Comprehension of Speech Acts, Theory of Mind, and Syntax Comprehension in Children with High-Functioning Autism and Specific Language Impairments

Objectives: The aim of the present study was to compare the speech act comprehension, theory of mind (ToM), and sentence comprehension in school-aged children with high-functioning autism (HFA) to children with specific language impairments (SLI) in an analogous classroom context. Methods: The participants in this study were school-age children with HFA, SLI and typically developing children (TD). To differentiate speech act comprehension behavioral observation was used in an analogous classroom context. The types of speech acts involved were direct and indirect. Also, this study measured ToM and syntax comprehension. Results: First, there were significant differences between the groups showing that the HFA group and SLI group had lower comprehension of speech acts than the TD group. Second, there was a significant difference within types of speech acts in which indirect speech acts had lower scores than the direct speech acts. Third, there was interaction between the groups and types of speech act comprehension. Finally, there were significant correlations between all speech act comprehension and ToM scores in children with HFA. And there were significant correlations among indirect speech acts scores, ToM, and sentence comprehension in children with SLI. Conclusion: This study found that children with HFA and SLI have more difficulties with the comprehension of speech acts than children with TD in analogous classroom contexts. It seems necessary to consider ToM and sentence comprehension when identifying communication competence for children with HFA and SLI.