This study investigated the Internal State (IS) language input of parents, IS language use
by children, and children’s performance on perspective taking and false belief Theory of
Mind (ToM) tasks. Two groups of participants were included: children with Autism
Spectrum Disorder (ASD) (N = 12, M chronological age = 7; 4, M language age = 6;0)
and typically-developing (TD) children (N = 13, M chronological age = 6;0, M language
age= 6;5), matched on language age. Independent means samples t-tests showed that the
transcripts of the two groups of parents or the two groups of children did not differ in
regards to total number of words, utterances, or mean length of utterance. ANOVAs were
used to test for differences in IS language category or elaboration in the two groups
(ASD, TD), in parents and children. For the parent data, no statistically significant
differences emerged. For the analysis of child talk the ANOVA revealed that the main
effect of group approached significance, with a trend towards TD children using more IS
language than children with ASD. ANOVAs were also used to test for differences in
ToM task performance (perspective-taking, false belief) in the two groups of children;
TD children performed significantly better on ToM Tasks overall than the children with
ASD. Partial correlations found that for the TD group, there were no significant
correlations between the parent’s or the child’s use of IS language with the child’s
performance on ToM tasks when chronological age was controlled for. For the ASD
group, after controlling for chronological age and language age, the parent’s use of
elaborated affect terms was significantly positively correlated with their child’s
performance score on perspective-taking tasks, and the parent’s use of elaborated
cognitive terms was significantly negatively correlated with their child’s performance on
false-belief tasks. Also for the ASD group, the child’s use of simple affect terms was
significantly positively correlated with their performance on false belief tasks after
controlling for chronological age and language age. Findings are discussed in relation to
prior research and clinical implications.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:NSHD.ca#10222/14157 |
| Date | 11 July 2011 |
| Creators | Dhooge, sarah |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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