What is the development law of verb expression ability in children with autism? Is there any difference from the development of normal children? Recently, the ALSOLIFE Research Institute conducted a study on this article entitled "The Implications of the Development Characteristics of Verb Expression and Development Characteristics of Autistic Children's Verb Expression Ability on Teaching Intervention" published by the domestic science and technology core journal " Chinese Journal of Hearing and Language Rehabilitation Science ". Conclusion: Autistic children have improved their verb expression ability with age. In the process of verb acquisition, autistic children first master the verbs that are most relevant to life experience.
Preface
The development of verbs is a key link in the development of children's language. The use of verbs marks the beginning of children's sentence making and can talk about events that occur in life. Generally, children can use at least 40 verbs [1] at the age of 2. They will have more advanced syntactic ability after 6 months. At this time, children who still do not use verbs or cannot quickly master new verbs often have abnormal language development [2].
Autistic children often have language delays, and the output of verbs is more difficult than nouns. [3], which may be one of the reasons that hinder their functional language development. Therefore, verb training is very important for language teaching intervention in children with autism.
This study adopts a cross-sectional design, and uses self-edited parent questionnaire to measure the level of verb expression development in autistic children. By comparing it with normal children, the development characteristics of verb expression ability of autistic children are explored in order to provide reference for vocabulary and language intervention.
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Objects and methods
Subjects
This study recruited 102 autistic children through the Internet, including 80 boys and 22 girls. Parents reported that they were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder or suspected, age 22 to 88 months, average age 49.46±15.31 months; 109 normal children, including 51 boys and 58 girls, age 22 to 84 months, average age 49.42±16.85 months.
measurement tools and procedures
This study refers to the children's vocabulary evaluation scale compiled by Shuhua et al. [4]. The self-compiled parent questionnaire was used to measure the level of verb development in children. This questionnaire can effectively measure the vocabulary comprehension and expression levels of normal children and autistic children [5]. There are 96 verbs in the
questionnaire, including 40 verbs without specific situations (such as jumping, pushing, and picking) and 56 verbs with specific situations (such as washing hands, skipping rope, swiping cards). The included verbs are selected from the "Chinese Communication Development Scale (Long Table)" [6] and the "Language Training Card" teaching aids used by 3 rehabilitation institutions.
, the single-word verb must be more than 1 in the Chinese lexicon [7]. Due to the lack of inclusion of double-word verbs in the lexicon, the double-word verb is evaluated by 2 special education teachers . Parents need to evaluate the expression ability of each word based on their own situation, and divide it into 3 levels. 0 points means that the child will not express the verb, 1 point means that the child can speak the verb in some situations, and 2 points means that the child can flexibly use the word in different situations.
Statistics and analysis
Statistical analysis was completed using SPSS 22.0 [8]. First, the total score of each child on all vocabulary assessments was calculated, and the score differences between autistic children and normal children were analyzed by independent sample t-test; then Pearson correlation analysis was used to explore whether autistic children could improve their verb expression ability with age. In order to explore the verb expression rules of children with autism, each vocabulary score was calculated in the two groups of children, and an independent sample t-test was used to explore whether there were differences in difficulty in verbs in specific situations, and a qualitative analysis of the order of vocabulary mastery was conducted.
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Results
Vocabulary expression score
There were extremely significant differences in the total vocabulary expression scores of the two groups of subjects [t(209) =-11.36,P0.01].Normal children develop very rapidly. Children around 24 months old can accurately use 60 to 80 verbs. At 36 months old, most children can flexibly use all 96 verbs.
Version expression levels in children with autism are relatively heterogeneous. Some can reach the same level as normal children around 36 months, and some can use less than 20 verbs over 60 months (see Figure 1). The relevant analysis results found that there was still a significant weak correlation between the age and total score of autistic children (r=0.308, P=0.01), indicating that children with autistic children have improved their expression of verbs to a certain extent as they age.
| Figure 1 Percentage of vocabulary expression scores for children with autism
Vocabulary development order
There was no significant difference in the expression scores of situational verbs in the two groups [Autism children group t(94)=0.95, P=0.345; normal children group t(94)=0.60, P=0.551]. Select the 15 words with the highest and lowest scores and the most abstract verb "praise" in the evaluation to make a picture, see Figure 2 and 3.
