In Other Words

More and more researchers, it seems to me, are trying to peek into the minds of children with autism by analyzing how they put together a sentence.Language impairments are one of the most common features of autism. But linguists have long debated the precise nature of the disorder's language deficit. Do grammatical errors mean there's something wrong with the language centers of the brain? Or are they instead the indirect result of an individual's social problems? Two new studies support the latter idea.Helen Tager-Flusberg's work in the 1980s first suggested that social aspects of language are behind all grammar problems in people with autism. One of her experiments, for example, focused on 'wh-questions' — such as ‘What did he eat?’ and ‘Who does Mary like?’ — which are interesting because they can indicate a child's desire to begin a conversation or attract the attention of others. Tager-Flusberg found that children with autism ask fewer wh-questions than do children with Down syndrome, but the questions coming from children with autism are more grammatically correct.Read more at...SFARI, March 2012.