Discourse prominence effects on interpretation of reflexive pronoun “ziji” in children with ASD

Abstract The core of language disorders in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is the loss of social function in language communication.Futher, the correct use and processing of personal pronouns is the basis of language social function. Therefore, clarifying the mechanism of processing the pronoun reference in children with ASD is a major focus in autism research. Currently, the main contradictory focus of the anaphora processing ability in children with ASD is use of semantic pragmatic information in the process of pronoun processing. Therefore, this study will focus on the effect of semantic cues on pronoun processing in children with autism spectrum disorder. This study uses the Chinese reflexive pronoun "ziji" (eg., himself/herself) as the media, because the Chinese reflexive pronoun "ziji (oneself)" is relatively flexible, which is not only restricted by the rule of syntactic rules, but also influenced by the semantic information of the antecedent. This study investigated the processing mechanism of Chinese reflexive pronoun "ziji (oneself)" in children with autism spectrum disorder by manipulating the position of strong semantic cues. The results showed that participants from both the experimental group (children with ASD) and the two control groups (children with typical development and children with intellectual disabilities) were able to process strong semantic cues. When the second person pronoun "you" or the s participant’s name appears in the remote subject position, children from both the experimental group and the two control groups could use semantic information to make long distance anaphora of the reflexive pronoun "ziji (oneself)". Conversely, when the second person pronoun "you" appeared in the close subject position, the children with autism spectrum disorder and the two control groups would both make close anaphora with the reflexive pronoun “ziji (oneself)”. This study found that children with autism spectrum disorder can process semantic information normally during pronoun anaphora when the semantic cues are sufficiently prominence. The results of this study provide a more comprehensive understanding of the language processing mechanism of individuals with autism spectrum disorder.