The Production of Pronouns and Verb Inflections by Italian Children with ASD: A New Dataset in a Null Subject Language.

Mazzaggio et al. (2020) watched how Italian-speaking children with autism use pronouns. They compared these kids to typically-developing peers during short picture tasks.

Italian lets you drop pronouns. The team wanted to see if autistic children still avoided them in a language where silence is normal.

The autistic group used fewer correct pronouns. They also picked the wrong form—saying the full word when native speakers stay quiet.

Pragmatic oddities showed up too. Kids would point to Mom and say 'she' without checking if the listener already knew who 'she' meant.

Shield et al. (2015) saw the same avoidance in American Sign Language. Even clear hand-shape pronouns were skipped for names, so the problem crosses speaking and signing.

Skrimpa et al. (2022) looks like the opposite story: bilingual autistic children actually scored slightly better on pronoun comprehension than monolingual peers. The gap closes when you test understanding, not production, and when kids juggle two languages daily.

Morgenstern et al. (2019) gives us hope. One child learned to say 'I' and 'you' correctly after a short ABA listener-then-speaker program. The Italian data confirm the deficit; the 2019 paper shows you can teach past it.

Check pragmatic language, not just vocabulary, during your next assessment. If a child points and says 'he' with no clear antecedent, probe further. For monolingual Italian-speaking clients, write goals that contrast null versus overt pronouns, and add listener discrimination first. If the family is bilingual, celebrate—the second language may be an extra cue, not a barrier.