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. 2016 Jan:2:413-425.
doi: 10.1146/annurev-linguist-030514-124824. Epub 2015 Nov 4.

Language and Speech in Autism

Morton Ann Gernsbacher  1 , Emily M Morson  2 , Elizabeth J Grace  3
Affiliations

Language and Speech in Autism

Morton Ann Gernsbacher et al. Annu Rev Linguist. 2016 Jan.

Abstract

Autism is a developmental disability characterized by atypical social interaction, interests or body movements, and communication. Our review examines the empirical status of three communication phenomena believed to be unique to autism: pronoun reversal (using the pronoun you when the pronoun I is intended, and vice versa), echolalia (repeating what someone has said), and a reduced or even reversed production-comprehension lag (a reduction or reversal of the well-established finding that speakers produce less sophisticated language than they can comprehend). Each of these three phenomena has been claimed to be unique to autism; therefore, each has been proposed to be diagnostic of autism, and each has been interpreted in autism-centric ways (psychoanalytic interpretations of pronoun reversal, behaviorist interpretations of echolalia, and clinical lore about the production-comprehension lag). However, as our review demonstrates, none of these three phenomena is in fact unique to autism; none can or should serve as diagnostic of autism, and all call into question unwarranted assumptions about autistic persons and their language development and use.

Keywords: autism; behaviorism; echolalia; expressive language; language comprehension; language development; language production; pronoun reversal; psychoanalysis; receptive language.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The percentage of typically developing children’s utterances that are echolalic. Data are from Bloom et al. (1976).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Increase in language comprehension skill across time for autistic and non-autistic children with language delay. Data are from Roberts (2014).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Decrease in immediate echolalia across time for autistic and non-autistic children with language delay. Data are from Roberts (2014).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Increase in mitigated echolalia across time for autistic and non-autistic children with language delay. Data are from Roberts (2014).
Figure 5
Figure 5
A typical production-comprehension lag. Data are from the norming sample of the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventory (Fenson et al. 2007).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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