DISCOURSE MARKERS IN THE ORAL SPEECH OF CHILDREN WITH AUTISM

Abstract

The article presents some results of a psycholinguistic research which is focused on the peculiarities of using discourse markers (DM) by children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The comparison with the 10-12 year-old children of typical development is given. It is shown that Russian-speaking children with autism spectrum disorders use dozens of times more DMs than healthy children. It is proved that children with ASD are able to use the “yes” and “no” feedback markers, as well as the discourse markers of the following categories: procedural ones, markers of self-correction, deduction and interpretation, evidential ones, markers of assessment, attention attraction and of difficulties in speech production, and markers of synthesis. The conclusion is made that the peculiarities in the use of discourse markers can become an additional diagnostic criterion for exposing autism spectrum disorders.

Keywords

• speech development
• autism
• discourse markers
• autism spectrum disorders
• feedback markers