Applied Psycholinguistics 34 (2013), 813835

doi:10.1017/S0142716412000033
Comprehension of reexive
and personal pronouns in children
with autism: A syntactic
or pragmatic decit?
ALEXANDRA PEROVIC
University College London
NADYA MODYANOVA and KEN WEXLER
Massachussetts Institute of Technology
Received: April 25, 2010 Accepted for publication: July 22, 2011
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE
Alexandra Perovic, Developmental Science Department, Division of Psychology and Language
Sciences, University College London, Chandler House, 2 Wakeeld Street, London WC1N 1PF, UK.
E-mail: a.perovic@ucl.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
Although pragmatic decits are well documented in autism, little is known about the extent to which
grammatical knowledge in this disorder is decient, or merely delayed when compared to that of
typically developing children functioning at similar linguistic or cognitive levels. This study examines
the knowledge of constraints on the interpretation of personal and reexive pronouns, an aspect of
grammar not previously investigated in autism, and known to be subject to differential developmental
schedules in unimpaired development. Fourteen children with autism(chronological age =617 years,
M=11) showed some difculties comprehending personal pronouns, no different fromthose observed
in two groups of younger controls matched on nonverbal IQ or receptive grammar, but in line with the
reported pragmatic decits and general language delay in this population. However, their interpretation
of reexives was signicantly worse than that of the control children. This pattern is not evidenced
at any stage of typical development, revealing an impaired grammatical knowledge in our sample of
children with autism, and is argued not to be due to a general language delay or cognitive decits.
Decits in language and communication are known to be one of the dening
characteristics and diagnostic criteria of autism (American Psychiatric Associ-
ation, 2000). Individuals with autism form a rather heterogeneous group with
respect to their language abilities, which range from mutism and little functional
communication to relatively well-developed language. A common characteristic
of these individuals, however, is that they all share impairments in pragmatic and
conversational skills.
Less is known about grammatical development in this population. It has been
argued that it follows the same path as that in typically developing (TD) children
Cambridge University Press 2012 0142-7164/12 $15.00
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Perovic et al.: Comprehension of reexive and personal pronouns in children with autism
matched on mental age (MA), although at a slower rate (Lord &Paul, 1997; Tager-
Flusberg, 1981; Tager-Flusberg et al., 1990). However, some results reported in
both early and very recent research seem to suggest otherwise. Early studies re-
vealed difculties in the use of grammatical morphology in spontaneous speech of
children with autism, not dissimilar to those seen in children with developmental
dysphasia, or specic language impairment (SLI; Bartolucci, Pierce, & Streiner,
1980; Churchill, 1972). Difculties with grammatical morphemes marking tense
(e.g., John goes, where the verb is correctly marked for tense vs. the incor-
rect John go) and present progressive (John is going) have been conrmed
more recently (Eigsti & Bennetto, 2009; Roberts, Rice, & Tager-Flusberg, 2004).
Using a computational measure introduced in accounts of the optional innitive
stage (difculties in marking the niteness of verb; Wexler, 1993) in TD and
SLI children, Roberts et al. (2004) reported that performance of children with
autism was poorer than expected for their general level of both linguistic and
cognitive development, indicating a specic morphosyntactic decit in this pop-
ulation. Note that difculty with tense marking is argued to be a reliable clinical
marker of SLI (Rice & Wexler, 1996). These ndings are particularly interesting
in view of reports suggesting a genetic link between autism and SLI (Fombonne,
Bolton, Prior, Jordan, &Rutter, 1997; Tomblin, Hafeman, &OBrien, 2003; Vernes
et al., 2008), as well as a recent claim that the two disorders could even be on
a continuum (Bishop, 2003a). Mapping out a detailed linguistic prole in the
population with autism is crucial to both establishing reliable differences between
autism and other developmental disorders, such as SLI, as well as understand-
ing the heterogeneity of the grammatical abilities of individuals on the autism
spectrum.
However, there is little consistent data on the comprehension of complex syntac-
tic structures. Research on grammar in autism traditionally entails investigations
of spontaneous speech and analyses of results obtained by standardized tests of
language abilities. Although these methods generate a wealth of important data,
contexts in which complex grammatical structures are produced are often limited,
thus failing to give a reliable picture of an individuals competence. In addition
to the studies reporting difculties with verb inection mentioned earlier, the
few experimental studies of complex grammar suggest that passives (Perovic,
Modyanova, Hanson, Nelson, & Wexler, 2007; Tager-Flusberg, 1981) and relative
clauses (Riches, Loucas, Charman, Simonoff, & Baird, 2009) also seem suscepti-
ble to impairment, as well as some operations at the syntactic/semantic/pragmatic
interfaces, such as marking of deniteness (Modyanova, 2009).
The lack of consensus on the issue of whether grammar in autism is simply de-
layed or also deviant, coupled with a scarcity of studies implementing experimental
methods, calls for investigations of formal aspects of grammar in this population in
more depth. The aim of our study is to investigate binding in children with autism.
Binding is the area of grammar that concerns constraints on the distribution of
personal and reexive pronouns. There is no previous experimental research in
this area in the population with autism; however, difculties with using personal
pronouns in spontaneous speech have been reported (Lee, Hobson, &Chiat, 1994).
Like young TD children, children with autism have been found to interpret you
as I, and vice versa. This phenomenon, termed pronoun reversal, is argued to
be due to their difculties with shifting reference and to general problems with
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Perovic et al.: Comprehension of reexive and personal pronouns in children with autism
pragmatics. Nothing is known about how children with autism interpret personal
versus reexive pronouns. Experimental research on typical development reports
specic difculties in the interpretation of personal but not reexive pronouns:
even after 6 years of age, TD children frequently interpret sentences involving
personal pronouns such as Mary washes her to mean Mary washes herself. This
robust phenomenon, termed the delay of Principle B effect (DPBE; to be discussed
in more detail in the following section) has been explained by appealing to the
distinct nature of the principles that guide the interpretation of reexive as opposed
to personal pronouns: reexives are interpreted by relying on constraints that are
purely syntactic in nature, whereas personal pronouns are regulated by both syn-
tactic and extrasyntactic (i.e., pragmatic) constraints. Syntactic constraints are in
place early, but the development of pragmatic constraints takes time (Thornton &
Wexler, 1999; Wexler & Chien, 1985); thus, the pattern in typical development
is understood as being due to TD childrens prolonged maturation of pragmatic
and not syntactic principles. In view of reported errors in production of personal
pronouns and general difculties in pragmatics and understanding of intention in
autism, an in-depth investigation of the knowledge of constraints regulating the
interpretation of both reexive and personal pronouns in this population seems
particularly pressing. If language in autism is delayed, but develops in a fashion
parallel to typical development, a similar, or even more exaggerated, pattern of
difculties with pronouns is expected, in line with reported pragmatic decits in
this population. However, if syntactic knowledge is also affected, children may
show difculties interpreting reexives that cannot be accounted for by a simple
language delay. The following section outlines the theory of binding, its acquisition
in the typical populations, and spells out the predictions for children with autism,
thus providing a rationale for our study.
