Person-reference in autism spectrum disorder: Developmental trends and the role of linguistic input.
Pronoun growth in autism follows a typical track; target referential flexibility, not basic pronouns, after age four.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Mihaela et al. (2020) watched autistic toddlers at home. They counted how often each child said “I,” “you,” or “me.” They also wrote down what moms and dads said.
The team tracked the same kids from age two to four. They wanted to see if pronoun errors grow or shrink over time.
What they found
Kids used more correct pronouns each year. Mix-ups like saying “you” for “I” were rare.
When parents used lots of “you” and “I,” their three-year-olds copied the same words the same day. Growth looked typical, just slower.
How this fits with other research
Dahlgren et al. (2008) saw big referential problems in autistic children. The new data say the trouble is late-emerging, not missing from the start. Age and task type may explain the clash.
Last et al. (1984) showed most autistic preschoolers pass the mirror test. If kids know who “self” is, rare pronoun reversals make sense.
Malkin et al. (2018) worked with older autistic kids. They found the children could track shared experience but needed help shaping their words. Together the papers draw a line: early pronouns grow normally; fine-tuning reference for listeners comes later and needs teaching.
Why it matters
Stop drilling “I versus you” with every two-year-old on the spectrum. If the child is young and reversals are few, move on to other goals. Spend your time expanding flexible reference for school-age kids who already have basic pronouns.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Past research has provided mixed evidence of the nature and difficulty with personal pronouns of children with autism spectrum disorder. No study to date has examined the nature of person-reference in autism, more broadly, by looking at referential language both in terms of who is being referred to (self vs. other) and how (words with shifting reference: personal pronouns, vs. fixed reference: names and nouns). Furthermore, the role of linguistic input specifically in the domain of referential language in autism has not been investigated before. We collected natural language samples from parent-child interactions from children with autism (N = 38; 7 female) at three time points (age 2, 3, and 4 years) and administered a battery of standardized assessments to evaluate their language ability. The samples were transcribed and coded for person-referential language. Children with autism used increasingly more pronouns both when referring to themselves and to their parent, but pronoun reversals were extremely rare. Their person-reference use was associated with language ability only at age 2. Parental input was also characterized by an increase in pronoun use but only when referring to their child. Parents' and children's person-reference were not associated across time, but they were concurrently related at age 3. Autism Res 2020, 13: 959-969. © 2019 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: In this study, we found that as children with autism grew older, they used more and more personal pronouns to refer both to themselves and their parents. Furthermore, they very rarely reversed their pronouns (used I instead of you) with only 1 child out of 38 making a pronoun error. This lack of pronoun errors suggests that pronoun difficulty in autism might not occur for long periods of time throughout development and might not be as prevalent in autism as previously thought.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2020 · doi:10.1002/aur.2243