ALI; n = 15) and without language impairment (ASD; n = 16) completed the Formulated Sentences and Recalling Sentences subtests of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals--Fifth Edition. Descriptive analyses and regression evaluated effects of scoring condition, group, and scoring condition by group on outcomes, as well as group differences in finiteness marking across utterances and morphosyntactic structures. Results: Strategic and unmodified item-level scores were essentially constant on both subtests and significantly lower in the ALI than the ASD group. Only group predicted item-level scores. Group differences were limited to: percent grammatical utterances on Formulated Sentences and percent production of overt structures combined on Sentence Repetition (ALI < ASD). Discussion: Findings support the feasibility of strategic scoring for sentence production and sentence repetition to identify language impairment and indicate that potential language variation in finiteness marking did not confound outcomes in this sample. To better understand the clinical utility of strategic scoring, replication with a larger sample varying in age and comparisons with dialect-sensitive measures are needed.
Descriptors: Sentences, Repetition, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Adolescents, Young Adults, Language Impairments, Individual Characteristics, Morphology (Languages), Syntax
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. 2200 Research Blvd #250, Rockville, MD 20850. Tel: 301-296-5700; Fax: 301-296-8580; e-mail: slhr@asha.org; Web site: http://jslhr.pubs.asha.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) (DHHS/NIH); National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) (DHHS/NIH)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals; Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule; Social Responsiveness Scale; Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence; Raven Progressive Matrices
Grant or Contract Numbers: T32DC017703; L70DC021323; R01MH112687