El uso de las expresiones referenciales en niños con Síndrome de Asperger

In this paper it is analysed the use of referring expressions by Spanish-speaking Asperger Syndrome (AS) children in task-oriented narratives using as a framework of analysis the Theory of Accessibility (Ariel 1988, 2001). In this task, children report what is going on in some comic strips. The results are contrasted with Typically Developing (TD) children performing the same task. The corpus is made up of 6 male AS children aged 12-13 (44 minutes and 55 seconds long) and 6 male TD children aged 12-13 (36 minutes and 30 seconds long). Specifically, the aim is to determine both the frequency and the typology of referring expressions that AS children use in contrast to TD children. The results show that AS children deployed (1) less referring expressions; (2) more pronouns and less zero anaphoras; (3) more accompanying gestures; and (4) more referring expressions with the antecedent in the previous turn.