Does Autism Affect Children's Identification of Ownership and Defence of Ownership Rights?
Calum Hartley, Nina Harrison, John J Shaw
PMID 33492538WHAT IT FOUND
Children with autism identified their own belongings as accurately as peers but struggled to track others' property.
They were less likely to defend ownership rights against theft. Pronouns caused more confusion than proper nouns, suggesting language choice affects comprehension of ownership.
Key findings
01Children with ASD were significantly less accurate than typically developing children when identifying items belonging to others, but not their own items.
02Children with ASD responded with significantly greater accuracy when owners were named explicitly compared to when possessive pronouns were used.
03Children with ASD were significantly less likely to protest when an experimenter attempted to claim the child's own object.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The two groups were not matched for age. The children with ASD were much older (mean 11.37 years) than the typically developing controls (mean 3.88 years), although they were matched for vocabulary skills. This makes it difficult to separate the effects of autism from developmental age differences. The sample sizes were small (18 and 19), which limits the generalisability of the findings. The tasks were highly structured and artificial. Children may behave differently regarding ownership in naturalistic settings with peers or siblings. The experimenter who attempted to take the objects was an adult. Children with ASD may have been less likely to protest against an authority figure, which could explain the low protest rates independently of their understanding of ownership rights.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that children with ASD do not understand the concept of ownership. They accurately identified their own belongings. The difficulty lies specifically in tracking other people's property and in comprehending possessive pronouns, which require shifting the reference point based on who is speaking.