Comprehension and Production of Contrastive Reference in Autism
type: CreativeWork
description: Autistic children often exhibit differences in their use of referring expressions during discourse, characterized by the production of ambiguous expressions or the tendency to provide too little or too much information. Although several studies have investigated the social communicative behavior of autistic children, fewer have examined the pragmatic aspects of reference and how these are related to their cognitive and general language abilities. Moreover, the majority of studies have focused on the production of pronominal reference in narratives, with fewer exploring contrastive reference, particularly in comprehension. The current study aims to address these questions by investigating both the comprehension and production of contrastive reference and informativeness in autistic children, aiming to enhance our understanding of their pragmatic language strengths and challenges and potentially inform improved assessment and support strategies. A total of forty-two monolingual English-speaking children; 26 neurotypical children and 16 autistic children, between the ages of 6;0 to 9;11 years participated in two computerized comprehension and production tasks of contrastive reference. In the comprehension task, participants listened to adjectivally modified noun phrases in various contexts of informativity and selected the corresponding picture (e.g., Find the big cup). The production task required participants to name targets appearing in various contexts of informativity. Analyses focused on reaction times in the comprehension task and the informativeness of expressions in the production task. Results provide valuable insights into the comprehension and production of contrastive reference and informativeness in autism. Specifically, to the best of our knowledge, this study represents the first investigation into the comprehension of informativeness in contrastive reference in autism. Additionally, it expands our knowledge on the production of contrastive reference an…
abstract: Autistic children often exhibit differences in their use of referring expressions during discourse, characterized by the production of ambiguous expressions or the tendency to provide too little or too much information. Although several studies have investigated the social communicative behavior of autistic children, fewer have examined the pragmatic aspects of reference and how these are related to their cognitive and general language abilities. Moreover, the majority of studies have focused on the production of pronominal reference in narratives, with fewer exploring contrastive reference, particularly in comprehension. The current study aims to address these questions by investigating both the comprehension and production of contrastive reference and informativeness in autistic children, aiming to enhance our understanding of their pragmatic language strengths and challenges and potentially inform improved assessment and support strategies. A total of forty-two monolingual English-speaking children; 26 neurotypical children and 16 autistic children, between the ages of 6;0 to 9;11 years participated in two computerized comprehension and production tasks of contrastive reference. In the comprehension task, participants listened to adjectivally modified noun phrases in various contexts of informativity and selected the corresponding picture (e.g., Find the big cup). The production task required participants to name targets appearing in various contexts of informativity. Analyses focused on reaction times in the comprehension task and the informativeness of expressions in the production task. Results provide valuable insights into the comprehension and production of contrastive reference and informativeness in autism. Specifically, to the best of our knowledge, this study represents the first investigation into the comprehension of informativeness in contrastive reference in autism. Additionally, it expands our knowledge on the production of contrastive reference an…
author: Drakopoulou Kalantzi, Georgia
keywords: Other Linguistics, reference, autism, adjectives, informativity
date published: 2024-02-01T08:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:59:14Z
provider: City University of New York - Graduate Center
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York