engleski

What do we know about lexical-grammatical development in children on the autism spectrum?

A large body of research emphasizes the continuity of lexical and grammatical development in typically developing children (TD) in the early stages of language acquisition. Much of the research has focused on the acquisition of verbs, suggesting that these words are important for syntactic and morphological development. The lexical-grammatical relationship in children on the autism spectrum (AS) is not yet entirely clearified. Some studies show a weak relationship between vocabulary size and grammatical abilities while others do not. Given the conflicting results in the literature, the aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between vocabulary size, verb acquisition, and grammatical development in children on the AS. The study was conducted with 20 children on the AS at an early stage of language development (vocabulary size 138 - 399 words, age 23 - 58 months). Data on language abilities were collected using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory, standardized for Croatian. The results partially contribute to the hypothesis that children on the AS do not show significant lexical-grammatical association. Spearman's rho indicated that there is no significant correlation between vocabulary size, number of verbs, and the mean length of the three longest utterances, as well as grammatical complexity. However, there is a positive correlation between vocabulary size, number of verbs, and word forms. The current study supports the findings that vocabulary size and number of verbs do not correlate strongly with grammatical development in children on the AS. It appears that children on the AS follow a somewhat different pattern of early lexical-grammatical development than do TD children. Namely, the increasing number of lexical items in their early vocabulary development is not accompanied by the expected grammatical productivity. These results contribute to the clarification of the lexical-grammatical relationship in children on the AS. Findings of this study provide some suggestions for supporting early language development of children on the AS. Further research should involve a larger number of participants and analyze spontaneous language production of children on the AS.

autism spectrum, lexical development, grammatical development, early language acquisition

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