Referential expressions in monolingual and bilingual children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): A study of informativeness and definiteness

Natalia Meir, Rama Novogrodsky

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The current study evaluated the separate and combined effects of bilingualism and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) on informativeness and definiteness marking of referential expressions. Hebrew-speaking monolingual children (21 with ASD and 28 with typical language development) and Russian-Hebrew-speaking bilingual children (13 with ASD and 30 with typical language development) aged 4-9 years participated. Informativeness, indexed by referential contrasts, was affected by ASD, but not by bilingualism. Definiteness use was non-target-like in children with ASD and in bilingual children, and it was mainly predicted by children's morpho-syntactic abilities in Hebrew. Language-universal and language-specific properties of referential use are discussed.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)215-244
Number of pages30
JournalJournal of Child Language
Volume50
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Mar 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press.

Keywords

  • Autism Spectrum Disorder
  • Child
  • Humans
  • Language
  • Language Development
  • Language Tests
  • Multilingualism

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