The Social Functionality of Language Coordination: Linguistic Alignment in Children with and Without Autism.

Dublin Core

Title

The Social Functionality of Language Coordination: Linguistic Alignment in Children with and Without Autism.

Creator

Elizabeth Osborn

Date

2013

Description

Linguistic alignment between conversationalists is a well documented phenomenon; however, the underlying motivational basis for this tendency remains to be established. This study explored the extent to which language convergence in terms of both lexical choice and syntactic structure is mediated by feelings of affiliation toward an interactional partner. In Experiment 1, children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and typically developing (TD) children completed a ‘Snap!’ game in which they alternated turns to name picture cards with a partner. In actuality, the partner was an experimental confederate who utilised non-preferred lexical choices to name the pictures. Results found that all children aligned their word choices with the lexical selections of the experimenter to an equivalent extent. However, evidence to link this tendency toward liking for an interactional partner could not be substantiated. Experiment 2 sought to further investigate evidence for syntactic convergence in children and employed a replication of the paradigm utilised by Allen et al. (2011). Again, there were no differences between the alignment abilities of children with ASD and the performance TD controls. Taken together, the results of this study add more support for the notion of automated low-level priming as one explanation of convergent functioning. Identified implications of these findings and proposals for future research are discussed.

Subject

linguistic alignment
autism

Source

Lexical Snap Cards
The experimental materials comprised of 16 paired experimental items and 50 filler picture cards. An initial pool of 55 items which could be named by two different lexical choices was compiled by images provided by Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) and experimental items utilised by Branigan et al. (2011). The images were presented in a list alongside two lexical choices to name each picture; one lexical choice was a highly preferred name for the picture which was paired with a second less-preferred but equally appropriate word to name the picture. For example, an image of a mushroom was presented adjacent to the names ‘Mushroom’ and ‘Toadstool’. Ten adult participants were then asked to individually rate the appropriateness of each lexical choice for naming the pictures on a seven point Likert scale, with ‘1’ indicative that the lexical choice was completely inappropriate for naming the picture and ‘7’ indicative that the lexical choice was completely appropriate for naming for the picture. Additionally, using a forced choice paradigm each participant was required to indicate their preferred word choice for naming the picture from the two options provided.
From this initial pool, twenty-four items were identified where both lexical choices had acceptability ratings above five and where there appeared a distinct majority preference for one word choice to name the picture (above 80%). Ten typically developing children (mean age: 9.7 years, range 9.2-10.1 years) were then asked to spontaneously provide names for these pictures in the absence of written or verbal prompts in order to further confirm the existence of a distinct lexical preference for each picture in child participants. A final list of 16 experimental items (see Appendix 1) was then selected where over 80% of children spontaneously used the word choices that had been preferentially indicated by adults to name the pictures. The final card set therefore comprised of 82 cards: the 16 paired experimental item picture cards (consisting of an experimenter prime card and subsequent matching participant target card), two sets of six matching filler ‘Snap!’ cards and 38 filler cards which pictured random objects.
Each participant received the sixteen experimental items in a different order, split randomly each time between two experimental conditions that were introduced to assess both the presence and strength of language coordination over time and to eliminate the potential of immediate echolalia as an experimental confound in participants with ASD. In accordance with the design utilised by Slocombe et al. (2013), eight of the paired experimental items were split by two filler card interventions between the experimenter’s prime card and the participant’s target card, whilst the other eight paired experimental items were split by four filler card interventions between the prime and target cards (see Figure 1). Cards were also colour coded so that ‘Snap!’ was only possible when both the colour and the pictures on the experimenter’s prime and participant’s target cards matched, in order to avoid distractions in responses to the experimental items. The order of the filler and ‘SNAP!’ cards remained fixed throughout the trials.
‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ Task
The first fourteen experimental items from the official ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ test (Baron-Cohen, 2001 – child version) were utilised as measures of emotion recognition and social sensitivity; abilities that have been recurrently taken as indicators of Theory of Mind (ToM) functioning in children.
ToM Book
Additional to the ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ task, children were also given a higher -order ToM assessment in order to obtain a more advanced measure of both social understanding and the abilities of participant’s to make inferences about the mental states of others. The story ‘The School Football Team’ developed by Liddle & Nettle (2006, story number 4) to investigate higher-order ToM functioning was presented pictorially to children in a story-book format and contained two scripted memory questions and a ToM question at the end (see Appendix 2).
Shopping list game
A commercially available child-appropriate board game was selected where it was possible that the experimenter could systematically manipulate the resultant winner of the game. The ‘Shopping List’ game by Orchard Toys is a picture-matching game designed for children with Verbal Mental Ages between three and six years and served as a quick experimental task where the outcomes could be reliably manipulated.
Liking Scale
In order to assess the resultant outcomes of the positive and neutral conditions on children’s affiliation to the experimenter, a picture sorting task was employed. Ten photographs that varied in content to include food, animals, people and events (e.g. baked beans, Spiderman and a giraffe) were obtained from an online picture database and constituted filler card items. The experimental item in this task was a head and shoulders photograph of the experimenter. Five line-drawing pictures of faces that varied in degrees of emotion from one (very unhappy face) through to five (very happy face) were then utilised as a pictorial adaptation of a Likert scale that was understandable to child participants. All participants received the pictures in same order, with the experimental item being placed at number eight out of the ten picture cards.
