Relationships between morphosyntactic development and Theory of Mind: A case study of a child with Asperger's Syndrome Relaciones entre el desarrollo morfosintáctico y la Teoría de la Mente: Estudio de un caso de un niño con Síndrome de Asperger

Abstract

Empirical evidence gathered to date supports arguments in favor of the undoubtable role of the morpho-syntactical dimension of language on the development of skills of a Theory of Mind. However, a large percentage of the research has been carried out with populations of children with typical development, thus more studies are required, especially ones that analyze these aspects in other populations, for instance, children with Asperger Syndrome. Accordingly, the aim of this study was to examine morphological and syntactic development, and its relation to the acquisition of Theory of Mind skills in a child with Asperger Syndrome, through a qualitative case study (n=1) with an interpretative approach. The results obtained indicate that the largest number of morpho-syntactic errors detected in the the child are related to the construction of sentential complements and to the use of personal pronouns. In addition, narrative skills were also studied, since they constitute an essential factor in the performance of tasks that directly imply the development of skills of Theory of Mind. Evaluation of the registered narrative sequences allowed to see that a large percentage of morpho-syntactic errors show up in tasks that require the direct implication of Theory of Mind skills; meanwhile, less errors show
up in stories that don’t imply the execution of these skills, and their narratives are much richer and complete.