Task Effects on Sentence Comprehension in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Evidence from Sentence-Picture-Matching Tests
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5900530 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Marios Andreou (0000-0002-7867-3163, University of Peloponnese), Konstantina Sonia Antoniou (University of Peloponnese), Eleni Peristeri (0000-0001-9629-0193, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 4 |
| Publication date | 2025-01-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Languages (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2226-471X • E-ISSN: 2226-471X |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/languages10010004 |
| OpenAlex | W4405992144 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 44 |
The present study compared two sentence-picture-matching tests in Greek, namely the Syntactic Proficiency Test and the sentence comprehension subtest of the Diagnostic Verbal Intelligence Quotient (DVIQ) battery, to assess complex sentence comprehension in 29 Greek-speaking children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Crucially, the DVIQ test included more foils and visual details than the Syntactic Proficiency Test. The study had three aims: (1) to examine sentence comprehension performance across various syntactically complex structures (passives, clitic pronouns, subject, and object relative clauses) and identify comprehension asymmetries among these types; (2) to investigate task effects on syntactic comprehension accuracy by comparing performance across the two tests; and (3) to examine differences in error types across tasks. Results showed that autistic children were significantly less accurate in their comprehension performance of passives and clitics in the DVIQ compared to the Syntactic Proficiency Test, with no difference in accuracy observed for subject or object relative clauses, which were consistently high and low, respectively, across both tests. Error patterns also differed across the two tests. More specifically, thematic role reversals in passives were more frequent in the DVIQ than the Syntactic Proficiency Test. The overall findings suggest that the DVIQ's enhanced perceptual complexity may have affected children's accuracy in their comprehension of passives and clitics, while object relatives were less affected by task effects because of their high structural complexity. The study highlights how visual complexity and foil count can impact syntactic comprehension in autistic children and underscores the importance of task design in assessing syntactic skills in ASD
Autism · Autism spectrum disorder · Cognitive psychology · Comprehension · Developmental psychology · Matching (statistics · Natural language processing · Sentence · Statistics · Task (project management · Autism Spectrum Disorder Research · Behavioral and Psychological Studies · Computer Science · Language Development and Disorders · Mathematics · Psychology · Artificial Intelligence
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
Enhanced Perceptual Functioning in Autism
Individual differences in syntactic processing
The Weak Coherence Account
Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using lme4
Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items
Semantic Constraints on Relative Clause Extraposition
Theory of Mind, Executive Functions, and Syntax in Bilingual Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |