Characteristics of Grammar in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Narrative Review of Evidence

One of the prevalent developmental disorders is Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Some children with ASD have language impairments besides communication disorders. Although the main linguistic impairment in this group has been reported in their pragmatic ability, some other linguistic elements such as grammar might be impaired, too. The primary purpose of this narrative review was to study the grammatical characteristics of children with ASD.
To find the related documents with this narrative review, we adopted 114 papers from the databases of Google Scholar, Web of Knowledge, Scopus, and PubMed. Out of these, 48 papers were selected to be studied.
The studies grouped into four: group of comparing grammatical characteristics of children with ASD and typically-developing children, group of comparing grammatical characteristics of children with ASD and individuals with specific language impairments, group of investigating the relationship between grammar and the theory of mind in children with ASD, and group of processing basis of grammar in ASD children that is named developmental language disorder recently after specific language disorder.
The studies reported conflicting results because of two main factors: differences in the types of studies and heterogeneity of the ASD group. Thus, some children with ASD show grammar impairments and need precise assessment for proper intervention and treatment.