Skip to main content
Log in

Interpretation of Logical Words in Mandarin-Speaking Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: Uncovering Knowledge of Semantics and Pragmatics

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This study investigated the interpretation of the logical words ‘some’ and ‘every…or…’ in 4–15-year-old high-functioning Mandarin-speaking children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Children with ASD performed similarly to typical controls in demonstrating semantic knowledge of simple sentences with ‘some’, and they had delayed knowledge of the complex sentences with ‘every…or…’. Interestingly, the children with ASD had pragmatic knowledge of the scalar implicatures of these logical words, parallel to those of the typical controls. Taken together, the interpretation of logical words may be a relative strength in children with ASD. It is possible that some aspects of semantics and pragmatics may be selectively spared in ASD, due to the contribution the language faculty makes to language acquisition in the ASD population.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. To illustrate how scalar implicatures arise, the logical words ‘some’ and ‘all’ compose a linguistic scale (e.g., <some, all>) based on information strength, with ‘all’ being more informative than ‘some’. The cooperative principle of Gricean pragmatics entreats a speaker to use the most informative expression in conversational contexts (Grice 1975). In a situation in which a sentence with ‘some’ and one with ‘all’ are both true, the cooperative speaker is expected to choose the more informative term ‘all’ over the weaker term ‘some’ to convey the information. Moreover, if the speaker asserts the weaker term ‘some’, the listener infers that the stronger term ‘all’ is not applicable, otherwise the speaker should use the stronger term ‘some’, thus the listener infers the negation of the stronger term, i.e., ‘not all’.

  2. In this experimental study, the term ASD refers to children with autistic disorder, Asperger syndrome and pervasive developmental disorder—not otherwise specified, i.e., children with a diagnosis of pervasive developmental disorders according to the DSM-IV-TR criteria. See similar reports in Chevallier et al. (2010) and Pijnacker et al. (2009).

  3. This is also the advantage of TVTJ over traditional act-out paradigms which request the participants to perform actions upon the experimenters’ commands. The act-out task may have limited value in determining the full range of interpretations that are associated with a linguistic expression, because children may simply favor one reading over others in the experimental contexts (Crain and Thornton 1998). Furthermore, it is harder for children with ASD to cooperate in act-out paradigms due to their lack of responsiveness to the experimenters’ instructions.

  4. To ensure that children with ASD’s judgments in the every-or-underinformative condition were based on their correct understanding of the other semantic conditions of ‘every…or…’, we also refined our analysis by excluding children who didn’t judge correctly in the every-or-true or every-or-false conditions for 3/4 of the test trials. This left 3 younger children and 11 older children with ASD, as well as 13 TD children in each age group. The results showed that the rejection rates of the every-or-underinformative condition between these children with ASD vs. TD children were similar within different age groups: ASD/younger vs. TD/younger: t(14) = .69, p = .50, d = .43; ASD/older vs. TD/older: t(22) = .63, p = .53, d = .26.

  5. Following the view of Noam Chomsky (1981, 1986), the language faculty is a biological mental system that implements the project procedures for associating human linguistic signals with interpretations. The language faculty imposes constraints on which languages human can naturally acquire. Language acquisition in normal children is then the by-product of a task-specific computational mechanism, which enables children to rapidly and effortlessly acquire any human language without formal instruction. More work is needed to investigate the possible role the language faculty plays in children with ASD.

  6. However, as one reviewer pointed out, preserved pragmatic capacities may not necessarily be linked to grammatical strengths in ASD (Kissine 2012; Perkins 2008). In particular, although not all pragmatics involves mind-reading, the computation of pragmatic inferences like scalar implicatures may not be rooted within grammar (Geurts 2009). See also Chemla and Singh (2014a, b) for different interpretations of experimental data on scalar implicatures.

References

  • American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed., text rev.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.

