Spatial language understanding and expression in children with autism: a study of “(go/come) to” sentence in Chinese / 中国康复理论与实践

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the characteristics of spatial orientation language comprehension and expression behavior ofchildren with autism. MethodsA three-ladder test was designed to test the comprehension and expression of "(go/come) to" sentences, including general subject-predicate sentences, conjunctive-predicate sentences with displacement purposes, and conjunctive-predicate sentences with displacement modes. March to June, 2022, the test was conducted on 17 children with autism from a special education school and 17 healthy children matched the scores of Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Chinese revised from a kindergarten. The typical errors were analyzed for children with autism. ResultsThe main effects of sentence ladders (F > 3.718, P < 0.05) and children groups (F > 8.782, P < 0.001) were significant on comprehension and expression of sentences, while the performance was poor for the complex sentences and for the children with autism. The common types of errors in expression were missing components, mixed sentences, autonomous sentences, inaccurate wording, inconsistent content, blending errors and non-response. The numbers and the distribution of error types were quite different from the children with autism to the healthy children. ConclusionChildren with autism are more difficult to understand and express "(go/come) to" sentences, mainly manifested in a higher error frequency and more kinds of error.