Comprehension of Yes/No- and Wh-questions Across Autism Spectrum Conditions
Understanding questions is key for successful communication. Although deficits in communication are the hallmark of Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC), how both yes/no-questions and wh-questions are understood by children with ASC has been poorly investigated in Spanish. Nevertheless, questions play a...
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis doctoral |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2021 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | CBUC, CESCA |
| Repositorio: | TDR. Tesis Doctorales en Red |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:www.tdx.cat:10803/671144 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10803/671144 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Lingüística Linguistics Comprensió Comprensión Comprehension Autisme Autismo Autism Sintaxi Sintaxis Syntax Ciències Humanes i Socials 81 |
| Sumario: | Understanding questions is key for successful communication. Although deficits in communication are the hallmark of Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC), how both yes/no-questions and wh-questions are understood by children with ASC has been poorly investigated in Spanish. Nevertheless, questions play an important role in ASC diagnostic tests and neurocognitive assessments. Although there is a widespread assumption of visual support easing linguistic production and comprehension, it has not been extensively investigated in question comprehension research. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to a more comprehensive picture of language impairments in ASC by targeting questions as a specific and neglected dimension of language in ASC. Specific research questions concern the impact of syntactic differences in question type, syntactic complexity and other linguistic, cognitive and age factors on question comprehension. Finally, the role of visual support as a facilitator of question comprehension is investigated. 34 children with ASC–ID (autism without intellectual disability, mean age = 9.99) were recruited and matched on VMA (verbal mental age) with 34 TD (typically developing) participants (mean age = 8.85). 14 individuals with ASC+ID (autism with intellectual disability, mean age = 12.95) were also recruited. These were compared to 7 ID (intellectual disability) participants without ASC (mean age = 12.86). The task design of the experiment used narratives to control the context in which yes/no-questions and different types of wh-questions (namely wh-questions in simple and complex sentences, long-distance wh-questions in complex sentences and local wh-questions in complex sentences) were asked. Participants responded immediately after having been exposed to narratives with either visual support or audio support only. Participants’ ability to answer questions about these narratives was assessed as a measure of their question comprehension. Significant results showed that both ASC and TD groups had greater difficulties in wh-questions than yes/no-questions. Compared to TD, ASC–ID also had lower wh- question comprehension. In addition, the ASC+ID group showed a lower level of question comprehension in yes/no-questions and in wh-questions compared to the ASC– ID and ID groups. All wh-questions in complex sentences and local wh-questions in complex sentences were more difficult for the ASC–ID group in comparison to the TD group. The ASC+ID group underperformed in all types of wh-question comprehension in comparison to the ASC–ID participants and had greater difficulties to comprehend local wh-questions in complex sentences compared to the ID group. Visual support aided question comprehension both in ASC and in TD. In between- group comparisons significantly greater question comprehension difficulties in tasks with visual support in the ASC–ID relative to the TD group remained. The ASC+ID group scored significantly lower in both visual and non-visual tasks in comparison to both ASC– ID and ID groups. VMA and VIQ (verbal intelligence quotient) correlated with yes/no- question comprehension in TD and in ASC–ID participants. In TD individuals, there was a correlation with these variables and wh-question comprehension. In the ID group, working memory and VIQ had a positive relation with the comprehension of some types of wh-questions. These results provide novel evidence for a question comprehension impairment in ASC with and without ID, which specifically centers on wh-questions. As age and cognitive factors were more related to question comprehension in TD and ID groups than in ASC, different underlying cognitive mechanisms might be at work in ASC. At a practical level, this thesis incites reflection on the roles of question types both in diagnostic assessments and interventions. |
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