  • Baron-Cohen, S. (2000). Theory of mind and autism: A 15-year review. In S. Baron-Cohen, H. Tager-Flusberg, & D. J. Cohen (Eds.), Understanding other minds: Perspectives from developmental cognitive neuroscience (pp. 3–20). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boucher, J. (2012). Research review: Structural language in autistic spectrum disorder–characteristics and causes. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 53, 219–233.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Chemla, E., & Singh, R. (2014a). Remarks on the experimental turn in the study of scalar implicature, Part I. Language and Linguistics Compass, 8, 373–386.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chemla, E., & Singh, R. (2014b). Remarks on the experimental turn in the study of scalar implicature, Part II. Language and Linguistics Compass, 8, 387–399.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chevallier, C., Wilson, D., Happé, F., & Noveck, I. (2010). Scalar inferences in autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 40, 1104–1117.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Chien, Y. C., & Wexler, K. (1990). Children’s knowledge of locality conditions in binding as evidence for the modularity of syntax and pragmatics. Language Acquisition, 1, 225–295.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chierchia, G. (2004). Scalar implicatures, polarity phenomena and the syntax/pragmatics interface. In A. Belletti (Ed.), Structures and beyond (pp. 39–103). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chierchia, G., Guasti, M. T., Gualmini, A., Meroni, L., Crain, S., & Foppolo, F. (2004). Semantic and pragmatic competence in children’s and adults’ comprehension of or. In I. Noveck & D. Sperber (Eds.), Experimental pragmatics (pp. 283–300). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky, N. (1986). Knowledge of language: Its nature, origin and use. New York: Praeger.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark, P., & Rutter, M. (1981). Autistic children’s responses to structure and interpersonal demands. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 11, 201–217.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Crain, S. (2012). The emergence of meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Crain, S., Gualmini, A., & Pietroski, P. (2005). Brass tacks in linguistic theory: Innate grammatical principles. In P. Carruthers, S. Laurence, & S. Stich (Eds.), The innate mind: Structure and content (pp. 175–197). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Crain, S., & Khlentzos, D. (2010). The logic instinct. Mind and Language, 25, 30–65.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crain, S., & Thornton, R. (1998). Investigations in Universal Grammar: A guide to experiments on the acquisition of syntax and semantics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crain, S., & Thornton, R. (2006). Acquisition of syntax and semantics. In M. Traxler & M. Gersbacher (Eds.), Handbook of psycholinguistics (2nd ed., pp. 1073–1110). Oxford: Elsevier.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Crain, S., & Thornton, R. (2011). Acquisition of semantics. In P. Hogan (Ed.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of the language sciences (pp. 745–748). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dennis, M., Lazenby, A. L., & Lockyer, L. (2001). Inferential language in high-function children with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 31, 47–54.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Emerich, D. M., Creaghead, N. A., Grether, S. M., Murray, D., & Grasha, C. (2003). The comprehension of humorous materials by adolescents with high-functioning autism and Asperger’s syndrome. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 33, 253–257.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Geurts, B. (2009). Scalar implicature and local pragmatics. Mind and Language, 24, 51–79.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gong, Y. X., & Cai, T. S. (1994). The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children Revised in China (C-WISC). Chinese Journal of Clinical Psychology, 2, 1–6. (In Chinese).

    Google Scholar 

  • Gong, Y. X., & Dai, X. Y. (1988). China-Wechsler Younger Children Scale of Intelligence (C-WYCSI). Acta Psychologica Sinica, 4, 364–376. (In Chinese).

    Google Scholar 

  • Goodwin, A., Fein, D., & Naigles, L. (2012). Comprehension of wh-questions precedes their production in typical development and autism spectrum disorders. Autism Research, 5, 109–123.

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics. Volume III: Speech acts (pp. 41–58). New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Guasti, M. T., Chierchia, G., Crain, S., Foppolo, F., Gualmini, A., & Meroni, L. (2005). Why children and adults sometimes (but not always) compute implicatures. Language and Cognitive Processes, 20, 667–696.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Happé, F. (1993). Communicative competence and theory of mind in autism. A test of relevance theory. Cognition, 48, 101–109.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Happé, F. (1994). An advanced test of theory of mind: Understanding of story characters’ thoughts and feelings by able autistic, mentally handicapped, and normal children and adults. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 24, 129–154.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Horn, L. (1972). On the semantic properties of logical operators in English. Los Angeles, CA: University of California, Los Angeles dissertation.

