Comprehension of Spatial Demonstratives in 4- to 6-Year-Old Chinese-Speaking Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Abstract

Children with autism have difficulties in processing contextual information in communication. This study explored how 4- to-6-year-old children comprehend the spatial demonstratives zhe (this) and na (that), which encode the relationship between language and context in Mandarin Chinese. Thirty-three children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and thirty-nine typically developing (TD) children from mainland China participated in the experiment. With semi-structured interactive tasks, we designed three cueing situations: no-cue, eye-gaze and pointing. The results showed that ASD children tended to perform less accurately than TD children in the no-cue and gaze-cue conditions, particularly when the speaker and participant were on opposite sides. Additionally, differences in comprehension levels for the two spatial demonstratives zhe and na existed only in the no-cue condition and only when children were 4 years old. The current study indicates that children with ASD are impaired in the processing of contextual information such as gaze cues and spatial location. Nevertheless, children with ASD have a relatively preserved ability to use highly salient pointing gesture cues, which compensates for the impairment.