Assessing structural language skills of autistic adults: Focus on sentence repetition

• Published in: Lingua Vol. 294; p. 103598
• Main Authors: Manenti, Marta, Tuller, Laurice, Houy-Durand, Emmanuelle, Bonnet-Brilhault, Frédérique, Prévost, Philippe
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01-10-2023
• Subjects: Adulthood; Autism; Disorder of intellectual development; Language impairment; Sentence repetition; Structural language; Inf; ACC; Language impairment; Sing; CL; fem; Autism; NEG; Disorder of intellectual development; masc; Structural language; Sentence repetition; Adulthood; Plur
• ISSN: 0024-3841; 1872-6135
• DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2023.103598

•Morphosyntactic performance in autistic adults displays great variability.•Autistic adults with language difficulties are sensitive to syntactic complexity.•There is no evidence that nonverbal cognition and autism severity explain language performance in autistic adults.•LITMUS-SR-FR-Adults is a promising tool for the assessment of morphosyntax in autistic adults.
Although autism is a life-long disorder, there is limited data on structural language abilities in adults, and a lack of language tools appropriate for this population. This study investigates the relevance of a sentence repetition (SR) task for assessing morphosyntactic abilities in autistic adults. The so-called LITMUS-SR-FR(ench)-Adults is an adaptation of a child SR task shown to be efficient for identifying language impairment in autistic children. It consists of sentences divided into six structures and structure subtypes created by manipulating ingredients of syntactic complexity (e.g., embedding and syntactic movement). The task was administered to 39 French-speaking autistic individuals aged 18–56 years, with ranging intellectual abilities, and 41 age-matched control participants. Performance on identical repetition was characterized by higher variability in the autistic group than in the control group, and it distinguished autistic adults with language difficulties from those without language difficulties on all structure types and subtypes. Error analysis showed that autistic adults with language difficulties were sensitive to syntactic complexity, revealing group specificities. Performance was explained neither by nonverbal cognition nor by autism severity, indicating possible independence of structural language from both variables. Our findings support the appropriateness of LITMUS-SR-FR-Adults for assessing structural language in autistic adults and contribute to document the variability in their morphosyntactic skills.