CONSTRAINTS GOVERNING PERSONAL AND REFLEXIVE
PRONOUNS IN TYPICAL ACQUISITION
Our implicit knowledge of the constraints involved in assigning reference leads us
to interpret the reexive pronoun, herself, as referring to only one of the female
characters mentioned in sentence (1a) below: Susan. To be interpreted as herself,
the noun phrase (NP) Susan (its antecedent), has to be nearest to the reexive.
The index next to an NP refers to the referent of the NP.
(1) a. Mary
i
says that Susan
j
likes herself
j
.
b. Mary
i
says that Susan
j
likes her
i
.
The personal pronoun her, in (1b), is interpreted as referring to Mary, the NP
furthest away from the pronoun.
The facts of the distribution of reexive and personal pronouns have been
captured in structural terms by the binding principles of Chomsky (1986),
1
given
in (2).
(2) a. Principle A: a reexive must be locally bound.
b. Principle B: a pronoun must be locally free.
2
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Perovic et al.: Comprehension of reexive and personal pronouns in children with autism
As stated above, the binding principles describe the complementary distribution of
reexives and pronouns. This is illustrated in (3a) and (3b): Principle A forces the
reexive to corefer with Mary in (3a), whereas Principle B excludes coreference
of pronoun and Mary in (3b).
(3) a. Mary
i
adores herself
i/j
b. Mary
i
adores her
i/j
Being part of the computational aspects of our linguistic knowledge, compliance
with binding principles is expected to be seen early on. Knowledge of Principle A,
which demands that a reexive have a local antecedent in the sentence, is acquired
by TDchildren at least by age 4 (Chien &Wexler, 1990; Jakubowicz, 1984; Wexler
& Chien, 1985). In Wexler and Chien (1985), structure (4) was tested with the aid
of a two-choice picture task in 129 children, aged 2 years, 6 months (2;6) to 6;6
(and adult controls). Their performance grew with age; 6-year-olds gave greater
than 90% correct performance (chance is 50%).
(4) Cinderellas sister points to herself.
Note that when tested on the constructions above, young children also show their
understanding of the c-command component of binding, as possessives allow for
two potential antecedents of the relevant pronominal element: one c-commanding
(the entire NP, Cinderellas sister), the other non-c-commanding (the genitive NP
Cinderella). Possessive NPs are argued to appear early in typical development
(Tomasello, 1998), at least by age 4 (Bannard & Matthews, 2008; Golinkoff &
Markessini, 1980); thus, any difculties with these constructions should to be
due to childrens incomplete mastery of the binding principles, and not of the
possessive NP.
In contrast, at around the same age, TD children have a great deal of trouble
with constructions that involve personal pronouns:
(5) Cinderellas sister points to her.
In the context of a forced-choice task (where one picture shows the sister point-
ing to Cinderella, and the other picture shows the sister pointing to herself), the
sentence in (5) cannot mean that Cinderellas sister pointed to the sister, but must
mean that she pointed to Cinderella. Wexler and Chien (1985) report that in the
two-choice picture task, children 5.5-year-old children (the same children who do
very well in reexives) were still around chance, and performance increased to less
than 60% for the 6-year-olds. This robust pattern, termed DPBE, has been repli-
cated in a number of studies for English (Avrutin & Thornton, 1994; Boster, 1991;
Chien & Wexler, 1990; Thornton & Wexler, 1999) and has also been observed
crosslinguistically (e.g., Dutch: Philip & Coopmans, 1996; Hebrew: Friedmann,
Novogrodsky, &Balaban, 2010; Icelandic: Sigurjonsdottir, 1992; Russian: Avrutin
& Wexler, 1992). Acquisition of binding has been one of the most fertile areas in
the eld of language acquisition (for a review, see Guasti, 2002) and the famous
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Perovic et al.: Comprehension of reexive and personal pronouns in children with autism
phenomenon of DPBE is still debated in the literature, two decades on. It has been
noted that very young children may not show the difference in their performance
on reexives versus pronouns (such as 2.5-year-olds in Wexler & Chien, 1985,
or the 3-year-old Hebrew speakers in Ruigendijk, Friedmann, Novogrodsky &
Balaban, 2010), and that the pattern may be more robust in comprehension than
in production (Bloom, Barss, Nicol, & Conway, 1994; Hendriks & Spenader,
2005/2006; but see Ruigendijk et al., 2010, for data in Hebrew and German that
present an argument against the asymmetry in comprehension and production).
What is it that children do not knowabout the principles that constrain the use of
pronouns? Chien and Wexler (1990, followed by other researchers) argued that this
result is due to the different nature of constraints governing personal pronouns,
as opposed to reexives. Binding principles, as given in (2), regulate syntactic
binding only, where the bound item is a bound variable. Reexives are subject
to syntactic binding only. Pronouns can be ambiguous between a coreferential
and a bound variable reading
3
: when a bound variable, they are regulated by
Principle B, but when interpreted coreferentially, they are subject to constraints
that are nonsyntactic in nature (pragmatic, according to Chien & Wexler, 1990,
or subject to a special rule of coreference, as argued by Grodzinsky and Reinhart,
1993).
4
Children thus have the knowledge of Principle B, the constraint governing
the bound variable interpretation, but their difculties with pronouns are due to
limitations in implementing nonsyntactic constraints that govern illicit corefer-
ence. Chien and Wexler (1990) argue that the high rate of errors in accepting the
coreferential reading of (5) should be interpreted as a pragmatic error (failure of
Principle P).
5
It is important that the same study reports additional experimental
data conrming that children are sensitive to the distinction between binding and
coreference. In contexts where a coreferential reading is not available, that is,
when pronouns are bound by quantied antecedents, children show no difculties
rejecting an ungrammatical sentence such as (6).
(6)

Every bear
i
is washing her
i
.
This is because quantiers, like other operators, have no denite referents and
accidental coreference is not an option: there is no ambiguity and no chance for
children to fail. The same 5- to 6-year-old children in Chien and Wexler who show
a chance performance on structures where the pronoun refers to the referential
antecedent, reached 84% correct performance on constructions involving a quan-
tied antecedent. These ndings have been conrmed in other languages (Russian:
Avrutin & Wexler, 1992; Dutch: Philip & Coopmans, 1996) where children have
been shown to accept illicit coreference between a pronoun and a local referential
antecedent.
6
PREDICTIONS FOR CHILDREN WITH AUTISM
The result that TD children as old as 6 are still missing some crucial pragmatic
abilities (while the related aspects of grammar have been acquired) provides an
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Perovic et al.: Comprehension of reexive and personal pronouns in children with autism
important opportunity to test hypotheses concerning language abilities in autism.
