A Qualitative and Quantitative Study: A Look at the Production of Emotive Words and Questions by Children with ASD vs. TD Children
Date
2020
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Producer
Director
Performer
Choreographer
Costume Designer
Music
Videographer
Lighting Designer
Set Designer
Crew Member
Funder
Rehearsal Director
Concert Coordinator
Advisor
Moderator
Panelist
Alternative Title
Department
Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
Type
Original Format
Running Time
File Format
Place of Publication
Date Span
Copyright Date
Award
Language
en
Note
Table of Contents
Terms of Use
Full copyright to this work is retained by the student author. It may only be used for non-commercial, research, and educational purposes. All other uses are restricted.
Rights Holder
Access Restrictions
No restrictions
Terms of Use
Tripod URL
Identifier
Abstract
This thesis investigates the language development in children with autism spectrum disorder
(ASD) versus that of typically developing (TD) children. This topic has been explored from
various angles across various fields, but still many uncertainties remain in regard to the apparent
language impairment in children with ASD. To home in on one area of language development, this
thesis explores the production of emotive words and wh- and yes/no questions in children with
ASD and TD children. I first provide a literature review of the general language acquisition process
in TD children, the social development of children with ASD, and the ability of children with ASD
to understand and correctly interpret communicative intents. To investigate their ability compared
to TD children’s ability to produce such utterances, I collected data from the CHILDES and ASD
TalkBank databases. A straight count of the emotive words and a count and analysis of the
questions revealed a disparity in the language abilities of these two groups of children. While the
emotive words data was not completely conclusive, the data from the wh- and yes/no questions
suggested an impairment in the language abilities of children with an ASD diagnosis. This is likely
due to differences in their semantic and pragmatic systems, in addition to their social behaviors and
skills.