Longitudinal Changes in Pronoun Reversals in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Typically Developing Children

Pronoun reversals occur when a pronoun is incorrectly mapped to the wrong referent. For example, when a child says, “You eat the cookie!” and intended to state that he is eating a cookie. Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, ASD, are known to be frequent reversers, but their development of these reversals; for example, incidence rate and endpoint, is still unknown. In this study, children interacted with their mothers in a 30-minute play session and their spontaneous pronoun usage were coded for the perspective of the pronoun, type of reversal, and case errors. Children with ASD to their typically developing (TD) counterparts. Few reversals were produced; however, children with ASD did tend to have a higher percentage of reversals and a larger proportion of first person pronouns at latter visits. Moreover, children with ASD showed a different pattern of reversals, exchanging “I” for “you” more frequently while TD children exchanged “you” for “I” more frequently.