We formulate these hypotheses as follows:
1. If only pragmatic, but not syntactic knowledge is affected in autism, children
with this disorder will show difculties in interpreting personal but not reexive
pronouns, displaying a pattern parallel to unimpaired development. An even more
exaggerated pattern of difculties with personal pronouns might be expected in
autismcompared to unimpaired development, in viewof reported language delays
in this population.
2. If, however, syntactic knowledge is also affected in autism, children may show
difculties interpreting reexives, because interpretation of these elements is
guided by principles that are purely syntactic in nature. A pattern of a worse
performance on reexives as opposed to, or in addition to pronouns, would be a
sign of deviance, and cannot be accounted for by a simple language delay because
it is not evidenced in the course of typical acquisition.
In the ensuing sections, we present a study of the knowledge of binding in
children with autism, aged 617. This age range was chosen to account for any
initial delays in language development in this population. Following Wexler and
Chien (1985), whose task was successfully used with over 100 English-speaking
TDchildren, we aimto also test the knowledge of the c-command part of Principles
A and B in our participants, by using a possessive subject that introduces both
a c-commanding and a non-c-commanding local antecedent to the reexive or
personal pronoun in question. Testing c-command is important because failures
of interpretation could be due to failures in calculating c-command or to more
general binding principle failures. To examine any effects of verbal as opposed to
nonverbal abilities in the population with autism, our participants were carefully
matched to TDcontrols on standardized measures of verbal and nonverbal abilities.
Binding principles have never been investigated in children with autism before,
nor have the possessive structures; thus, we hope that our investigation will ll an
important gap in the literature with respect to comparing the grammar in autism
to that of TD children.
METHOD
Participants
Forty-ve children, 18 clinically diagnosed with autism and 27 TD controls, were
recruited for the study. The children with autism, aged 6;617 (M = 11;6), were
recruited with the help of Childrens Hospital Boston and autism parent support
groups in Massachusetts. Four autistic children (7- to 10-year-olds) were excluded
fromthis group as they were unable to complete the test battery; thus, the complete
set of data was obtained from 14 participants with autism (of which 3 were girls).
Their overall IQ, as measured by the Kaufman Brief Test of Intelligence (KBIT;
Kaufman & Kaufman, 1990), ranged from 40 to 98 (M = 64.38, SD = 20.55; cf.
Table 1). Their scores on different standardized measures reveal some disparity
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Perovic et al.: Comprehension of reexive and personal pronouns in children with autism
Table 1. Ages and mean (standard deviation) scores on standardized tests of
language and cognition for the group with autism and two control groups
Group
Autism KBIT-TD TROG-TD
(n = 14) (n = 13) (n = 14)
Age (months) 133.63 (43.36) 71.31 (20.12) 49.79 (6.93)
Age range (months) 78206 48112 4060
KBIT
Composite SS 64.38 (20.55)
Vocabulary SS 67 (22.59)
Matrices SS 65.93 (20.37) 100.00 (6.76)
Matrices RS 15.93 (5.86) 16.85 (4.58)
PPVT-III
SS 56.57 (15.81)
RS 67.50 (16.26)
TROG-2 99.91 (9.92)
SS 56.50 (4.05)
RS 3.57 (2.76) 3.64 (2.71)
Note: The scores for the measures on which participants with autism were matched
to controls are in bold. KBIT, Kaufman Brief Test of Intelligence; TD, typically
developing; TROG, Test for Reception of Grammar, Second Edition; SS, standard
score; RS, raw score; PPVT-III, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Third Edition.
between nonverbal and verbal abilities, but these differences did not prove to
be statistically signicant: on the Matrices subtest of KBIT, which measures
nonverbal IQ, their mean standard score (SS) was 65.93 (SD = 20.37); on the
Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Third Edition (PPVT-III; Dunn & Dunn, 1997),
the test of receptive vocabulary, the mean was 56.57 (SD = 15.81); and on the
Test for Reception of Grammar, Second Edition (TROG-2; Bishop, 2003b), their
mean score was 56.50 (SD = 4.05). It may be noted that these childrens scores
appeared uniformly poorer on TROG as opposed to PPVT: 12 out of 14 children
were at oor on TROG, whereas 4 out of 14 children were at oor on PPVT.
Unimpaired controls, aged 39, were recruited fromday care centers and schools
in Boston, Massachusetts, and were individually matched to children with autism
on the raw scores of one of the two measures: the matrices subtest of KBIT (no
more than 1 point off), and TROG-2 (no more than 1 point off), thereby forming
two control groups: KBIT-TD and TROG-TD, respectively. The inclusion of the
two different measures of nonverbal and verbal abilities allowed us to factor out
the inuence of general cognition and of general grammar ability on participants
performance on the particular syntactic structures under investigation. The TROG-
TD control group consisted of 14 children, whereas the KBIT-TD group had 13: 1
child with autism scored particularly low on KBIT; thus, no match could be found
for himamong our typical controls. Independent sample t tests conrmed that there
were no statistically signicant differences between the raw scores of the group
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Perovic et al.: Comprehension of reexive and personal pronouns in children with autism
with autismand either of the two control groups on the relevant matching measure.
Participants were closely matched for gender: this match was exact in the autism
versus KBIT control group, and fairly close in the autism versus TROG group,
where 11 out of 14 autistic participants were matched with controls for gender.
All participants were native speakers of standard American English dialect.
Procedure
Comprehension of personal and reexive pronouns was investigated with the aid
of a two-choice picture selection task, adapted from Wexler and Chien (1985). To
make sure that all participants understood the procedure, great care was taken to
introduce the task, the characters used in the experimental pictures (the Simpsons
family: Mom, Dad, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie), and the verbs depicting different
actions used in the experimental sentences (dress, wash, point to, and touch).
The task was rst piloted with two children with autism and two children with
Williams syndrome, aged 36, all with varying degrees of intellectual impairment.
A similar version of this task, with the identical procedure but testing a different
syntactic construction, was successfully used in another experiment in our lab,
with 198 TD children, aged 314. The pictures of the ve cartoon characters were
introduced on the laptop screen individually, for example, This is Mom, this is
Dad, this is Lisa, etc., followed by practice items that tested the childs familiarity
with each one: the child would be asked to point to the character that matches the
name uttered by the experimenter (e.g., Lisa, while the screen shows two pictures,
one of Lisa, one of Marge, Lisas mom). This was followed by the introduction
of four verbs used in the experimental pictures: dress, wash, point to, and touch,
and nally, by two practice items involving simple transitive constructions: Mom
kisses Dad and Bart holds Lisa. The correct answers to all the practice items
and experimental items alternated between pictures presented on the left and right
side of the screen, to control for any visual bias. The task was administered to
ten unimpaired adults whose performance was at ceiling. All the controls and the
14 participants with autism (excluding the aforementioned four participants with
autismwho were for this reason excluded) were able to followthe task instructions
and successfully completed the introductory items, before the experimental probe
was presented to them.
