Comprehension and definition of compound words in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
File(s)
Date Issued
May 28, 2018
Author(s)
Abstract
Background: More insight is needed into the mechanisms that underlie co-morbid language impairments in
children with ASD across complex lexical and/or grammatical phenomena, particularly for languages beyond
English.
Aim/s: To test the comprehension and production of two-constituent compound words at the single-word level for
Greek (e.g., pondikopayitha ‘mouse trap’) in four school-aged children (mean age 7; 8 years) diagnosed with
ASD.
Method: Comprehension was probed in relation to the word’s constituents, for which semantic interpretation
involved explaining the meaning of the compound. This involved the examiner introducing the child to a puppet
and asking the child to tell the puppet: “Why do we say X?” For carrot juice, one of the warm up examples used
the experimenter asked: ‘We say carrot juice because it is juice from a carrot, right?’ Each response was coded
at two levels, one that related to comprehension (i.e., parsing of the NNC) and one that tapped into semantic
interpretation of the NNC (i.e., explaining). Production of compound words was tested using a picture
confrontation naming task.
Results: The results revealed that the children with ASD had less difficulty parsing the compound constituents
but showed a significant deficit in deriving the compound meaning. Naming compounds was exceptionally difficult
for the ASD group despite generally intact comprehension of the object pictures.
Conclusion: It is hypothesized that children with ASD have difficulties at the interface of (morpho) syntax with
semantics and pragmatics, that is, at the conceptual-intentional system.
children with ASD across complex lexical and/or grammatical phenomena, particularly for languages beyond
English.
Aim/s: To test the comprehension and production of two-constituent compound words at the single-word level for
Greek (e.g., pondikopayitha ‘mouse trap’) in four school-aged children (mean age 7; 8 years) diagnosed with
ASD.
Method: Comprehension was probed in relation to the word’s constituents, for which semantic interpretation
involved explaining the meaning of the compound. This involved the examiner introducing the child to a puppet
and asking the child to tell the puppet: “Why do we say X?” For carrot juice, one of the warm up examples used
the experimenter asked: ‘We say carrot juice because it is juice from a carrot, right?’ Each response was coded
at two levels, one that related to comprehension (i.e., parsing of the NNC) and one that tapped into semantic
interpretation of the NNC (i.e., explaining). Production of compound words was tested using a picture
confrontation naming task.
Results: The results revealed that the children with ASD had less difficulty parsing the compound constituents
but showed a significant deficit in deriving the compound meaning. Naming compounds was exceptionally difficult
for the ASD group despite generally intact comprehension of the object pictures.
Conclusion: It is hypothesized that children with ASD have difficulties at the interface of (morpho) syntax with
semantics and pragmatics, that is, at the conceptual-intentional system.