Among the 15 most difficult verbs for autistic children, 11 words replicate the lowest scores of normal children. These words are mainly actions that children have no relevant experience (such as meetings) or infrequent actions (such as choosing); among the 15 simplest verbs, 8 words replicate the highest scores of normal children. These words are mainly events that children experience every day (such as washing hands) or things that parents often ask their children to do (such as picking up building blocks).
results show that the verb expression development order of autistic children is very similar to that of normal children. Autistic children are not affected by whether the word has a specific situation during the learning and use of verbs. It mainly depends on whether the action is often made or have relevant experience in life.
| Figure 2 Vocabulary expression score of autistic children
| Figure 3 Vocabulary expression score of normal children
Discussion
Although the language development of autistic children is seriously behind the normal children, the verb expression level of autistic children has increased with age, which reminds educators and parents that the rehabilitation intervention of autistic children is very necessary and meaningful. The order of verb expression development in autistic children does not follow the verb category and is very similar to that of normal children.
The rules of acquisition of children's verbs are believed to be based on the order of action verbs, tendency verbs, psychological verbs, existing verbs, willing verbs, and order verbs. Monosyllable verbs are earlier than bisyllable verbs, and specific verbs are earlier than abstract verbs [9].
This study found that did not find any significant differences in the order of acquisition between different categories of verbs for autistic children and normal children. In the process of learning verbs by autistic children, they first learned the verbs that are often made in life. These verbs may be tendency verbs or bisyllable verbs.
The expression level of the most abstract verb "praise" in this assessment is higher than the expression scores of many specific verbs. Similar to the research results of previous generations, they found that children preferentially acquire functional verbs in the early verb learning process, such as eating, picking, reading, loving, etc. [10].
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Therefore, The author believes that in the verb teaching process of autistic children, teaching should not be stereotyped in the order of "simple to difficult", but should be flexibly arranged according to the actual living needs of children. such as walking, jumping, running and other movements often appear in life. They can be taught together without the need to teach them separately according to the difficulty level.
As educators who spend the longest time with their children, parents should create more opportunities for their children to experience in life for different verbs. The verbs with the highest score in this study, brushing teeth, washing face, combing hair, etc. are also things that parents help their children to complete every day. Parents will unconsciously name these movements while assisting their children in completing movements, which increases their children's learning opportunities.The types, number and frequency of verb use by parents of autistic children in their lives can significantly predict the number of expressive verbs in children [11].
There are still shortcomings in this study. For example, the parent evaluation used is an indirect measurement method, and it does not directly measure whether the child can express the vocabulary. For children with autism, verbs expressing better, measurements of their use in life are lacking. Future research can use children as direct measurement objects to explore the expression of verbs.
In short, the results of this study can provide reference and inspiration for parents and teachers to teach verbs in children with autism. recommends that teachers increase flexibility in verb teaching, fully consider children's ability level, and formulate verb teaching order according to life needs.
Parents increase their interaction with their children in their lives, increase the frequency and richness of verb use, and allow children to have personal experience of every verb they learn as much as possible. thus improves the verb expression level of autistic children.
References
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[3] Kown EG,Pae SY.Noun & Verb Naming Ability of the Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder[J].Communication Sciences & Disorders,2005,10(2):32-42.
[4] Hao M,Shu H,Xing A,et al.Early vocabulary inventory for Mandarin Chinese[J].Behavior Research Methods, 2008, 40(3):728-733.
[5] Wang Bijun, Su Xiaona, Lu Ling. Exploration of language proficiency in children with autism[J]. Chinese Journal of Children's Health, 2017, 25(012):1255-1258.
[6] Twila Tardif. User manual of Chinese Communication Development Scale: Mandarin and Cantonese Version[M]. Beijing: Peking University Medical Press, 2008.1-160.
[7] Sun Honglin, Huang Jianping, Sun Dejin, et al. "Modern Chinese Research Corpus System" [C]. Selected Papers of International Chinese Teaching Symposium.1997.459-466.
[8] Nie, Norman H.SPSS Statistical Package for the Social Sciences[J]. Encyclopedia of Information Systems, 2003, 13(1):187-196.
[9] Yang Min. A review of research on verb acquisition in Chinese children[J]. Cultural and educational materials, 2017, (32):23-25.
[10] FensonL, MarchmanVA, Thal D, et al.MacArthur-BatesCommunicative DevelopmentInventories:User’sguide and technical manual(2ndedn.) [M].Baltimore, MD:Brookes Publishing, 2007.1-208.
[11] Crandall MC, Mcdaniel J, Watson LR, et al.The Relation Between Early Parent Verb Input and Later Expressive Verb Vocabulary in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder[J].Journal of speech,language, and hearing research:JSLHR, 2019,62(6):1787.
Author: Liu Daiyue Wang Bijun
article published in in Chinese Journal of Hearing and Language Rehabilitation Science, v.18; No.103(06), 75-77.
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