Stimuli
The probe consisted of two experimental conditions involving reexive (name
reexive [NR]) and personal pronouns (name pronoun [NPr]) and two control
conditions involving no pronouns but just proper names (control possessive [CP]
and control name [CN]). The complete list of sentences is provided in Table 2.
Possessive subjects (Barts dad) were chosen over simple noun phrases
(Homer), because possessive structure allows for two potential antecedents of
the reexive or pronoun in the experimental conditions: the possessor NP Bart,
and the entire subject NP consisting of the possessor and possessee, Barts dad.
This way, the child has the choice of two local antecedents, one c-commanding
the dependent, the other not.
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Perovic et al.: Comprehension of reexive and personal pronouns in children with autism
Table 2. The complete list of sentences in each test condition
1. Name reexive Barts dad is touching himself.
Lisas mom is touching herself.
Barts dad is pointing to himself.
Lisas mom is pointing to herself.
Barts dad is washing himself.
Maggies mom is washing herself.
Maggies mom is dressing herself.
Lisas mom is dressing herself.
2. Name pronoun Barts dad is touching him.
Lisas mom is touching her.
Barts dad is pointing to him.
Lisas mom is pointing to her.
Barts dad is washing him.
Maggies mom is washing her.
Maggies mom is dressing her.
Lisas mom is dressing her.
3. Control name Bart is pointing to Dad.
Lisa is touching Mom.
Bart is washing Dad.
Mom is dressing Maggie.
Dad is pointing to Bart.
Mom is touching Lisa.
Mom is washing Maggie.
Mom is dressing Lisa.
4. Control possessive Barts dad is licking a lamp post.
Lisas mom is waving a ag.
Barts dad is petting a dog.
Maggies mom is petting a dog.
Lisas mom is driving a car.
Lisas mom is playing with blocks.
Barts dad is eating an ice cream.
Maggies mom is eating an ice cream.
Participants were asked to point to one of the two pictures presented on the
laptop computer that matched the sentence uttered by the experimenter. Thus,
a sentence Barts dad is washing him (NPr) would be accompanied by two
pictures: Picture A, depicting Homer, Barts dad, washing himself, with Bart
standing by, and Picture B, the correct answer, where Homer is washing Bart.
The same two pictures would be used for the reexive sentence (NR), Barts
dad is washing himself, where the correct answer is the aforementioned Picture A.
In the control condition CP, which contained no pronominal elements, a sentence
such as Barts dad is petting a dog would be accompanied by two pictures:
Picture A showing Bart petting a dog, and Picture B showing Homer, Barts dad,
petting a dog (the correct answer). CP sentences tested whether children knew
the structure of possessive NPs: whether they knew that the structure Barts dad
refers to Barts dad and not, say, to Bart, which is the rst NP in the sentence.
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Perovic et al.: Comprehension of reexive and personal pronouns in children with autism
If children did well on this control condition, then any problems they have with
binding could not be the result of misunderstanding the possessive structure.
Furthermore, as is also the case for control condition CN (to be described next), if
children did well on this control condition, it shows that they can perform well in
this experiment when binding is not involved. Control condition CN contained no
possessive structures and no pronominal elements: for example, the sentence Dad
is pointing to Bart would be accompanied with Picture A showing Homer, Barts
dad, pointing to Bart (the correct answer), and Picture B showing Bart pointing to
Homer, his dad.
There were eight sentences in each condition (two for each of the four verbs in
the experimental conditions), thus totaling 32 sentences. The order of sentences
was automatically randomized for each participant. The test took about 10 min to
complete.
The majority of the participants with autism were tested in their homes, but
several were tested in their schools. TD controls were all tested at their daycare
centers or after school clubs.
RESULTS
Because the outcome variable was binary, and involved repeated measures for each
participant in each of the three groups, the data were analyzed using the generalized
linear mixed model function with a logit link (Gelman & Hill, 2007). Mixed
logistic regression models have been argued to be more suitable for analyzing data
in psycholinguistic research than commonly used repeated measures analyses of
variance (e.g., Jaeger, 2008; Quene & van den Bergh, 2008).
The xed effects built into the model were Group (autism group and the two
control groups: KBIT-TD and TROG-TD), sentence (NPr, NR, CP, and CN), and
Group Sentence interaction.
7,8
The model revealed signicant main effects of group, F (2, 152) = 16.62, p <
.001, sentence type, F(3, 152) =10.13, p <.001, and signicant Group Sentence
Type interaction, F (6, 152) =3.20, p =.005. To investigate the Group Sentence
Type interaction, post hoc contrasts (Sidak corrected) compared mean probability
correct of each sentence type both between the groups and within the groups.
Variables were considered to be statistically signicant at the adjusted level of
p = .05. Mean probabilities correct for each sentence type and each group are
displayed in Figure 1.
The signicant Group Sentence Type interaction indicates different patterns
of performance between the three participant groups. The performance of the two
TD control groups did not differ on any of the sentence types. All the differences
observed concerned the performance of the group with autism relative to that of
the controls.
With regard to the control conditions, estimated mean probabilities correct of
the group with autism on CN (M = 0.80, 95% condence interval [CI] = 0.70,
0.88) and CP (M = 0.77, 95% CI = 0.62, 0.87) were no different from those of
the TROG group: CN (M = 0.89, 95% CI = 0.80, 0.94), t (152) = 1.57, p =
.224, and CP (M = 0.86, 95% CI = 0.72, 0.93), t (152) = 1.06, p = .455,
respectively. The other control group, KBIT-TD, had generally higher scores on
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Perovic et al.: Comprehension of reexive and personal pronouns in children with autism
Figure 1. The results of the study. KBIT, Kaufman Brief Test of Intelligence; TD, typically
developing; TROG, Test for Reception of Grammar; CP, control possessive; CN, control name;
NPr, name pronoun; NR, name reexive.
the control conditions (CN: M= 0.95, 95% CI = 0.87, 0.98; CP: M= 0.93, 95%
CI =0.80, 0.98). The autism groups performance on CN was signicantly worse
than that of KBIT-TD controls, t (152) = 2.88, p = .014; odds ratio = 4.75, but
only approached signicance on CP, t (152) = 2.16, p = .093; odds ratio = 3.97.
With regard to the experimental conditions, comparisons of mean probabilities
revealed no differences between the groups on NPr (autism group M=0.67, 95%
CI =0.54, 0.74; KBIT-TD group M=0.71, 95% CI =0.60, 0.80; and TROG-TD
group M = 0.71, 95% CI = 0.61, 0.80): autism versus KBIT-TD: t (152) = 1.02,
p = .671, and autism versus TROG-TD: t (152) = 0.96, p = .671.
However, the performance of the autistic group on NR (M = 0.43, 95%, CI =
0.31, 0.55) was signicantly worse than those of both control groups (KBIT-TD,
M=0.92, 95% CI =0.82, 0.97; and TROG-TD, M=0.83, 95% CI =0.71, 0.90):
autism group versus KBIT group: t (152) = 6.88, p < .001, odds ratio = 15.24,
and autism group versus TROG group: t (152) = 5.10, p < .001, odds ratio =
6.48.
