Influence of Incompatible Cues on Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders' Comprehension of the Japanese Directional Demonstratives ko/so/a

Abstract

The present article reports an experiment on influences of nonverbal cues on the comprehension of the Japanese directional demonstratives kocchi, socchi, and acchi. Participants were 10 children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD; average age 8.9 years, range 6-14 years) and 10 adults (age range 19-25 years) who had developed typically. The results revealed that 5 of the children with autism spectrum disorders did not use the gaze of a speaker as a nonverbal cue. A possible reason for this is that some of the children with autism spectrum disorders did not specify the direction of the speaker's gaze; another possible reason is that some of the children with autism spectrum disorders did not understand that the speaker's gaze had given them a cue identifying the object referred to with the direction demonstrative. Other possible causes for the observed results are that the children with autism spectrum disorders had not acquired appropriate language, or had problems with pragmatics. It is suggested that relations of children with autism spectrum disorders with other people should be fostered, because such relations become the foundation of language acquisition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)