Language Development in Children with Autism 1

Language Development in Children with Autism

SERP 434 Fall 2017

4 December 2017

Dr. Rivera

Charlie Marie Anthony

Language Development in Children with Autism 2

Language is a made up of socially shared rules that include the following: what words

mean, how to make new words, how to put words together, and what word combinations are best

in what situations. Many teachers and parents may have a child that has difficulties in one or

more of the above-mentioned categories which can manifest in a few of the following ways:

impairments in joint attention, social reciprocity, language and related cognitive skills, and

behavior/emotional regulations. The students that exhibit these struggles are often categorized on

the autistic spectrum scale. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is defined as the developmental

delay that exhibits a range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive

or stereotyped behaviors, speech and nonverbal communication. (What is Autism?, 2012) ASD

is one of the most common developmental disabilities that affects all races, ethnic groups, and

socioeconomic backgrounds. It has been found that boys are four times more likely to have

autism than girls but per the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d) Autism

Spectrum Disorder was found to affect an average of one out of every 110 children of eights

years old (National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders,2010). According

to Valdes-Laribi “Clinically, language in ASD is characterized by a series of abnormalities, such

as immediate or delayed echolalia, idiosyncrasies, pronoun inversion, pragmatic difficulties and

atypical prosody” (2012,93). With this in mind it is important to understand the areas that these

abnormalities affect. The key areas of difficulties for children with autism spectrum disorder in

language development are pragmatics, semantic, and syntax which can have an overall affect in

school and social progress. The overall purpose of this paper is to describe how language

develops in children with autism spectrum disorder, the educational impact of their language

delay, and types of interventions or accommodations that both teachers and parents can use to

help the child with ASD succeed.

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From research and studies, it is known that compared to a typically developing child,

language development for an ASD child is delayed rather than deviant (Gernsbacher, Morson, &

Grace, 2015). This is an important factor to keep in mind when looking at an ASD child’s

language development struggles in the areas of pragmatics, semantic and syntax since with a

delay an ASD child will still have the ability to learn the same information and words at a later

time with proper intervention. (Gernsbacher, Morson, & Grace, 2015). The overall take away to

understand from this information is that when studying the specific nuances of language

development rather than the gross measures on a standardized test it can be suggested that

autistic children’s language development will have the same order and will be qualitatively

similar in developmental course as compared to the language development of a non-autistic child

at the same stage of development (Gernsbacher, Morson, & Grace, 2015).

The first area of language development that a child with ASD may have problems with is

pragmatics, also known as social language. Early indicators in pragmatic use for a child with

ASD can be seen if a child does not babble or point by one year of age, respond to their name, or

have poor eye contact with communication partners (Rudy, 2016). Generally, children with ASD

differ pragmatically from typical developing children because they don’t look at the speaker to

confirm instructions, attend to objects a speaker is manipulating and point to desired objects or

follow the speaker’s gestures (Lopez, 2015). In a study of eye tracking it was seen that both

reaction time and accuracy were similar across the group of children (10 TD children, and 6

children with ASD) however, their eye gaze was different. It was found that children with ASD

took longer to make a pragmatic interpretation than a typically developing (TD) child (Lopez,

2015). As a result, eye tracking can help provide insights to behavior that standardized testing

cannot gather or target. (Lopez, 2015). According to Lopez (2015) it is better to take a
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functionalist approach to examine language in ASD children. In a functionalist approach, the

language form and content are embedded within pragmatics (Lopez, 2015). There are several

factors that play a role in pragmatic impairments for child with ASD and one of these factors is

semantic ability (Lopez, 2015).

The second area of language development that a child with ASD may have problems with

is semantics, also known as words and word meaning. Early indicators of possible semantic

problems can be seen if a child exhibits no single word use by sixteen months, has no two-word

phrases by two years of age, or a loss of language or social skills (Rudy, 2016). While these are

some early indicators of a possible language delay for a child with ASD it is important to keep in

mind that autistic language development has extreme variability (Gernsbacher, Morson, &

Grace, 2015). Children with ASD do not appear to use semantic comprehension to learn, retain,

or process novel words and sentences (Lopez, 2015). As a result, there can be a separation

between word use, such as repeating the same word in a sentence during conversation, and word

comprehension, such as when the same child asks for the definition of the word they had just

used repeatedly (Lopez, 2015). Since semantic ability is closely related to pragmatic ability,

word recognition and retrieval abilities should be separated from conversational requirements on

the use of words (Lopez, 2015). An example of a semantic struggle some ASD children can face

is difficulties with pronouns (Schoenstadt, n.d). This can be seen if a someone were to ask, “Are

you wearing a blue jacket today?” and the child responds with “you are wearing a blue jacket

today”, in place of saying “yes” or “no”.

