Understanding the roles of theory of mind and receptive prosody in pragmatic language comprehension among Chinese children with autism spectrum disorders

Abstract

The present study explored the performance of theory of mind (ToM), receptive prosody and pragmatic language comprehension in Chinese school-aged children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and examined the relationships between these three areas. Twenty-eight 9- to 12-year-old children with ASD and 28 typically developing (TD) controls were tested on non-verbal intelligence, working memory, word definition, ToM, receptive prosody and pragmatic language comprehension. The results showed that children with ASD were impaired in ToM skills, particularly more advanced ones. They also showed deficits in receptive prosody in the aspects of turn-end, affect and sentence-final particle. They showed more difficulties in answering pragmatically complex questions and providing explanations for their answers. Moderate to strong correlations between ToM, receptive prosody and pragmatic language comprehension were found in ASD children. Furthermore, ToM skills were shown to be a predictor to pragmatic language comprehension in school-aged children. The findings illustrated a comprehensive profile of ToM skills, receptive prosody and pragmatic language comprehension in Chinese school-aged ASD children, and also shed light on the importance of incorporating ToM elements into the intervention on pragmatics for ASD children.