TY - JOUR

T1 - Evidence for syntactic alignment in children with autism

AU - Allen, M. L.

AU - Haywood, S.

AU - Rajendran, G.

AU - Branigan, H.

PY - 2011/5

Y1 - 2011/5

N2 - We report an experiment that examined whether children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) spontaneously converge, or align, syntactic structure with a conversational partner. Children with ASD were more likely to produce a passive structure to describe a picture after hearing their interlocutor use a passive structure to describe an unrelated picture when playing a card game. Furthermore, they converged syntactic structure with their interlocutor to the same extent as did both chronological and verbal age-matched controls. These results suggest that the linguistic impairment that is characteristic of children with ASD, and inparticular their difficulty with interactive language usage, cannot be explained in terms of a general deficit in linguistic imitation.

AB - We report an experiment that examined whether children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) spontaneously converge, or align, syntactic structure with a conversational partner. Children with ASD were more likely to produce a passive structure to describe a picture after hearing their interlocutor use a passive structure to describe an unrelated picture when playing a card game. Furthermore, they converged syntactic structure with their interlocutor to the same extent as did both chronological and verbal age-matched controls. These results suggest that the linguistic impairment that is characteristic of children with ASD, and inparticular their difficulty with interactive language usage, cannot be explained in terms of a general deficit in linguistic imitation.

KW - autism

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=79953771109&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2010.01001.x

DO - 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2010.01001.x

M3 - Journal article

VL - 14

SP - 540

EP - 548

JO - Developmental Science

JF - Developmental Science

SN - 1363-755X

IS - 3

ER -