The third area of language development that a child with ASD may have problems with is

syntax, also known as grammar and sentence structure. While the studies on pragmatics are

extensive for children with ASD in comparisons to typically developing children, according to
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Eigsti et al. “there has not been a similar in-depth exploration of the syntactic development or its

underlying cognitive impairments” (2007). Since there have been very few studies involving the

syntactic development of ASD children researchers are working with a selective amount of

studies to draw the related inferences. The following areas are where a child with ASD can

manifest their language developmental delay struggles: Trouble with Wh-questions, relative

clauses, and complement clauses. In a study done by Eigsti (2007) on spontaneous speech in

children with autism and Down syndrome, he found that autistic children produced less questions

and negations than a typically developing child. A study done by Riches (2010) that measured

the way in which autistic children with language impairments in comparison to typically

developing children were able to repeat object and subject relative clause sentences. The results

showed that the ASD participants did preform worse than a typically developing child (Valdes-

Laribi, 2012). There is also the added obstacle of the inclusion of a false proposition while

keeping the same truth value of the entire sentence (Valdes-Laribi, 2012).

Research has not been able to find a definitive cause of speech and language problems

but for ASD there are theories of possible causes. Such causes are events that occurred before,

after, or during birth that affected the brain development. These factors can interfere with the

child’s ability to interact and interpret in their surrounding world which is seen in an ASD child’s

inability to socially interact and delay in language acquisition. Since both interaction and

interpretations are necessary for language development it is possible that as a result of the

language delay the child may have issues with educational settings and interactions.

A child with ASD can exhibit the following educational challenges due to their language

developmental delay: Difficulties with joint attention, obsessional questioning (answers never

satisfy them), and difficulties with open ended questions or creation of a short story (National
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Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, 2010) .These are only a few areas

that an autistic child can have in the educational setting due to their language development delay

since these tasks all focus on pragmatics, semantics, and syntactic structure. Joint attention this is

a pragmatic issue since the social language is being challenged when having to process what the

teacher is saying or the objects in which they are attending to. This difficulty can make a student

act out or seem lost or off task when they are just having problems attending to the speaker, the

object(s) that are being manipulated and the instructions or lesson being verbally presented to

them. The aspect of obsessional questioning can stem from a semantic issue since in place of a

behavior issue it is possible the child is asking why over and over again because they do not

understand what is expected of them or cannot comprehend the word meaning. This difficulty

can result in the teacher assuming the child is being silly which will then end in either a

disciplinary action or the teacher simply annoying the child. Both of the outcomes can be

damaging for a child since it can prevent them from asking for clarification in the future or make

them unwilling to put in the effort. Difficulties with open ended questions or creation of a short

story stems from a syntactic struggle in their language delay. Since writing these types of stories

depends heavily on wh-question and both complement and relative clauses it is highly possible

that a child presented with this work will shut down or be unwilling to try.

Lastly the best thing for a child with ASD would be interventions that both parents and

teachers can use to help their child have both education and social success despite their language

development delay. Three types of interventions could be naturalistic language strategies (NLS),

video modeling (VM), and pivotal response training (PRT). NLS are child-centered and occur

during natural routines and activities. NLS aim to promote communication and language

development by using responsive communication partners, environmental arrangements,

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modeling, reinforcement and prompting (Bloomington, 2017). The second intervention is VM

which is a teaching method that uses video recordings to provide a visual que of a targeted

behavior or skill. VM’s can help the child learn how a conversation should go and also reduce

the number on undesired behaviors in the classroom (Bloomington, 2017). The last intervention

is PRT which are interventions that use the principles of applied behavioral analysis. PRT are

effective doe the development of communication, language, play, and social skills (Bloomington,

2017). This intervention type aims to enhance the following pivotal skills: motivation, self-

initiation, responding to multiple cues, and self-management (Bloomington, 2017).

Overall, it can be seen that the areas of difficulties for children with autism spectrum

disorder in language development are pragmatics, semantic, syntax, which can have an overall

affect in school progress. Pragmatics is one of the most prevalent areas of language development

delay for a child with ASD which can be seen in their social interactions, eye gaze, and ability to

both use and comprehend word meaning. Semantics and pragmatics are very closely related and

a suggested method to differentiate this overlap can come from the use of specific linguistic

structures such as scalar implicatures should be implemented into studies. Syntax struggles are

varied, so a child with autism can either be at the same level depending on the difficulty of the

task or they can fall below that of a typically developing child ensuring that an autistic child does

in fact have a language delay. Once these struggles are identified the teachers and parents can

identify the correct and most appropriate methods of accommodations or modification and

interventions to support them in both educational setting and social setting. With proper

interventions, an autistic child can manage their language delay so that it doesn’t not limit their

academic or social success.

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