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Recent findings suggest that stigma and camouflaging contribute to mental health difficulties for autistic individuals, however, this evidence is largely based on UK samples. While studies have shown cross-cultural differences in levels of autism-related stigma, it is unclear whether camouflaging and mental health difficulties vary across cultures. Hence, the current study had two aims: (1) to determine whether significant relationships between autism acceptance, camouflaging, and mental health difficulties replicate in a cross-cultural sample of autistic adults, and (2) to compare these variables across cultures. To fulfil these aims, 306 autistic adults from eight countries (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States) completed a series of online questionnaires. We found that external acceptance and personal acceptance were associated with lower levels of depression but not camouflaging or stress. Higher camouflaging was associated with elevated levels of depression, anxiety, and stress. Significant differences were found across countries in external acceptance, personal acceptance, depression, anxiety, and stress, even after controlling for relevant covariates. Levels of camouflaging also differed across countries however this effect became non-significant after controlling for the covariates. These findings have significant implications, identifying priority regions for anti-stigma interventions, and highlighting countries where greater support for mental health difficulties is needed., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

More and more studies show that neurotype mismatching (e.g. autistic-non-autistic pairing) rather than being autistic leads to interaction difficulties in autism. This study further tests this assumption by investigating communication efficiency and first impressions of verbal interactions across three dyad types (autistic, non-autistic and mixed (autistic-non-autistic) dyads). To address this aim, we used an online version of the Director Task (DT) - a task in which dyads need to organize unlexicalized images in a specific order across several turns. To do so, they need to create novel referential expressions for these images. Dyad members communicate about these images across several rounds, prompting them to negotiate shorter descriptions and therefore taking less time to complete a round. The DT thus provides objective measures of conversation outcome which can then be related to more subjective measures (ratings). Following the DT, dyads engaged in an unstructured, get-to-know-you task. Afterwards, they rated each other’s discourse abilities (coherence, fluidity & efficiency), interaction quality and likelihood to hang out. Preliminary results from fifty-two dyads (23 non-autistic dyads/16 autistic dyads/12 mixed dyads) indicate that turn duration and expression length decreased for all dyad types, suggesting that all dyads became increasingly efficient as the task proceeded. Furthermore, during the DT, perceived discourse coherence, fluidity & efficiency did not differ across dyads. However, during the get-to-know-you task, in non-autistic dyads, ratings of coherence and fluidity were higher than in autistic and mixed dyads. Finally, in mixed dyads, ratings of likelihood to hang out were lower than those in same-neurotype dyads. These results suggest that neurotype mismatching does not influence impressions of the discourse and interaction quality but does seem to influence future behavioural intentions (e.g. likelihood to hang out). This study will help us be, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Narrative research has been identified as a great tool in linguistic studies, as it ecologically reveals qualitative and quantitative differences in individuals experiencing communicative difficulties - but who still show good structural language skills (Geelhand et al. 2020; Manolitsi & Botting, 2011). Narrative research within the autistic population has until now included predominantly male samples, but it is now argued that the communicative profile of autistic women might differ from men's (Sturrock et al. 2020). However, the nature of these differences is still poorly understood. Moreover, most narrative studies rely on oral tasks; given that autistic adults tend to prefer written or computer-mediated communication (Gillespie-Lynch et al. 2020), it is surprising that the written communication of autistic adults has not been thoroughly investigated yet.With this study, we aimed at offering a better perspective on the specific linguistic challenges that autistic women face compared to non-autistic (NA) women, through a semi-structured task that resembles every-day narrative situations (i.e. memories storytelling). Participants were 15 autistic and 15 non-autistic (NA) cisgender women, pairwise matched on age (M(age)= 34.73). As the study took place during the lockdown, recruitment and testing were done online and in writing. Participants were asked to write 4 autobiographical memories, based on 4 emotional cue words. No time limit was given, but a minimum and maximum number of characters were allowed for each narrative (1000-1800).Group differences were found in all aspects of the analysis, the first being the microstructure: autistic women wrote longer narratives, used more unique and infrequent words, and showed greater productivity than NA women. On the macrostructure level, autistic women showed reduced use of explicit causal connectives. As for the internal state language, autistic women used less cognitive state terms but slightly more perceptual terms.Mic, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Narrative research has been identified as a great tool in linguistic studies, as it ecologically reveals qualitative and quantitative differences in individuals experiencing communicative difficulties - but who still show good structural language skills (Geelhand et al. 2020; Manolitsi & Botting, 2011). Narrative research within the autistic population has until now included predominantly male samples, but it is now argued that the communicative profile of autistic women might differ from men’s (Sturrock et al. 2020). However, the nature of this ambiguous profile of autistic women is still poorly understood. Moreover, most narrative studies rely on oral tasks; given that autistic adults tend to prefer written or computer-mediated communication (Gillespie-Lynch et al. 2020), it is surprising that the written communication of autistic adults hasn’t been thoroughly investigated yet. Therefore, this study aims at offering a better perspective on the specific linguistic challenges that autistic women face compared to non-autistic (NA) women, through a semi-structured task that resemble every-day narrative situations (i.e. memories storytelling). Participants were 15 autistic and 15 non-autistic (NA) cisgender women, pairwise matched on age (M(age)= 34.73). As the study took place during the lockdown, recruitment and testing were done online and in writing. Participants were asked to write 4 autobiographical memories, based on 4 emotional cue words. No time limit was given, but a minimum and maximum number of characters were allowed for each narrative (1000-1800). Groups differences were found in all aspects of the analysis, the first being the microstructure: autistic women wrote longer narratives, used more unique and infrequent and showed greater productivity than NA women. On the macrostructure level, autistic women showed reduced use of explicit causal connectives. As for the internal state language, autistic women used less cognitive state terms but slightly more pe, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