  • Huang, Y. T., & Snedeker, J. (2009). Semantic meaning and pragmatic interpretation in five-year olds: Evidence from real time spoken language comprehension. Developmental Psychology, 45, 1723–1739.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kaland, N., Moller-Nielsen, A., Callesen, K., Mortensen, E. L., Gottlieb, D., & Smith, L. (2002). A new ‘advanced’ test of theory of mind: Evidence from children and adolescents with Asperger syndrome. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 43, 517–528.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kelley, E., Paul, J., Fein, D., & Naigles, L. (2006). Residual language deficits in children with a history of autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 36, 807–828.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kissine, M. (2012). Pragmatics, cognitive flexibility and autism spectrum disorders. Mind and Language, 27, 1–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lee, D., & Chen, G.-P. (1989). Ravens Progressive Matrices (CRT): Chinese version. Shanghai: East China Normal University. (in Chinese).

    Google Scholar 

  • Lord, C., Rutter, M., DiLavore, P., & Risi, S. (2000). Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS). Los Angeles, CA: Western Psychological Services.

    Google Scholar 

  • Loukusa, S., Leinonen, E., Jussila, K., Mattila, M.-L., Ryder, N., Ebeling, H., & Moilanen, I. (2007a). Answering contextually demanding questions: Pragmatic errors produced by children with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism. Journal of Communication Disorders, 40, 357–381.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Loukusa, S., Leinonen, E., Kuusikko, S., Jussila, K., Mattila, M.-L., Ryder, N., & Moilanen, I. (2007b). Use of context in pragmatic language comprehension by children with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37, 1049–1059.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Loukusa, S., & Moilanen, I. (2009). Pragmatic inference abilities in individuals with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism. A review. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 3, 890–904.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Musolino, J., Chunyon, G., & Landau, B. (2010). Uncovering knowledge of core syntactic and semantic principles in individuals with Williams Syndrome. Language Learning and Development, 6, 126–161.

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Notley, A., Thornton, R., & Crain, S. (2012). English-speaking children’s interpretation of disjunction in the scope of “not every”. Biolinguistics, 6, 32–69.

    Google Scholar 

  • Noveck, I. (2001). When children are more logical than adults: Experimental investigations of scalar implicature. Cognition, 78, 165–188.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Noveck, I., & Reboul, A. (2008). Experimental pragmatics: A Gricean turn in the study of language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12, 425–431.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Oi, M. (2010). Do Japanese children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder respond differently to wh-questions and yes/no-questions? Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 24, 691–705.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Papafragou, A., & Musolino, J. (2003). Scalar implicatures: Experiments at the semantics–pragmatics interface. Cognition, 86, 253–282.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Perkins, M. (2008). Pragmatic impairment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Perovic, A., Modyanova, N., & Wexler, K. (2012). Comparison of reflexive and personal pronouns in children with autism: A syntactic or pragmatic deficit? Applied Psycholinguistics, 34, 813–835.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Perovic, A., Modyanova, N., & Wexler, K. (2013). Comparison of grammar in neurodevelopmental disorders: The case of binding in Williams syndrome and autism with and without language impairment. Language Acquisition, 20, 133–154.

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Pietroski, P., & Crain, S. (2012). The language faculty. In E. Margolis, R. Samuels, & S. P. Stich (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy and cognitive science (pp. 361–381). New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pijnacker, J., Hagoort, P., Buitelaar, J., Teunisse, J.-P., & Geurts, B. (2009). Pragmatic inferences in high-functioning adults with autism and Asperger Syndrome. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 39, 607–618.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Pouscoulous, N., Noveck, I., Politzer, G., & Bastide, A. (2007). Processing costs and their impact on the development of scalar implicature. Language Acquisition, 14, 347–375.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rapin, I., & Dunn, M. (2003). Update on the language disorders of individuals on the autistic spectrum. Brain and Development, 25, 166–172.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Saalasti, S., Lepisto, T., Toppila, E., Kujala, T., Laakso, M., Nieminem-von Wendt, T., & Jansson-Verkasalo, E. (2008). Language abilities in children with Asperger syndrome. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 38, 1574–1580.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Su, L.-Y. (2014). Child psychiatry. Changsha: Hunan Science and Technology Press. (In Chinese).

