Two times three little pigs: dysfluency, cognitive complexity and autism

Stirling, Lesley, Barrington, Graham and Douglas, Susan (2007-01-01). Two times three little pigs: dysfluency, cognitive complexity and autism. In: Mushin, Ilana and Laughren, Mary Annual Meeting of the Australian Linguistic Society, Brisbane, Australia, (). 7-9 July 2006.

 
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Author(s) Stirling, Lesley
Barrington, Graham
Douglas, Susan
Title of paper Two times three little pigs: dysfluency, cognitive complexity and autism
Conference name Annual Meeting of the Australian Linguistic Society
Conference location Brisbane, Australia
Conference dates 7-9 July 2006
Editor(s) Mushin, Ilana
Laughren, Mary
Publication date 2007-01-01
Abstract/Summary This paper presents an analysis of dysfluencies in two oral tellings of a familiar children's story by a young boy with autism. Thurber & Tager-Flusberg (1993) postulate a lower degree of cognitive and communicative investment to explain a lower frequency of non-grammatical pauses observed in elicited narratives of children with autism in comparison to typically developing and intellectually disabled controls. we also found a very low frequency of non-grammatical pauses in our data, but indications of high engagement and cognitive and communicative investment. We point to a wider range of disfluencies as indicators of cognitive load, and show that the kind and location of dysfluencies produced may reveal which aspects of the narrative task are creating the greatest cognitive demand: here, mental state ascription, perspectivization, and adherence to story schema. This paper thus generates analytical options and hypotheses that can be explored further in a larger population of children with autism and typically developing controls.
Subjects 380201 Applied Linguistics and Educational Linguistics
Keyword(s) autism
narrative
discourse analysis
cognitive science
dysfluency
repairs
 
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Created: Mon, 26 Feb 2007, 13:24:09 EST by Ilana Mushin  -  Detailed History