Abstract
Six children diagnosed as autistic and who also were reported to be using questions inappropriately in their conversations with adults were each placed in a conversational context in which the adult responses to their questions were systematically varied. The dependent variable was the occurrence and amount of appropriate conversational continuation associated with each type of adult response. Differential listener response did affect the occurrence of conversational continuation and to a lesser degree the amount of continuation. These data were interpreted to support the hypothesis that repetitive questioning in this population serves the communicative function of conversation initiation. Furthermore, it appears that the autistic conversants lack the conversational management skills to maintain the conversation following the listener's answer to the question.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ackerly, M. Parents speak.Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia, 1974,4, 347–356.
Baker, L., Cantwell, D., Rutter, M., & Bartak, L. Language and autism. In D. Ritvo (Ed.),Autism. New York: Spectrum, 1976.
Cunningham, M. A comparison of the language of psychotic and non-psychotic children who are mentally retarded.Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 1968,9, 229–244.
Dore, J. Holophrases, speech acts and language universals.Journal of Child Language, 1974,2, 21–40.
Ervin-Tripp, S. Discourse agreement: How children answer questions. In J. R. Hayes (Ed.),Cognition and the development of language. New York: Wiley, 1970.
Garvey, C. Requests and responses in children's speech.Journal of Child Language, 1975,2, 41–63.
Garvey, C. The contingent query: A dependent act in conversation. In M. Lewis & L. Rosenblum (Eds.),Interaction, conversation, and the development of language. New York: Wiley, 1977.
Gelman, R., & Shatz, M. Appropriate speech adjustments: The operation of conversational constraints on talk to two-year-olds. In M. Lewis & L. Rosenblum (Eds.),Interaction, conversation, and the development of language. New York: Wiley, 1977.
Goldfarb, W., Goldfarb, N., Braunstein, P., & Scholl, H. Speech and language faults of schizophrenic children.Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia, 1972,2, 219–233.
Halliday, M. A. K.Learning how to mean: Explorations in the development of language. London: Edward Arnold, 1975.
Holzman, M. The use of interrogative forms in the verbal interaction of three mothers and their children.Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 1972,1, 311–336.
Kanner, L. Autistic disturbances of affective contact.Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, 1943,2, 217–250.
Klima, E., & Bellugi, U. Syntactic regularities in the speech of children. In C. Ferguson & D. Slobin (Eds.),Studies of child language development. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1973.
Leopold, W.Speech development of a bilingual child: A linguist's record. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1949.
Lewis, M., & Rosenblum, L.Interaction, conversation, and the development of language. New York: Wiley, 1977.
Mandler, J., & Johnson, N. Remembrance of things parsed: Story structure and recall.Cognitive Psychology, 1977,9, 111–151.
Mitchell-Kernan, C., & Ervin-Tripp, S. (Eds.).Child discourse. New York: Academic Press, 1977.
Moerk, E. L. Principles of dyadic interaction in language learning.Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 1972,18, 229–257.
Moerk, E. L. Processes of language teaching and training in the interaction of mother-child dyads.Child Development, 1976,47, 1064–1078.
Moerk, E. L.Pragmatic and semantic aspects of early language development. Baltimore: University Park Press, 1977.
Nelson, K.Children's language (Vol. 1). New York: Gardner Press, 1978.
Paris, S., & Lindauer, B. Constructive aspects of children's comprehension and memory. In R. V. Kail, Jr., & J. W. Hagen (Eds.),Perspectives on the development of memory and cognition. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Earlbaum, 1976.
Paris, S., & Upton, L. Memory for inferential relationships in prose.Child Development, 1976,47, 660–668.
Ricks, D., & Wing, L. Language, communication and the use of symbols in normal and autistic children.Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia, 1975,5, 191–221.
Rutter, M. The description and classification of infantile autism. In D. Churchill, G. Alpern, & M. DeMyer(Eds.),Infantile autism. Springfield, Illinois: Charles C Thomas, 1971.
Rutter, M., Greenfield, D., & Lockyer, L. A five- to fifteen-year follow-up study of infantile psychosis: II. Social and behavioral outcome.British Journal of Psychiatry, 1967,113, 1183–1189.
Savić, S. Aspects of adult-child communication: The problem of question acquisition.Journal of Child Language, 1975,2, 251–260.
Shatz, M., & Gelman, R. The development of communication skills: Modifications in the speech of young children as a function of listener.Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 1973,38(5, Serial No. 152).
Simmons, J., & Baltaxe, C. Language patterns of autistic adolescents.Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia, 1975,5, 333–351.
Snow, C. E. Mother's speech to children learning language.Child Development, 1972,43, 549–565.
Wolf, S., & Chess, S. An analysis of the language of fourteen schizophrenic children.Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 1965,6, 29–41.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hurtig, R., Ensrud, S. & Tomblin, J.B. The communicative function of question production in autistic children. J Autism Dev Disord 12, 57–69 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01531674
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01531674