    Google Scholar 

  • Su, Y. (E.) (2013). Scalar implicatures and downward entailment in child Mandarin. Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 22, 167–187.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Su, Y. (E.) (2014). The acquisition of logical connectives in child Mandarin. Language Acquisition, 21, 119–155.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Su, Y. (E.), & Crain, S. (2013). Children’s knowledge of disjunction and universal quantification in Mandarin Chinese. Language and Linguistics, 14, 599–631.

    Google Scholar 

  • Su, Y. (E.), Jin, Y., Wan, G.-B., Zhang, J.-S., & Su, L.-Y. (2014). Interpretation of wh-words in high-functioning Mandarin-speaking children with autism spectrum disorders. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 8, 1364–1372.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Su, Y. (E.), Zhou, P., & Crain, S. (2012). Downward entailment in child Mandarin. Journal of Child Language, 39, 957–990.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sung, B., & Miao, X. C. (1990). The revision of trail norm of Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test Revised (PPVT-R) in Shanghai. Psychological Science, 5, 20–25 (in Chinese).

  • Surian, L., Baron-Cohen, S., & Van der Lely, H. (1996). Are children with autism deaf to Gricean Maxims? Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 1, 55–71.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Tager-Flusberg, H. (1994). Dissociations in form and function in the acquisition of language by autistic children. In H. Tager-Flusberg (Ed.), Constraints on language acquisition: Studies of atypical children (pp. 175–194). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tager-Flusberg, H. (2000a). Language and understanding minds: Connections in autism. In S. Baron-Cohen, H. Tager-Flusberg, & D. J. Cohen (Eds.), Understanding other minds: Perspectives from developmental cognitive neuroscience (pp. 124–149). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tager-Flusberg, H. (2000b). The challenge of studying language development in children with autism. In L. Menn & N. Bernstein Ratner (Eds.), Methods for studying language production (pp. 313–332). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

  • Tager-Flusberg, H. (2001). Understanding the language and communicative impairments in autism. International Review of Research in Mental Retardation, 23, 185–205.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tager-Flusberg, H., Paul, R., & Lord, C. (2005). Language and communication in autism. In F. Volkmar, R. Paul, A. Klin, & D. J. Cohen (Eds.), Handbook of autism and pervasive developmental disorders: Diagnosis, development, neurobiology, and behavior (pp. 335–364). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Terzi, A., Marinis, T., Kotsopoulou, A., & Francis, A. (2014). Grammatical abilities of Greek-Speaking children with autism. Language Acquisition, 21, 4–44.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thornton, R., & Wexler, K. (1999). Principle B, VP ellipsis and interpretation in child grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhang, H. C. (2009). The revision of WISC-IV Chinese version. Psychological Science, 32, 1177–1179. (in Chinese).

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhou, P., Crain, S., Gao, L., Tang, Y., & Jia, M. (2014). The use of grammatical morphemes by Mandarin-speaking children with high functioning autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. doi:10.1007/s10803-014-2304-6.

Download references

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 81171291). We thank Joshua John Diehl and the anonymous reviewers for valuable comments. We thank Anna Notley, Francesco Ursini and Vered Birmaher Cohen for helpful suggestions. We are grateful to the support from the clinicians and teachers who assisted in the execution of this project: Yu Jin, Guo-Bin Wan, Ji-Shui Zhang, Yu Pan and many others. We thank the children and families who participated in this research.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yi (Esther) Su.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Su, Y.(., Su, LY. Interpretation of Logical Words in Mandarin-Speaking Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: Uncovering Knowledge of Semantics and Pragmatics. J Autism Dev Disord 45, 1938–1950 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-014-2350-0

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-014-2350-0

Keywords

Navigation