[Background] Narrative research has been identified as a great tool in linguistic studies, as it ecologically reveals qualitative and quantitative differences in individuals experiencing communicative difficulties - but who still show good structural language skills (Geelhand et al. 2020; Manolitsi & Botting, 2011). Narrative research within the autistic population has until now included predominantly male samples, but it is now argued that the communicative profile of autistic women might differ from men’s (Sturrock et al. 2020). However, the nature of these differences is still poorly understood. Moreover, most narrative studies rely on oral tasks, although autistic adults tend to prefer written or computer-mediated communication(Gillespie-Lynch et al. 2020). [Objectives] This study aims at offering a better perspective on the specific linguistic challenges that autistic women face compared to non-autistic (NA) women, through a semi-structured task that resembles every-day narrative situations (i.e. memories storytelling). [Methods] Participants were 15 autistic and 15 non-autistic (NA) cisgender women, pairwise matched on age (M(age)= 34.73). As the study took place during the lockdown, recruitment and testing were done online and in writing. Participants were asked to write 4 autobiographical memories, based on 4 emotional cue words. No time limit was given, but a minimum and maximum number of characters were allowed for each narrative (1000-1800). [Results] Group differences were found in all aspects of the analysis, the first being the microstructure: autistic women wrote longer narratives, used more unique and infrequent words, and showed greater productivity than NA women. On the macrostructure level, autistic women showed reduced use of explicit causal connectives. As for the internal state language, autistic women used less cognitive state terms but slightly more perceptual terms. [Conclusions] Microstructure results seem in line with those observed in wri, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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In recent years, there have been increasing discussions surrounding the appropriate terminology to talk about autism. Initially, this debate revolved around the use of person-first language (e.g. person with autism) versus identity-first language (IFL; e.g. autistic person) but has recently expanded to other autism-related terms (e.g. deficits). However, to date, studies investigating autism-related language preferences have been limited to English-speaking countries, and little is known about preferences in other languages. This study addresses this gap by investigating the language preferences of French-speaking autistic adults., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

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SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

