The Acquisition of Relative Clauses in Autism: The Role of Executive Functions and Language.
Eleni Peristeri, Xanthi Kamona, Spyridoula Varlokosta
PMID 37898582WHAT IT FOUND
Autistic children’s relative-clause accuracy was not clearly lower than typically developing children’s, except in some object-clause conditions.
Object relative clauses were harder than subject relative clauses for both groups.
Key findings
01Object relative clauses were harder than subject relative clauses for both groups. In the condition where the nouns matched in gender and number, subject-clause accuracy was 97.1% for autistic children and 100% for typically developing children, while object-clause accuracy was 73.3% and 78.5%.
02The groups were equally accurate on active transitive sentences (98.1% each), but autistic children scored lower than typically developing children in object clauses where gender matched but number mismatched and in object clauses where gender mismatched but number matched.
03Object-clause accuracy was associated with different abilities in the two groups: for autistic children, IQ and inhibition on the arrows task were associated with some object-clause conditions; for typically developing children, vocabulary, working memory, and inhibition on the arrows task were associated with some object-clause conditions.
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 sample was small: 21 autistic children and 21 typically developing children. All participants had IQ scores of 80 or above, so the study does not show how children with lower IQ would perform. The children came from Greek-speaking schools and clinics, and the language-specific number and gender marking may not transfer to other languages. The age range was broad, from 7 to 11 years, so developmental differences may affect the results. The sentence-picture matching task required pointing to pictures and coordinating with the examiner, which may add demands beyond language alone. The study measured associations between abilities and comprehension, so it cannot show that improving vocabulary, working memory, or inhibition improves relative-clause comprehension.
Declared interests
The supplied text reports only that the funder was Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. It does not report industry funding or author conflicts.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that autistic children have a general relative-clause comprehension deficit. The groups were equally accurate on active transitive sentences and in the condition where the nouns matched in gender and number, and lower scores appeared only in specific object-clause conditions.