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The analysis also allowed for comparisons between the performances on the
four different sentence types for each group individually. Comparisons of mean
probabilities correct between the four sentence types within the autism group
revealed the score on NRto be signicantly lower than that of every other sentence
type: CP, t (152) =3.76, p =.001; CN, t (152) =4.86, p <.001; and NPr, t (152) =
2.65, p = .035. No other differences between sentence types in the autism group
were observed.
Within the KBIT-TD control group, the differences were signicant between
the NPr and every other sentence type: CP, t (152) =3.45, p =.003; CN, t (152) =
4.29, p < .001; and NR, t (152) = 3.46, p = .003. No other differences between
sentence types were observed.
Within the TROG control group, the only statistically signicant difference
between means was between NPr and CN, t (152) = 3, p = .019.
That the autism group performed worse on the control condition CN, a simple
subjectverbobject sentence, than the KBIT-TD group, may raise concerns such
as whether these children were able to understand the task, and whether the
main result, the extremely poor performance on NR of the autism group, was
due to those autistic children who showed difculties with this control condition.
There were ve children with autism who scored ve out of eight correct on this
condition (all other children, including all the controls, reach at least six out of
eight correct).
9
Even when these ve children are excluded and the analysis rerun,
the results remain the same: the difference on NR is the only observed difference
between the autistic group and the two control groups: autism versus KBIT-TD,
t (132) = 5.49, p < .001, and for autism versus TROG-TD, t (132) = 4.42, p <
.001.
The control condition CP was crucial in revealing whether or not children
understand the notion of possessive structures, independently of their performance
on pronouns or reexives. The children with autism showed a slightly lower but
not statistically signicantly different performance from that of controls. There
were several children overall who scored low on CP: three autistic children (one
8-year-old who scored none of the possible eight correct, one 17-year-old who got
three of eight correct, and one 6-year-old who scored ve of eight correct) and
four control children (two 4.5-year-olds who scored four of eight correct, and two
3.5-year-olds who scored ve of eight correct). A separate analysis was run with
all these children excluded, and results were identical to those reported above:
the autism group showed no difference from the controls on any condition except
NR: autism versus KBIT-TD, t (124) = 6.10, p < .001, and for autism versus
TROG-TD, t (124) = 4, p < .001.
In order to get a better idea of the patterns revealed in the data on experimental
conditions, we also report the number of children who scored at least six out of
eight items correct on NR and NPr conditions in the autism group as opposed
to the controls. On NR, only two children out of 14 in the autism group passed
the threshold of six of eight correct (14% of the sample); the other 12 children
scored between one and ve correct. In contrast, there were 23 out of the total of
27 control children (85% of the sample) who reached at least six of eight correct
on NR; the other four control children all scored ve of eight correct on this
experimental condition. With regard to the NPr condition, 15 control children out
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of 27 (56% of the sample) scored six of eight or more correct, whereas 5 out
of 14 autistic children (36% of the sample) did so. Note that the two children
with autism mentioned above, who showed the good performance on NR, also
showed a poorer performance on NPr (less than six of eight correct), which is a
pattern parallel to TD controls. Their general language abilities, as reected in
their scores on standardized tests, were in line with those of other children in the
group (cf. Table 1 for average scores of the autism group on different standardized
measures): both children had an SS of 55 on TROG, and SSs of 50 and 58 on
PPVT. On KBIT, the measure of nonverbal IQ, one childs SS was 63 and the
others 84, the latter score almost in the average range. It is unlikely, however,
that the SS of 84 on KBIT contributed to this childs ability to interpret reexives
correctly: there were other autistic children whose standard scores on some of the
measures were also close to or even within the normal range (e.g., two children
had KBIT SSs of 98 and 103, and three different children had PPVT SSs of 80,
80, and 87) but who still performed poorly on the reexive condition.
DISCUSSION
Here we summarize the patterns revealed in the performance of the group with
autism and the two groups of matched TD controls, and argue that the results of
our sample of children with autism signal the presence of a particular grammatical
decit in this population. We discuss a possible account of this decit and examine
the general implications that these results have for our understanding of the study
of language in autism and the linguistic theory of binding.
The results shown by our TD controls are in line with those widely reported
in the literature for this chronological age range (3- to 9-year-olds), as reviewed
in earlier sections. Children in the older control group, KBIT-TD (average age =
6), showed a worse performance on pronouns, NPr (M = 0.71) and a very good
performance on reexives, NR (M = 0.92), displaying a classic DPBE pattern.
The younger TROG-TD control group (average age = 4) showed no statistically
signicant difference between their performance on the two conditions (NPr: M=
0.71, and NR: M = 0.83). The lack of differential performance on reexives and
pronouns in this control group parallels the pattern reported in Ruigendijk et al.
(2010) for 3-year-old Hebrew speakers and can therefore be attributed to their
young age. However, even these childrens performance on pronouns was still
worse than their performance on a control condition CN; thus, for both control
groups, their only difculty involved the experimental condition testing personal
pronouns, NPr.
In contrast, the pattern demonstrated by the autism group revealed a persistent
difculty with the experimental condition involving reexives, NR. Comparing
the results of the three groups overall, the autism group performed signicantly
worse on NR than either of the TD control groups: the estimated mean probability
correct of children with autism on NR was 0.43, for the KBIT-TD it was 0.92, and
TROG-TD it was 0.83. Crucially, on the NPr condition, their performance was no
different from either of the control groups.
Like the KBIT-TD group, the autism group also showed the difference between
the NPr and NR, but crucially, this difference goes in the opposite direction:
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Perovic et al.: Comprehension of reexive and personal pronouns in children with autism
children with autismhad more difculties with NRthan with NPr. Recall, however,
that there were two autistic children whose results followed the typical pattern of
a DPBE: good performance on reexives, but poor on pronouns. Thus, although
the discussion here concerns the large majority of our sample, individual variation
needs to be kept in mind. Recall however, that there were no TD control children
who showed the atypical pattern, of a better performance on pronouns, and poorer
on reexives.
Children with autism did relatively well on the test of possessive structures, CP,
although somewhat worse than the KBIT-TD controls, indicating that possessives
seem within reach for the majority of children with this disorder (a discussion on
how this performance can relate to the childrens performance on NR is provided
below). Some individual variation also seems present here, as there were three
autistic children, along with four controls, who had difculties interpreting these
sentences. Note that the poorer performance of these children did not affect the
results, because the same results were obtained even after these participants were
excluded.
The performance of the autism group on the control CN condition was signi-
cantly worse than that of KBIT-TDgroup. Because these are simple subjectverb
object sentences, whose purpose was to ensure that autistic children are able to
understand the task, one may wonder whether the extremely poor performance of
the autism group on NR was due to these autistic children who showed difculties
with this particular control condition. We do not believe this is the case: when the
ve children with autism who do less than well on this condition are excluded
from the analysis, the robust pattern remains: a signicant difculty with the inter-
pretation of reexives, not present in the matched controls, and an observable but
less severe difculty with pronouns, comparable to that seen in matched controls.