In the last few decades, there has been increased interest in the incorporation of data from bi- and multilingual individuals in linguistic theory: from second language acquisition and language attrition to heritage varieties and code-switching. This dissertation discusses a range of ways in which code-switching data can provide insight into the mechanisms that underlie linguistic structures. The data will be analysed within the framework of Minimalist Generative syntax and Distributed Morphology.The first part investigates grammatical gender assignment in code- switching between English, a language without grammatical gender, and two languages with grammatical gender: French and Belgian Dutch. These languages have comparable, but different gender systems. French has two genders: masculine and feminine, whereas Belgian Dutch adds a third: neuter. The study in this part of the dissertation compares gen- der assignment strategies in bilinguals with different profiles. In addition, the code-switching data provide evidence against the default status of neuter in Belgian Dutch.The second part focuses on word order and includes two studies: one on verb-second word order in Dutch-English code-switching and one on adverb placement in English-French and Dutch-English code- switching. The verb-second chapter identifies a lacuna in the traditional Generative analysis for verb second and uses the CS data to address this. The chapter on adverb position looks at placement of the adverb between the verb and its direct object, which is allowed in Dutch and French, but not in English. For all domains investigated, it is found that the finite verb predicts word order.Taken together, these studies demonstrate that bilingual data can shine a light on elements of the theory of grammar which remain in the shadows when only monolingual data is used., Les dernières décennies ont vu croître l’intérêt pour l’intégration à la réflexion en linguistique théorique des données produites par des locuteurs/trices bilingues ou multilingues, que celles-ci concernent l’acquisition d’une langue seconde, l’attrition, les langues d’héritage ou l’alternance codique. Le présent travail développe plusieurs exemples où les données issues de l’alternance codique éclairent les mécanismes qui sous-tendent les structures linguistiques. Les données recueillies sont interprétées dans le cadre de la syntaxe générative minimaliste et de la morphologie distribuée (« distributed morphology »).Dans un premier temps, nous analysons l’attribution du genre grammatical dans l’alternance entre l’anglais, d’une part, et le français et le néerlandais de Belgique, de l’autre. Alors qu’il n’y a pas en anglais de genre grammatical, le français et le néerlandais de Belgique marquent ce genre, mais de façon différente :si le français distingue deux genres, masculin et féminin, le néerlandais de Belgique y adjoint un troisième, le neutre. Dans cette partie de la thèse, nous dressons le profil des stratégies d’attribution du genre auprès de deux types distincts de bilingues et nous établissons également que le neutre n’est pas le genre par défaut en néerlandais de Belgique.Dans un second temps, nous nous penchons sur l’ordre des constituants. Dans une première étude, nous examinons l’ordre des mots avec « verbe second » (V2) dans l’alternance anglais-néerlandais. Nous abordons ensuite le placement de l’adverbe dans l’alternance anglais- français et anglais-néerlandais. Le chapitre consacré à V2 identifie une lacune dans la littérature générative et tire profit des données de l’al- ternance pour y proposer une solution. Le chapitre consacré à l’adverbe s’intéresse au placement de celui-ci entre le verbe et son objet, position licite en français et néerlandais mais pas en anglais. Dans ces deux études, il apparaît que c’est la langue du verbe à la forme fini, Doctorat en Langues, lettres et traductologie, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Discourse studies investigating differences in the socio-communicative profiles of autistic (ASD) and neurotypical (NT) individuals have mostly relied on orthographic transcriptions, without taking prosodic information into account. However, atypical prosody is ubiquitous in ASD and a more accurate representation of their discourse abilities should also include prosodic cues. This exploratory study addresses this gap by segmenting the spoken discourse of 12 ASD and NT adults using the framework of Basic Discourse Units (BDUs). BDUs result from the mapping of syntactic boundaries on prosodic units, which can coincide in different ways and are associated with different discourse strategies. We hypothesized that the discourse of ASD adults would display more atypical strategies than NT adults, reflecting a ‘pedantic’ style and more difficulties in managing ongoing discourse. While ASD adults did not produce more discourse units associated with didactic or pedantic strategies than NT adults, they did produce less units associated with strategies of interactional regulation. This study provides initial evidence that multidimensional linguistic units, such as BDUs can help differentiate speech delivery strategies of ASD adults from those of their NT peers, even based on simple prosodic cues like silent pauses., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

