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Uneven Language Acquisition in Mandarin-Learning Preschool Children with ASD: Comparing Vocabulary, Grammar, and Pragmatic Use Via the PCDI-Toddler Form
English-speaking children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have often been reported to demonstrate an uneven language profile, with strengths in vocabulary and grammar in contrast to the pragmatic deficits (Tager-Flusberg et al. 2005; Boucher 2012). Recent research has begun to delineate language profiles in non-English speaking children with ASD, to characterize the general language acquisition process of children with ASD across countries (Su et al. 2014; Terzi et al. 2014).
Objectives:
Using the Putonghua Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences (PCDI-Toddler Form; Tardif et al., 2008), this study attempts to characterize expressive language profiles in Chinese preschool children with ASD, especially to compare vocabulary, grammar and pragmatic use.
Methods:
Parents of 110 2-6-year-old children with ASD (97 boys and 13 girls, mean age = 51.57 ± 15.34 months) completed the PCDI-Toddler Form. Children were divided into 3 subgroups - Low Verbal (LV, n=62), Middle Verbal (MV, n=30) and High Verbal (HV, n=18), based on a trimodal histogram of total vocabulary production scores (LV: 0–200 words; MV: 201 – 499 words; HV: 500+ words). Language abilities were compared among the subgroups and with the published norms of typically-developing (TD) children.
Results:
The LV, MV and HV subgroups were each significantly different in total vocabulary production as well as all five subcategories (nouns, verbs, pronouns, quantifiers and question words; ps < .01). The 3 subgroups also differed significantly in the four grammatical subcategories of serial verb construction, possessive, quantifier, and past tense marker (ps <.05 for 9/12 comparisons) and in the 5 pragmatic subcategories of abstract objects, possession, absent toys/animals, past events/people, and future events (ps <.05 for 12/15 comparisons). When matched on total vocabulary production scores with TD children aged 16 months, 20 months and 27 months, the three ASD subgroups didn’t generally differ from the TD children on lexical subcategory scores (ps=.07-.75 for 13/15 comparisons), nor on grammatical subcategory scores (ps = .20 -.91 for 9/12 comparisons). In contrast, the vocabulary-matched groups did consistently differ on the subcategories of the pragmatic uses of language (ps <.05 for 12/15 comparisons), with the ASD groups showing lower scores. Correlations between the total grammatical and total pragmatic scores were not significant once vocabulary was partialled out, for the whole ASD group, nor for the three ASD subgroups (ps = .25 - .65).
Conclusions:
LV, MV and HV subgroups of Mandarin-speaking children with ASD differ on grammatical and pragmatic as well as vocabulary skills. However, compared to vocabulary-matched TD children, children with ASD seemed to have more difficulties in the pragmatic than in the grammatical uses of language. Furthermore, the grammatical and pragmatic uses of language were not significantly related, even in this large dataset of Mandarin-learning preschool children with ASD. These findings thus corroborate the uneven language profile reported in English-learning children with ASD.