Quantitative but Not Qualitative Differences: A Longitudinal Analysis of Grammatical Marker Development in Mandarin-Speaking Autistic Children.
Mandarin-speaking autistic kids follow the same grammar-learning sequence as typical peers—just slower—so keep teaching the next marker in the usual order.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team tracked 65 Mandarin-speaking autistic kids every six months from .
They counted correct uses of eight little grammar words, like the perfective marker -le and the possessive de.
The same counts were made for 65 age-matched typical children.
What they found
Both groups learned the markers in the same order.
Autistic children just needed more months to reach each step.
Severity of autism or starting language level did not change the order.
How this fits with other research
Reichard et al. (2019) saw the same pattern for receptive vocabulary: same growth slope, lower ceiling.
Mas et al. (2019) and Skrimpa et al. (2022) add that bilingual autistic pupils keep pace on grammar, so the slow-but-steady rule holds across languages.
Ni et al. (2025) seems to disagree—they found autistic kids produce weaker Mandarin prosody. The clash is only surface-deep: grammar rules are learned fine, but pitch and stress cues need extra help.
Why it matters
You can trust the typical developmental chart for grammar goals. Teach the next marker in the usual sequence, stay patient, and probe prosody separately. No need to re-order targets just because a child is autistic.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Past research has revealed large differences between typically developing (TD) and autistic children's language development. However, little is known about whether such differences are quantitative or qualitative, especially in the morphosyntactic domain. This study is the first longitudinal research aiming to systematically investigate the developmental patterns of a wide range of Mandarin grammatical markers in autistic children. The mastery of target markers in autistic children (N = 88, Mage = 44.9 m, Range = 26-76 m) was assessed longitudinally across three time points using parent reports and compared with that of TD children (N = 84, Mage = 23.2 m, Range = 16-30 m) assessed at a single time point. We further examined the influence of autism severity and initial language ability. The results suggested that autistic children acquired Mandarin grammatical markers in a typical sequence but at a slower rate. Additionally, this developmental pattern was maintained regardless of autism severity and initial language ability. These findings suggest that autistic children's language development differs quantitatively but not qualitatively from that of TD children, reflecting developmental delay rather than deviance.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2026 · doi:10.1002/aur.70195