Abstract
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and fragile X syndrome (FXS) are neurodevelopmental disorders with overlapping pragmatic language impairments. Prior work suggests pragmatic language differences may run in families. This study examined specific pragmatic difficulties (i.e., linguistic mazes and perseverations) in boys (9–18 years) with idiopathic ASD (n = 26) and FXS+ASD (n = 29), and relationships with maternal maze use. Language samples were obtained separately for boys and mothers. Nonparametric analyses suggested that boys largely did not differ in their rates of mazes, but that boys with FXS+ASD exhibited more perseverations. Mazes were correlated between fragile X dyads. Maternal mazes were correlated with child perseverations among idiopathic ASD dyads. These findings have implications for the etiological significance of ASD-related language phenotypes.
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Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders R03 DC011616, 1K23DC016639-01, and T32DC005359, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number T32HD007489 and U54 HD090256 and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
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NM, LF, EL, and AS contributed to the study conception and design. AS is the Principal Investigator of the grant that supported this research. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by NM, LF, EL, and AS. The first draft of the manuscript was written by NM and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Maltman, N., Friedman, L., Lorang, E. et al. Brief Report: Linguistic Mazes and Perseverations in School-Age Boys with Fragile X Syndrome and Autism Spectrum Disorder and Relationships with Maternal Maze Use. J Autism Dev Disord 52, 897–907 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-04981-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-04981-2