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

Natalia Meir; Rama Novogrodsky

doi:10.1017/S0305000921000702

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

Natalia Meir, Rama Novogrodsky

Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-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 language	English
Journal	Journal of Child Language
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000921000702
State	Accepted/In press - 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their most constructive comments, which helped us improve the manuscript. We would also like to thank the members of the Language Abilities in Children with Autism ‘LACA’ network ( http://laca.humanities.uva.nl/wp/ ) for their ideas and discussions which inspired us to conduct this study. The authors are wholeheartedly grateful to the families and children who took part in the study, and to Marissa Hartston and Revital Berlowitz who helped with data collection. We also would like to thank Lexi Tuch for the proofreading of the earlier version of the manuscript. This research was partially supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant No. 1068/16) awarded to Rama Novogrodsky. 1

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

Keywords

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
Hebrew
definiteness
informativeness
referential expressions

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Language and Linguistics
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Developmental and Educational Psychology
Linguistics and Language
Psychology (all)

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10.1017/S0305000921000702

Cite this

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

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. ",

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author = "Natalia Meir and Rama Novogrodsky",

note = "Funding Information: We are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their most constructive comments, which helped us improve the manuscript. We would also like to thank the members of the Language Abilities in Children with Autism {\textquoteleft}LACA{\textquoteright} network ( http://laca.humanities.uva.nl/wp/ ) for their ideas and discussions which inspired us to conduct this study. The authors are wholeheartedly grateful to the families and children who took part in the study, and to Marissa Hartston and Revital Berlowitz who helped with data collection. We also would like to thank Lexi Tuch for the proofreading of the earlier version of the manuscript. This research was partially supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant No. 1068/16) awarded to Rama Novogrodsky. 1 Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press.",

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journal = "Journal of Child Language",

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N1 - Funding Information: We are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their most constructive comments, which helped us improve the manuscript. We would also like to thank the members of the Language Abilities in Children with Autism ‘LACA’ network ( http://laca.humanities.uva.nl/wp/ ) for their ideas and discussions which inspired us to conduct this study. The authors are wholeheartedly grateful to the families and children who took part in the study, and to Marissa Hartston and Revital Berlowitz who helped with data collection. We also would like to thank Lexi Tuch for the proofreading of the earlier version of the manuscript. This research was partially supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant No. 1068/16) awarded to Rama Novogrodsky. 1 Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press.

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

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

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