Abstract

Autism has effects on social, communication, and information processing factors (American Psychological Association, 2022; HappÃ© & Frith, 2006). Sentence processing is a type of information processing that synthesizes both discourse and local information (e.g., syntactic and morphological). This thesis explores potential effects of autistic traits on sentence processing in the context of adjunct control structures. In a two-part study, adult English L1 participants (n=118) were administered a self-paced-reading (SPR) task with comprehension and acceptability questions for task 1. Task 2 consisted of an online survey containing three standardized autism questionnaires: the Autism Quotient (AQ; Baron-Cohen et al, 2001), the Broad Autism Phenotype Questionnaire (BAPQ; Hurley et al., 2007); and the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale-Short Form (IUS-12; Carleton et al., 2007). Results for combined data indicate that object control is accessible given supporting context but still more difficult to process than subject control, confirming theory and results from Green & Lowry (submitted) and Green (submitted). Results accounting for autistic traits indicate that higher total AQ scores and gender affect whether morphological or contextual information is relied on for interpreting a coreferential relationship in adjunct control. However, a larger sample size with more diversity in autistic traits scores is needed to confirm or refute current results.

Degree

College and Department

Humanities; Linguistics

Rights

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