Expressive morphological deficiencies in children with autism: regular past inflections and pluralization morphemes

Abstract

The inability of children with autism spectrum disorder to communicate effectively and with confidence as well as the documentation of the level of deficiencies in their speech motivated the thrust of this study. A survey of 20 children aged 5 to 12 was conducted at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Autistic Centre in Rivers State, Nigeria. It examined the severity of the clients' morphological disorder. A judgment sampling technique was used to identify autistic children with intermediate autism who still had speech and could be remediated. Data were gathered employing the verified Word Structure (WS) evaluation, with sentence completion tasks, in addition to a validity test re-test of mean length of utterance (MLU), which professionals discovered to have a significant degree of internal coherence (r = 94). The respondents were asked to read a paragraph of 100 utterances, and the readings were then recorded and transcribed for analysis using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcript (SALT) software. The analysis was made easier with the use of the word-based theory. The major findings showed that the production of the past tense and plural morphemes of the clients both in the mean length of utterance in word (MLUw) and mean length of utterance in morpheme (MLUm) were less than 5.0. The findings can be used to arrange for a suitable assessment design and therapy for the clients.