Second-Order False Beliefs and Linguistic Recursion in Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Irina Polyanskaya, Inge-Marie Eigsti, Torben Brauner and 1 others
PMID 34524586WHAT IT FOUND
Age-matched children with and without ASD did not differ in reasoning about one person's belief about another's belief.
In children with ASD who initially struggled, five sessions of recursive language or working memory training improved this reasoning; interaction-only control did not.
Key findings
01When children with ASD and neurotypical children were matched for age, the groups did not differ on second-order false belief, recursive sentence comprehension, or working memory.
02In children with ASD, comprehension of recursively embedded sentences helped predict second-order false belief performance after age, working memory, and grammar comprehension were taken into account.
03After training, second-order false belief performance increased in the recursive embedding and working memory groups, but not in the interaction-only control group.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The age-matched groups were 30 children with ASD and 30 neurotypical children, while the full ASD sample was older, so age differences could affect interpretation. The neurotypical group did not complete all standard language and cognitive measures, and it did not receive training. The training groups were small, and the paper did not test whether gains lasted after months. The same examiner delivered training and administered before-and-after tests. Three children were placed in the working memory group at teacher request rather than by random assignment. The participants were selected for verbal comprehension and working memory scores of 80 or higher, so the results may not apply to children with lower language or working memory ability. The outcome was performance on second-order false belief stories. The study cannot show which part of the recursive embedding training caused the improvement.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat this as evidence that recursive language training or working memory training is an established therapy for everyday social communication. The gains were immediate, the training groups were small, and there was no months-later follow-up.