Furthermore, because the autismgroups performance on CNwas no different from
that of TROG-TD, the youngest group matched on grammar comprehension, we
attribute this result to general difculties attending to the task in the autism group.
How do the observed patterns match our predictions outlined earlier? Recall
that Prediction 1 stated that if only pragmatic, but not syntactic knowledge were
affected, children with autism should show difculties interpreting personal but
not reexive pronouns. Such a pattern would also be in line with the evidenced
language delay in this population: if language development follows the same path
as in TD, but develops much slower, a pattern resembling the DPBE, reported
widely in the typical acquisition literature, was to be expected. Our data con-
rm this prediction only with regard to pronouns: the observed difculties with
personal pronouns, comparable to matched TDcontrols, seemin line both with the
delayed but normal characterization of language development in autism as well
as the reported pragmatic decits (the nature of these decits will be discussed in
more detail below). However, the extreme difculty with the reexive pronouns
observed in the data ts in better with Prediction 2, which stated that if syntax
were also affected in autism, in addition to pragmatics, our participants should also
show difculties interpreting reexive pronouns. The pattern of extreme difculty
with reexive pronouns cannot be explained by a mere delay in grammatical
development in autism: the disparity in the command of grammatical constraints
governing pronouns as opposed to reexives, where Principle B is obeyed but
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Perovic et al.: Comprehension of reexive and personal pronouns in children with autism
Principle A violated, is not evidenced at any stage of typical language develop-
ment (for a review, see Perovic, 2004) and has been observed in other populations
with known grammatical decits, such as Down syndrome (Perovic, 2004, 2006;
Ring & Clahsen, 2005).
We argue that the difculty in the interpretation of reexives observed in the
sample of children with autism in this study signals an impairment that is purely
syntactic in nature. Reexive binding is governed by Principle Aof binding theory;
thus, we hypothesize that this principle is missing, or is incorrectly represented,
in the grammar of children with autism. In particular, the c-command subpart of
Principle A is missing in the child with autism. If this is the case, how is the
anaphor interpreted? Recall that the subject, the possessive NP, contained two
potential antecedents for the reexive. In sentences such as Barts dad is washing
himself, participants with autism tended to incorrectly interpret himself as
referring to Bart, choosing the picture that shows Barts dad washing Bart. One
could argue that children with autism rely on some linear rule to interpret the
reexive. For instance, assume that the child with autism interprets reexives as
relying on a rule such as the antecedent of a reexive is a preceding noun phrase
in the same clause. Such a rule would in fact obtain the correct interpretation
for simple sentences involving the reexive, that is, Mary points to herself.
However, their poor performance on NR where the subject of the sentence is
a possessive could be interpreted as signaling that children with autism do not
know the c-command part of Principle A: that the antecedent of a reexive must
c-command the reexive. Presumably a child with such a rule could choose either
Bart or Barts dad as the antecedent of the reexive in Barts dad is pointing to
himself. After all, they are both in the same clause as the reexive.
The suggestion that children use such a linear rule raises two important issues.
First, should the existence of this linear rule be interpreted to mean that the child
with autism is completely missing the hierarchical rule of c-command? Second,
why do our participants (with the exception of three children, as reported earlier)
interpret CP sentences correctly?
10
C-command is a structural notion, considered a primitive of grammar (Koster,
1987; Neeleman &van de Koot, 2002; Williams, 1980; although see other accounts
which argue that the c-command relation is a consequence of general syntactic
operations, for example, Hornstein, 2001, 2009). Thus, not having c-command at
all would severely impede most grammatical and interpretive understanding. For
example, the subjectpredicate relationship demands that the subject c-command
the predicate. In Lisa is driving a car, Lisa c-commands driving a car. As we have
pointed out, very little is known about the grammatical capacities of children with
autism, so many possibilities are open. We simply point out here, that not having
c-command would be a fairly devastating deciency.
Turning to the second issue, the aim of the CP condition was to test the c-
command relation independently of binding: computing the subjectpredicate
relationship in these sentences indicates that children with autism show sensitivity
to c-command: Lisas mom is driving the car cannot be interpreted as Lisa is
driving the car. The semantic relationship (possession) between Lisa and mom
is usually interpreted as the c-commanding NP being the possessor. However,
it could be argued that a linear strategy can also be used to interpret the CP
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Perovic et al.: Comprehension of reexive and personal pronouns in children with autism
sentences. Assume that the child with autism interprets the second NP as the
head of possessive structure, Barts dad; this would always result in the correct
interpretation of possessive sentences. If the children also have the (wrong) linear
rule for the interpretation of reexives, where the antecedent of a reexive is a
preceding noun in the same clause, such a grammar would predict childrens good
performance on CP, but poor or chance performance in NR.
Assuming that children with autism lack c-command altogether, yet can under-
stand simple transitive sentences (as we see in our study) and can understand the
possessive relationship (as we see in our study) seems to implicate the existence of
several different kinds of linear rules. We have seen the need for a particular two
of these, one for the possessive, one for the reexive. Although this is conceivable,
we would have to explain how a child creates such a set of linear rules. It is
not entirely obvious how this could be done, but we will leave this matter of
learnability here for future study.
Thus, although we are hesitant to argue that c-command in general is missing
in the grammar of autism, as this would imply a devastating decit in this popu-
lation, we settle for a more conservative hypothesis: we argue that children with
autismdo not showsensitivity to c-command in establishing the complex syntactic
dependency of binding, where the antecedent of a reexive must c-command the
reexive.
Support for the idea that the ability to establish complex syntactic dependencies
may be compromised in autism comes from recent reports that complex syntactic
operations involved in the formation of passive and raising structures may also be
affected in children and teenagers with autism (Perovic et al., 2007). One theo-
retical proposal suggests that binding should be reduced to a movement analysis
(Hornstein, 2001). Because there are indications that children with autism have
difculties with raising constructions (such as John seems to Mary to be driving
a car, which involve movement of the subject John from the subject position
in the embedded clause to the subject position in the main clause; Perovic et
al., 2007), in addition to binding, it may seem as if the child with autism has
difculties with argument movement. This theory, however, would have to nd a
way to account for why raising and binding are distinguished in other populations,
for example, typical development (Hirsch & Wexler, 2007), Williams syndrome
(Perovic & Wexler, 2007), where binding much precedes raising.