This study examined whether the atypical speech style that is frequently reported in autistic adults is underpinned by an inflexible production of phonetic targets. In a first task, 20 male autistic adults and 20 neuro-typicals had to read and produce native vowels. To assess the extent to which phonetic inflexibility is due to an overall fine-grained control of phonetic behavior or to a lack of flexibility in the realization of one's phonological repertoire, the second task asked participants to reproduce artificial vowel-like sounds. Results confirmed the presence of a greater articulatory stability in the production of native vowels in autistic adults. When instructed to imitate artificial vowel-like sounds, the autistic group did not better approximate the targets' acoustic properties relative to neuro-typicals but their performance at reproducing artificial vowels was less variable and influenced to a greater extent by the articulatory properties of their own vocalic space. These findings suggest that the greater articulatory stability observed in autistic adults arises from a lack of flexibility in the production of their own native vowels. The two phonetic tasks are devoid of any pragmatic constraint, which indicates that phonetic inflexibility in autism is partly independent of register selection. Lay Summary: Autistic and neuro-typical adults took part in two tasks: one in which they produced vowels from French, their native tongue, and the other where they imitated unfamiliar vowels. Autistic adults displayed significantly less variation in their production of different French vowels. In imitating unfamiliar vowels, they were more influenced by the way they pronounce French vowels. These results suggest that the atypical speech style, frequently attested in autistic individuals, could stem from an unusually stable pronunciation of speech sounds., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is often associated with impaired perspective-taking skills. Deception is an important indicator of perspective-taking, and therefore may be thought to pose difficulties to people with ASD (e.g. Baron-Cohen in J Child Psychol Psychiatry 3:1141–1155, 1992). To test this hypothesis, we asked participants with and without ASD to play a computerised deception game. We found that participants with ASD were equally likely—and in complex cases of deception even more likely—to deceive and detect deception, and learned deception at a faster rate. However, participants with ASD initially deceived less frequently, and were slower at detecting deception. These results suggest that people with ASD readily engage in deception but may do so through conscious and effortful reasoning about other people’s perspective., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

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Human bodies are sometimes cognitively objectified, i.e. processed less configurally and more analytically, in a way that resembles how most objects are perceived. Whereas how people process images of sexualized bodies appearing in the mass media has been well documented; whether subtler manifestations of sexualization, such as wearing makeup, might elicit cognitive objectification of ordinary women’s faces, remains unclear. The present paper aims at filling this gap. We hypothesized that faces wearing makeup would be processed less configurally than faces wearing no makeup. Sixty participants took part in a face recognition task, in which faces wearing or not wearing makeup were presented. In regards to faces with no makeup, people recognized face parts better in the context of whole faces than in isolation, which served as evidence of configural processing. In regards to faces wearing makeup, face parts were recognized equally well when presented in isolation vs. in the context of whole faces; evidence of a lower configural processing. That pattern of results was driven by eye makeup (vs. lipstick). Implications for research on objectification and sexualization are discussed., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Adequate and efficient participation in a social interaction requires the ability to produce and interpret coherent discourse. Coherence can be achieved using a diverse set of cognitive and linguistic tools such as topic continuity or connectives. On the one hand, successful production of coherent discourse requires the ability to integrate these tools in speech, creating continuity and unity between the sequence of utterances in the discourse. For instance, when telling a story, a speaker can maximize coherence by choosing to mark explicitly the relationships between the events with a connective such as ‘then’, ‘however’ or ‘therefore’. On the other hand, the success of the storytelling will also depend upon the listener’s recognition of these cues and their appropriate interpretation. Failing to produce enough coherence cues or to interpret them as such can lead to communication breakdowns or misunderstandings, potentially compromising the on-going interaction. In a neurodevelopmental disorder like autism, characterized by impairments in social communication, autistic individuals often fail to produce and understand coherent discourse.A plethora of studies have already used discourse analysis to examine discourse (in)coherence and (a)typicality in autistic individuals. However, the studies have been one-sided in terms of methodology, viz. investigating either discourse production or comprehension, but not both. They have also been one-sided in terms of the perspective of the analysis, viz. only considering discourse coherence from the standpoint of neurotypical individuals, without also considering the perspective of autistic individuals. However, social communication is a two-sided dynamic, whereby both communication partners, alternating between the roles of speaker and listener, contribute to the coherence of the unfolding discourse. Therefore, the aim of this dissertation is to define the qualities of discourse (in)coherence and (a)typicality in autistic adult, Doctorat en Langues, lettres et traductologie, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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An ongoing debate in the literature on language acquisition is whether preschool children process reference in an egocentric way or whether they spontaneously and by-default take their partner's perspective into account. The reported study implements a computerized referential task with a controlled trial presentation and simple verbal instructions. Contrary to the predictions of the partner-specific view, entrained referential precedents give rise to faster processing for 3- and 5-year-old children, independently of whether the conversational partner is the same as in the lexical entrainment phase or not. Additionally, both age groups display a processing preference for the interaction with the same partner, be it for new or previously used referential descriptions. These results suggest that preschool children may adapt to their conversational partner; however, partner-specificity is encoded as low-level auditory-phonological priming rather than through inferences about a partner's perspective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)., ULBabyLab, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

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