The image of mind in the language of children with autism

(2015) The image of mind in the language of children with autism. While it is widely agreed today that autism involves a cognitive change (Baron-Cohen, 1988), the main psychological models have put the explanatory weight on changes in such non-linguistic neurocognitive variables as " theory of mind " (ToM), weak central coherence, or executive functioning. Linguistic deficits, including ones identified as " pragmatic " and taken to be universal in people with autism spectrum disorders or even the absence of functional language could then be seen as a secondary consequence of a primary defect in non-linguistic (particularly social) cognition (Mundy and Markus, 1997). A " modular " perspective, which separates language from cognition, has been widely adopted with regard to the internal organization of language itself, which is taken to comprise phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics as relatively independent components. In this regard, Tager-Flusberg (1981) formulates the classical view that " phonological and syntactic development follow the same course as in normal children and in other disordered groups, though at a slowed rate, while semantic and pragmatic functioning may be specially deficient in autism. " More recently, attention was drawn to a potential subtype of ASD, autism with language impairment (ALI), showing deficits in structural aspects of language comparable to those in Specific Language Impairment (SLI) (Tager-Flusberg and Joseph, 2003), additionally to standard impairments in social interaction and communication, and behavioral abnormalities. Specific deficits in such domains as non-word repetition (phonology) or verbal inflection (morphology), as seen in this subtype (Tager-Flusberg, 2006), however, provide little basis for understanding the distinctive ASD cognitive " style " (Happé and Frith, 2009). Indeed the absence of co-morbid non-verbal cognitive impairment is a defining feature of SLI. Yet it is not clear how independent of language human-specific forms of social interaction and communication can be, and it could be that a fundamental alteration in language competence is an inherent aspect of the cognitive change in question. Children with autism might construe language differently, reflecting a linguistic style different from that inherent in neurotypical cognition, which could then be reflected in altered patterns of social communication. Rapin and Dunn (2003) already suggested, not only that phonology and syntax are impaired in autism, but that there is a relation between phonological and syntactic deficits, and between semantic and pragmatic ones. Kjelgaard and Tager-Flusberg (2001, p. 10) suggest that phonological deficits are only present in those children …