Personal pronouns and the autistic child.
Pronoun reversal is a multi-piece puzzle, so teach listener-speaker shifts before drilling I.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Fay (1979) wrote a theory paper. It asked why many autistic children mix up I and you.
The author looked at old data and language rules. The goal was to find new teaching angles.
What they found
The paper says pronoun trouble is not just one glitch. It is a mix of social, language, and self-other issues.
Because the puzzle is multi-piece, drilling I may miss the point. The paper urges softer, broader goals.
How this fits with other research
Morgenstern et al. (2019) tested the idea. They taught a child to hear pronouns first, then say them. The child later used I and you with new people and places. This extends the 1979 call to step back from heavy I training.
Shield et al. (2015) seems to clash. Native-signing autistic kids still skip clear sign pronouns. The twist is modality: easy-to-see signs do not fix the deeper social-language block. So both papers agree pronouns are hard; they just test different roads.
Mazzaggio et al. (2020) add Italian data. Kids with ASD there also drop pronouns. This shows the issue crosses languages, backing the multi-factor view.
Why it matters
Stop hammering I in every trial. Try listener-first games: have the child point to who gets the cookie when you say I want it. Then swap roles. Track if the child can shift speaker point of view, not just say I. This wider lens may unlock real pronoun use and social sense together.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Run five listener trials: say I want car and wait for the child to hand you the car before you prompt I want it as speaker.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
The long-recognized difficulties of the speaking autistic child with the use and nonuse of personal pronouns ["reversals" and "avoidance"] have been generally attributed either to the nondifferentiation of the self or to the frequently coexisting symptom of echolalia. These explanations are reconsidered in this eclectic analysis from the perspective of current theory and research in development of self and of language. Emphasis is on studies of normal development of personal pronouns and the roles played in that process by listening, echoic memory, mitigated echolalia [recoding], and person deixis. It is concluded that multiple developmental obstacles of a social, cognitive, and grammatical nature underlie the more obvious symptoms and militate against the child's resolution of labels and their referents. Treatment alternatives that de-emphasize the primacy of I are offered.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 1979 · doi:10.1007/BF01531739