Reference Production in Young Speakers 1 RUNNING HEAD: Reference Production in Young Speakers Reference Production in Young Speakers with and without Autism: Effects of Discourse Status and Processing Constraints

We examine the referential choices (pronouns/zeros vs. names/descriptions) made by high-functioning children and adolescents with autism and a well-matched typically developing control group as they relate a narrative. The process of choosing appropriate referring expressions has been proposed to require mentalizing abilities. Given reports that autism is associated with mentalizing deficits, individuals with autism may have difficulty producing pragmatically appropriate references. Nevertheless, all participants in our analysis made adultlike referential choices, exhibiting fine-grained sensitivity to the discourse context. Furthermore, referential choices for all participants were modulated by factors related to the cognitive effort of language production. The only difference between diagnostic groups emerged as a tendency for the younger participants with autism to use a higher rate of names and descriptions than their typically developing peers when the referent was neither highly focused nor completely unfocused. We discuss the implications of these findings for the processes of reference production.