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ERIC Number: EJ1476519
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025
Pages: 19
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: EISSN-2381-473X
Available Date: 0000-00-00
Personal Pronoun Comprehension and Theory of Mind in Autistic Adults
Oluwatobi Abubakare; Jesse Snedeker
Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups, v10 n3 p672-690 2025
Purpose: Pronouns stitch together discourse by linking referents within and across sentences. Previous research has shown that people often rely on two strategies to interpret pronouns: the subject bias (assuming the pronoun refers to the subject of a prior sentence) and the repeated mention bias (assuming it refers to a person that was mentioned repeatedly). The present study seeks (a) to determine whether autistic adults make use of these strategies to the same degree as non-autistic adults with similar language skills and (b) to assess whether use of these strategies is correlated with theory of mind or vocabulary knowledge. Method: Native English-speaking autistic and non-autistic adults completed a pronoun comprehension task, as well as a modified version of Happe's Strange Stories task, the Vocabulary Size Test (VST), and the Autism Spectrum Quotient Test. Results: Both groups used both strategies most of the time with no reliable differences between the groups. Performance on the VST predicted use of the subject bias strategy. Conclusions: Autistic adults use some of the same strategies for interpreting ambiguous pronouns as non-autistic adults with similar language skills. Variation in subject bias strategy use is correlated with vocabulary knowledge, a sensitive measure of variation in language skills.
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. 2200 Research Blvd #250, Rockville, MD 20850. Tel: 800-638-8255; Fax: 301-296-8580; e-mail: perspectives@asha.org; https://perspectives.pubs.asha.org/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: Autism Spectrum Quotient
Grant or Contract Numbers: 3R03HD09762902S1; 1342962
Author Affiliations: N/A