11
To shed more light on the actual difculties with reexives in the grammar
of autism, it would be relevant to investigate binding in those languages that
show a contrast between strong and weak reexive elements (zich vs. zichzelf
in Dutch, sich vs. sich selbst in German, or the reexive clitic se vs. the full
reexive sebe in Serbo-Croatian). Perovic (2004, 2008) reports results of Serbian
adolescents with Down syndrome who showed difculties with the full reexive
sebe, but not with the reexive clitic se, arguing that this is due to their inability
to establish the syntactic relation of binding between the full reexive and its an-
tecedent. These participants, however, were able to understand inherently reexive
predicates that can only appear with the clitic, and not with the full reexive. It has
been argued that other theories of binding, such as Reinhart and Reuland (1993), or
Reuland (2001), may be better equipped to deal with the different types of reexive
elements in these languages than the standard binding theory of Chomsky (1986;
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Perovic et al.: Comprehension of reexive and personal pronouns in children with autism
for details, see Perovic, 2004, 2006, Ring & Clahsen, 2005). However, further
research is needed, with a larger number of participants, to establish the exact
nature of the violations of the syntactic principles guiding the interpretation of
reexives in autism.
On the general level, our data have interesting implications for the linguistic
theory of binding: they provide evidence that the constraints regulating reexives
and pronouns are different in nature (i.e., there is a difference in how children
with autism treat reexives as opposed to pronouns), or to put it differently, that
the fractionation of binding into syntactic and nonsyntactic components is real
(Reinhart, 1983). The well-established result of a difculty with personal pronouns
but not reexives in the typical acquisition literature, the DPBE phenomenon,
proves this fractionation in one direction: it is the pragmatic/processing constraint
that is difcult to apply for the TD children who then cannot rule out illicit
coreference of pronouns. The pattern revealed here provides evidence for this
fractionation in the opposite direction: children with autism cannot apply the
constraint that falls within syntax proper. However, although our data demonstrate
a pattern reminiscent of the DPBE in our sample of children with autism, it is not
immediately obvious howand whether these results can help us decide whether the
extra-syntactic constraint governing illicit coreference of pronouns is pragmatic
or processing in nature, because opposing arguments have been provided in the
literature (cf. Chien & Wexler, 1990 vs. Grodzinsky & Reinhart, 1993). Further
research is needed to establish whether autistic childrens performance would
differ on quantied as opposed to nonquantied antecedents, the issue crucial
in these accounts. If TD childrens difculties with personal pronouns are due
to their inability to block illicit coreference, which in turn is a result of their
immature pragmatic abilities, one might expect children with autism, in view of
their reported pragmatic decits, to nd the interpretation of personal pronouns
extraordinarily difcult, even more so than the TD controls. One option would
be to consider the possibility that pragmatic abilities involved in ruling out illicit
coreference in TD populations are different in nature to those pragmatic abilities
that are affected in autism. Children with autism, for example, are known to have
difculties assigning reference to speakers as opposed to addressees, for example,
I versus you, or between the third person, for example, Mary, and the rst
person, I. However, when an action is directed toward only one third person
referent in the discourse, the difculty in assigning reference is greatly reduced:
the interpretative complexity of determining whether that object is reexive or
nonreexive is greatly reduced. Further research is needed in this domain as well.
An important issue to consider is howgeneral verbal and nonverbal abilities may
have inuenced the results of our group with autism. It is interesting to note that
the autism group performed worse than either of the two control TD groups on re-
exives, revealing that neither of the two measures: nonverbal MA nor the general
comprehension of grammar, were reliable predictors of our participants knowl-
edge of this subtle aspect of grammar. Although nonverbal abilities, as measured
by KBIT Matrices, seemed stronger than their verbal abilities, our participants
with autism still performed worse than the much younger TD controls matched
on this measure, which suggests the observed decit cannot be due to a general
cognitive decit in the population with autism. Furthermore, they performed worse
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Perovic et al.: Comprehension of reexive and personal pronouns in children with autism
than even the TD controls matched on TROG, indicating that the decit in the
interpretation of reexives is more severe than the general grammatical decit in
this population would suggest. Clearer insights into the relation between general
cognitive abilities and the knowledge of this particular aspect of grammar can
only be obtained by comparisons of different populations with known intellectual
impairments. Although this study focussed on the population with autism only,
results from studies on other developmental disorders reveal different patterns,
suggesting that comprehension of reexive and personal pronouns is independent
from nonverbal as well as verbal MA. It has been shown that children and adults
with Down syndrome also have difculties with the interpretation of reexive
pronouns (Perovic, 2004, 2006; Ring & Clahsen, 2005), in contrast to children
and adolescents with Williams syndrome, who demonstrate a good comprehension
of both reexives and pronouns (Clahsen & Almazan, 1998; Perovic & Wexler,
2007; Ring &Clahsen, 2005; but, for indications of a DPBE in younger children
with Williams syndrome, see Perovic & Wexler, 2007). It is crucial that a recent
study suggests that even when matched on chronological age and intellectual and
verbal ability, children with autism perform worse than children with Williams
syndrome on reexives, but not on pronouns (Perovic, Modyanova, & Wexler,
2009). Why binding should be vulnerable in two disorders as different as Down
syndrome and autism remains to be answered.
CONCLUSIONS
The results from the rst experimental investigation of binding in the population
with autism reported here reveal two clear patterns. Children with autism showed
some difculties interpreting personal pronouns (a DPBE), but these were no
different fromthe TDcontrols functioning at similar levels of verbal and nonverbal
abilities, in line with the reported language delays and pragmatic decits in this
population. Howver, they did show signicant difculties interpreting reexives,
signicantly worse than either of the two groups of controls, matched on nonverbal
MAor receptive grammar. Because for the interpretation of reexives the syntactic
relation between the reexive element and its antecedent is crucial, in contrast
to pronouns, which are interpreted by invoking extrasyntactic mechanisms, the
pattern suggests a decit that is syntactic in nature. This pattern is not seen in
typical development, but has been evidenced in other populations with syntactic
impairments, that is, Down syndrome (Perovic, 2004, 2006; Ring & Clahsen,
2005). The observed pattern is in contrast to the traditional view that there is
a pragmatic, but not a syntactic decit in autism, because such a view predicts
problems with pronouns, but not with reexives. Despite individual variability in
our participants with autism, the observed deciency of children with autism on
a complex aspect of grammar such as binding and reports of other deciencies
on passives and raising, suggest that grammatical development in autism may be
qualitatively different from that of typical development. Although further studies
with greater participant numbers are needed, these data contribute to a more
comprehensive picture of the knowledge of complex grammar in autism, an area
of research severely neglected in the literature.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported by the Anne and Paul Marcus Family Foundation; the Brain
Development and Disorders Project (BDDP) Postdoctoral Award (to A.P.); and the Brain
Infrastructure Grant Program to the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Mas-
sachusetts Institute of Technology, from the Simons Initiative on Autism. We thank all
of the participants and their families for taking part and the Autism Resource Center of
Central Massachusetts and Childrens Hospital, Boston, for help with recruiting. We also
thank Lee Mavros-Rushton, the coordinator of BDDP, and all of the students in the Wexler
Lab for help with collecting data; Gordon Craig, Christopher Hirsch, Vikki Janke, and Ad
Neeleman for helpful discussions; and audiences at the 31st Boston University Conference
on Language Development in November 2006; Autism Research UK, Open University,
in May 2007; the Symposium on Research on Child Language Disorders, University of
Wisconsin, Madison, in 2007; the Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition Con-
ference, Universitat Aut ` onoma de Barcelona, in September 2007; and the Symposia on
Innovative Research in Autism, Tours, France, in April 2009, where some of the ndings
were presented.
