Exploring links between language and cognition in autism spectrum disorders: Complement sentences, false belief, and...

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Linguistics

Background:

• A link between complement clause sentences and Theory of Mind (ToM) in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is suggested, but may be influenced by language skills.
• The role of complementation in ToM is debated, with executive functioning (EF) also proposed as a key factor.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between ToM (verbal and non-verbal), complement clause comprehension, and EF in children with ASD.
• To determine if complementation plays a privileged role in ToM, specifically in verbal false-belief (FB) tasks.

Main Methods:

• 17 children and adolescents with ASD and a younger typically developing (TD) control group were assessed.
• Tasks included verbal and non-verbal ToM, complement sentences (verbs of cognition, communication, perception), EF (Dimensional Change Card Sorting), and general language measures.

Main Results:

• Children with ASD and TD controls performed similarly on complement sentences, non-verbal ToM, and EF tasks.
• ASD participants showed significant impairment on verbal FB tasks compared to TD controls.
• Verbal FB task performance correlated with complement sentences of communication and cognition verbs (but not perception) in both groups, controlling for IQ.

Conclusions:

• Knowledge of specific complement clauses may facilitate performance on verbal FB tasks in individuals with ASD.
• Complements describing a false event while the sentence remains true (cognition, communication verbs) are particularly suited for representing others' mental states.