Procedure
Each participant was tested individually in a quiet room, away from distractions. Testing was divided between two sessions that were held approximately twenty-one days apart. During the first session participants completed the BPVS which took approximately ten minutes to administer and required children to select (either verbally or via pointing) a picture from a choice of four that depicted a word spoken by the experimenter. During this session children also completed the two ToM assessment tasks. For the Baron-Cohen ‘Reading the Mind in the Eyes’ task (2001-child version) each participant was firstly shown a practice example sheet depicting a photograph of a pair of eyes with the names of four different emotions surrounding them. Each child was asked to look at the eyes whilst the experimenter read aloud the four names in turn and was then asked to choose the emotion that they thought best described the eyes. After the practice trial had been successfully completed the same procedure was repeated for the fourteen experimental items, taking approximately five minutes in total.
For the second higher-order ToM task, children were asked if they would like to read a story about two friends, Johnny and Bob. If the participant agreed then the experimenter and the child looked at the picture book together, with the experimenter reading the story aloud to each child. At the end of the story book children were then asked two scripted memory comprehension questions about the story in order to gain an indication of overall attention and comprehension of the story and a third scripted question that assessed higher-order ToM functioning. This task took less than five minutes to administer.
In the second session participants were asked if they would like to play some more fun games with the experimenter. If the child agreed they were informed that the first game they would be playing was a race to find all of the items on their ‘shopping list’ and that the winner of this game would receive a prize. In this board game task both the experimenter and participant received a ‘shopping list’ and alternated attempts to turn over cards from a pile in the middle of the table in order to correctly identify items on their list. The first person to complete their ‘shopping list’ and identify all of their items was determined the winner, however by removing a card either on the experimenter’s shopping list or on the participant’s shopping list meant that the ‘winner’ of the game could be systematically manipulated. Six children in both the ASD and TD groups were allowed to win, whereas the other six children in each group played and lost. When children ‘won’ the game they received positive verbal reinforcement and praise from the experimenter (e.g. “Wow! You were brilliant at that game! You must be very clever”) and were allowed to choose a sticker as a reward (positive affiliation condition). In contrast, when children ‘lost’ the game the experimenter retained a strictly neutral manner towards the child and continued with the next task (e.g. “okay, shall we play the next game?” neutral affiliation condition).
Immediately following this game, children were asked to sort some photographs according to how much they liked the things depicted in the pictures. Five images of faces that displayed varying emotional expressions were placed in a line on the table, going from one (a really unhappy face) through to five (a really happy face). Children were then given three examples of picture sorting by the experimenter e.g. “This is a picture of broccoli, I really hate broccoli and so I would give it a number one and put it in this pile”, “This is a picture of a cupcake, I really like cupcakes and so I would give it a number five and put it in this pile” and finally “This is a picture of the Queen, I don’t really like or really dislike the Queen and so I will give her a number three and put her in this pile”. Each child was then asked to sort the ten photographs in turn according to how much they liked the things depicted in the pictures whilst the experimenter busied herself ‘preparing the next task’.
Finally, children were asked if they would like to play a fun game of ‘Snap!’ with the experimenter. If the child agreed then the experimenter explained the rules of the game; that ‘Snap!’ in this game occurred when cards were both the same picture and the same colour and that before deciding if it was ‘Snap!’ each player was firstly required to name the picture depicted on their card. In order to further establish these rules each child was then shown four sets of example picture cards; the first pair of cards had the same picture but were not the same colour (a pink penguin and a blue penguin), the second pair of cards were the same colour but did not have the same picture (a blue bell and a blue tie), the third pair had different colours and different pictures (a green carrot and a blue star) and the final pair had the same colour and the same picture (two green shoes) depicting ‘Snap!’. The child and the experimenter then played with these example cards until it became clear that the child understood the conditions that constituted ‘Snap!’ in this game.
Following indication that the participant understood how to play the game, the experimenter and child took turns in taking the top card from their pre-ordered card pile, naming the picture on the card, before placing the card on the table and deciding if it was ‘Snap!’ The experimenter always began the game and utilised pre-scripted non-preferred word choices to name the pictures on the sixteen experimental item prime cards. When both the experimenter’s prime card and participant’s target cards both had the same picture and were the same colour it was ‘Snap!’ and the first person to shout this won the cards. At the end of the game the person who had won the most cards was determined the winner (the experimenter let all children win the game). This task took 5-10 minutes dependent upon the participant’s age and concentration and was digitally recorded for later transcription.

Publisher

Lancaster University

Format

data/SPSS.sav

Identifier

Osborn2013

Contributor

John Towse

Rights

Open

Language

English

Type

Data

Coverage

LA1 4YF

LUSTRE

Supervisor

Melissa Allen

Project Level

MSc

Topic

Developmental Psychology

Sample Size

Twelve participants with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (mean chronological age: 9.2 years, range 5.7 to 13.5 years) were recruited from a Special Educational Needs (SEN) school in the North West area of England
Participants with Autism were then paired with a group of twelve typically developing (TD) children (mean chronological age: 5.3 years, range 3.11 to 7.8 years) recruited from both a mainstream primary school and a pre-school centre in Lancashire.

Files

Collection

Citation

Elizabeth Osborn, “The Social Functionality of Language Coordination: Linguistic Alignment in Children with and Without Autism.,” LUSTRE, accessed March 29, 2024, https://www.johnntowse.com/LUSTRE/items/show/36.