NOTES
1. See Reuland and Everart (2001) for a critique of the standard framework and Hornstein
(2001), Reuland (2001) for alternative accounts of binding.
2. Binding: Xbinds Yif Xc-commands Yand is coreferential with Y(see the next Note for
more on coreference). C-command is a structural relationship between constituents: a
noun phrase X c-commands a noun phrase Y if the rst branching node that dominates
X also dominates Y (X dominates Y if it is higher up in a syntactic tree). C-command
is a core grammatical relationship pertinent to our understanding of how binding and
reference work in natural language but also to other crucial syntactic phenomena, for
example, movement. For present purposes, local can mean in the same clause as.
3. There are two ways that a pronoun can have the same referent as a noun phrase. A
very pervasive way is for a pronoun to pick up its referent from an antecedent,
typically uttered in the discourse (although sometimes the discourse is wider than
the current situation). This is, perhaps, most obvious when the pronoun is clearly a
variable. In the sentence Every woman in the class thought she would do well,
the pronoun she picks up its referent from every woman, varying in reference with
each woman in the set denoted by every woman in the class: for example, Susan
thought she (Susan) would do well, Mary thought she (Mary) would do well, and
so forth. However, even in a sentence like Mary thought that she would do well, the
pronoun she picks up its referent from an antecedent (Mary). We think of the pronoun
in all these cases as being bound to its antecedent; it picks up its referent from the
antecedent. Principle B applies to this type of relationship. In contrast, a pronoun
may corefer with another noun phrase accidentally. The pronoun does not pick
up its referent from the other noun phrase; rather, the pronoun and the noun phrase
just happen to refer to the same person or thing. Consider a discourse like, That guy
must be John. At least he looks like him. Here the pronoun him picks up its reference
fromthe noun phrase John, so it corefers with John. However, himalso is coreferential
with the noun phrase that guy. The speaker is asserting that that guy is John, and
him, which is coreferential with John also must be coreferential with that guy. This
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relationship is not one of picking up reference, rather it is what is called accidental
coreference. Him corefers with that guy, but does not pick up its referent from it.
This is a relationship of coreference, but not a bound variable relationship. Similarly
he and him in the second sentence of the discourse are coreferential, but neither picks
up its referent from the other; they are coreferential, but there is no bound variable
relationship between them. Principle B does not apply to this relationship, so he and
him in the second sentence corefer, he locally c-commands him, yet Principle B does
not apply to make this sentence ungrammatical, because there is no bound variable
relationship between he and him.
4. Although this is the prevalent viewin the literature (i.e., for a review, see Guasti, 2002),
other accounts have also been proposed; for example, see Hendriks and Spenader
(2005/2006) for an account couched in the optimality theory framework.
5. See Grodzinsky and Reinhart (1993) for an argument that the observed pattern is due
to an error in syntactic processing: the failure of Rule I (preserving the Chien and
Wexler proposal about the distinction in childrens behavior between bound variable
and coreferential pronouns). See Thornton and Wexler (1999) for a response to that
suggestion, defending Wexler and Chiens (1985) original pragmatic hypothesis.
6. The pattern of childrens worse performance on pronouns when referential as opposed
to when bound by a quanticational antecedent has been disputed at both ends of the
spectrum. On the one hand, Elbourne (2005) argues that quanticational asymmetry
is not real: children have difculties interpreting pronouns both with referential and
quantied antecedents, that is, they lack the knowledge of Principle B altogether,
until at least about 6 years of age. Conroy, Takashi, Lidz, and Philips (2010), on the
other hand, argue that DPBE is an experimental artifact: in their study, children are
able to interpret pronouns both bound and referential. Both studies question the truth
value judgment method used in the original experiments displaying the DPBE with
referential pronouns and the lack of it with bound pronouns. Further research is needed
to help us decide between conicting data and arguments; however, this issue is not
of immediate concern to us: we aim to replicate studies that use a picture selection
method, and not truth value judgment, and focus on childrens comprehension of
referential pronouns, not those bound by quantied antecedents.
7. Matching did not create a dependency between the scores across the groups, and
hence, the groups can be treated as independent. Consequently, match is not included
as a random effect.
8. It is possible that the four verbs used here could have elicited different responses in our
participants. It has been argued (Everaert, 1986) that wash and dry belong to the group
of verbs that are ambiguous between inherently reexive and regular transitive verbs:
when inherently reexive, these verbs can be used without the reexive pronoun: I
wash every day, and when regular transitive verbs, they are reexivized by the
presence of the reexive I wash myself everyday (Reuland & Reinhart, 1993). The
other two verbs, touch and point to are regular transitive verbs and cannot be used
without the reexive in reexive contexts. Note, however, that different uses of wash
and dry are rarely observed in everyday American English. Crucially, Wexler and
Chien (1985) found little variability between childrens performance on these same
four verbs. Although it seems unlikely that the children here treated wash and dry
differently from touch and point to in reexive contexts, this issue should still be
considered in future studies and verb included as a random effect in the model.
Applied Psycholinguistics 34:4
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Perovic et al.: Comprehension of reexive and personal pronouns in children with autism
9. We assume a cutoff point of 6/8 (75%) correct as indicating that the structure has been
mastered, in line with Hirsch and Wexler (2007), who used a similar experimental
methodology to test raising structures in TD children aged 39 years. This, of course,
may not be conservative enough, but notice that raising the cutoff point to 7/8 or 8/8
correct would result in eliminating a greater number of autistic children. Using a larger
number of items per condition in this type of experimental design may be a solution
in future studies; however, other requirements have to be taken into consideration,
such as the generally shorter attention span of the child with autism, the number of
experimental tasks researchers can carry out in a single experimental session, and so
forth.
10. Note that the error in CP was that the child chooses the wrong syntactic subject (Bart
instead of Barts dad), whereas the error in NR is that the child chooses the wrong
referent of the syntactic object, namely, himself to refer to Bart instead of Barts
dad. The relations of subject and object (agent, patient) are depicted in the picture. If
the child chose the wrong subject (Bart instead of Barts dad) in the NR case, it just
makes neither of the two pictures t the sentence, because both of them have Barts
dad doing the action. This might lead to chance performance (guessing behavior) but
it would also predict chance performance on NPr, and we have seen that children with
autism perform signicantly better on NPr than NR. Thus, there are two reasons why
we do not think that performance on possessives predicts the poor performance on
reexives: the good performance on CP and the signicantly better performance on
NPr compared to NR.
11. For discussion on how other components of Hornsteins analysis, the movement
analysis of the construction of control structures fare in typical language acquisition,
see Hirsch and Wexler (2007).
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