First- and second-person pronoun comprehension in autistic and nonautistic children

Autistic children are more likely than nonautistic children to produce personal pronoun errors. However, we know less about their comprehension of personal pronouns. This study examines their comprehension of personal pronouns within an experimental design. The children completed an activity focused on demonstrating comprehension of the first-person pronoun “my”, and second person pronoun “your”, both when it referred to the child and when it referred to someone else. Our findings indicate that both nonautistic and autistic children demonstrate an understanding of the first-person “my” pronoun and second-person “your” pronoun when it refers to the child. Both groups struggled more with “your” when it did not refer to themselves; however, while nonautistic children still performed above chance in this condition, autistic children were at chance. Thus, this study parallels prior work, highlighting similarities between the two groups and suggesting that autistic children have all-around lower rates of success but not categorical differences in pronoun knowledge.