TTLA: Characteristics of vocabulary and speech in autistic children aged 3 to 6 years old (Survey of some autistic children in Hanoi)

3. Date of birth: January 1, 1984 4. Place of birth: Hung Yen
5. Decision number for admitting doctoral students: Decision No. 4416/2019/QD-XHNV dated November 26, 2019, of the Rector of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi.
6. Changes in the training process: Extending the training period from November 2022 to November 2024.
7. Thesis title: Characteristics of vocabulary and speech of autistic children aged 3 to 6 years old (Survey of some autistic children in Hanoi)
8. Major: Linguistics 9. Code: 9229020.01
10. Scientific supervisors: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vu Thi Thanh Huong, Dr. Do Hong Duong
11. Summary of the new findings of the thesis:
Through a survey on "Characteristics of vocabulary and speech of autistic children aged 3 to 6 years old (Survey of some autistic children in Hanoi)", the thesis has obtained the following results:
Firstly, regarding the vocabulary characteristics of autistic children aged 3 to 6 years old.
Regarding word count: By age 3, all 15 autistic children we surveyed had developed spoken language, and their word count increased each year. The word count of autistic children depends on the severity of autism in each child, the intervention environment, and the family's cooperation during the intervention process. Although the word count of autistic children increases each year, it is still significantly lower than that of typical children.
Regarding word categories: The distribution of word categories varies among children with different levels of autism and differs across developmental stages. Autistic children are capable of grasping a fairly complete range of word categories, similar to typical children, but their understanding is slower and less diverse and extensive.
Regarding factors influencing the vocabulary of autistic children: The vocabulary of autistic children depends on the severity of autism; the level of intervention (continuous or intermittent); and the cooperation of the family during the intervention process.
Secondly, regarding speech characteristics in autistic children aged 3 to 6 years old.
Speech structure characteristics: The total number of utterances varies among autistic children and increases with each year of intervention. The development of speech structure in the language of autistic children depends on the severity of autism in each child and differs across different developmental stages. The development of speech types according to structure in autistic children is similar to that of typical children, but slower.
Characteristics of utterance purpose: Regarding utterance purpose in autistic children, there are differences between children with varying degrees of autism and across different stages of development. Autistic children differ significantly from typical children in terms of the number and proportion of utterances categorized by purpose: interrogative utterances are the least frequent and have the lowest proportion among all utterances categorized by purpose.
The characteristics of the level of active use of speech in communication among autistic children also differ in the number and proportion of speech types categorized by level of active use, and there are differences between different stages of development in these children. Autistic children typically go through the following stages of active language development: mimicry speech, speech requiring prompting, and active speech.
12. Directions for further research
- Research on phonetics (the speech characteristics of children with autism)
- Speech length of autistic children compared to typically developing children.
- Language errors in communication among autistic children.
- An assessment chart of phonetics, vocabulary, grammar, language use, etc., for autistic children in Vietnam.
13.Publications related to the dissertation:

 

3. Date of birth: January 1, 1984 4. Place of birth: Hung Yen
5. Admission decision number: 4416/2019/QD-XHNV dated November 26, 2019 by the Rector of University of Social Sciences and Humanity, Hanoi National University
6. Changes in academic process: Extend training from 11/2022 to 11/2024
7. Official thesis title: Characteristics of vocabulary and speech of autistic children from 3 to 6 years old (Cases of autistic children in Hanoi)
8. Major: Linguistics
9. Code: 9229020.01
10. Supervisors: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vu Thi Thanh Huong, Dr. Do Hong Duong
11. Summary of the new findings of the thesis:
By surveying characteristics of vocabulary and speech of some autistic children from 3 to 6 years old in Hanoi, this thesis comes to the following results:
Firstly, regarding the characteristics of the vocabulary of some autistic children from 3 to 6 years old.
On the amount of words: All 15 autistic children at 3 years old we have surveyed have their own spoken language. Their vocabularies grow yearly. The mouth of words of each child depends on degree of their autism, interverntional environment as well as the co-operation of their family in the process of the therapy. This mouth is much lower than that of normal children despite the increases of their vocabulary.
On the word classes: The chacteristics of the word classes's distribution in children at different degrees of autism and at different periods of development are different. Autistic children are able to archive all word classes but at a lower speed and not diversified compared to normal children.
On the factors affecting the vocabulary of children with autism: The vocabulary of children with autism depends on the degree of autism; the level of intervention (continuous or interrupted) as well as the family's cooperation during the child's intervention.
Secondly, on the characteristics of autistic children from 3 to 6 years old
Characteristics of the speech structure: The number of speeches are different among autistic children and increased after every interfered year. The development of speech structure in language of autistic children depends on the level of autism of each child as well as different stages in each child's development. The development of structural speech types in children with autism is similar to that of normal children, but slower.
Characteristic of the speech's purpose: In terms of the purpose of speech in children with autism, there are also differences between children with different levels of autism and differences in each stage. In autistic children, there is a great difference compared with normal children in terms of the number and proportion of utterances classified by purposes. That is interrogative utterances in the language of autistic children accounts for lowest number and proportion of total utterances classified by purposes.
The characteristics of the level of initiative in using utterances in communication of autistic children also differ in the number and proportion of types of utterances classified by the level of initiative in autistic children and there are differences between different stages in children. Children with autism often go through developmental stages in terms of the level which are spontaneous speech, follow-up speech, prompting speech and active speech.
12. Further research direction, if any:
- Study on phonetics (speech characteristics of children with austism)
- Mean lenght utterance of children with austism in comparison with that of normal children.
- The language errors in the communication of children with autism
- The speech-language communication assessments on pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and language use for children with austism
13. Thesis-related publications:
1. Nguyen Thi Giang (2020), “Characteristics of utterance structures of 4 – 5 – year – old children with autism”, Proceedings of the international conference on language, literature and culture education, Vietnam education publishing house, pp. 213 – 219, ISBN: 978 – 604 – 0 – 24664 – 6.
2. Nguyen Thi Giang (2020), “Speech intention characteristics of four to five-year-old autistic children”, Journal of Science, Hanoi University of Education 2 (12), pp. 74 – 88.
3. Nguyen Thi Giang – Pham Hien – Nguyen Dong Hung (2020), “Vocabulary of autistic children aged 4 to 5 years old”, The Journal of Human Resources on Social Sciences, (10), pp. 125 – 132.
4. Pham Hien - Nguyen Thi Giang (2020), "Formulatic language of Vietnamese children with autism spectrum disorders: Acorpus linguistic Analysis", Proceedings of the 34th Pacific Asia conference on language, information and computation, pp. 575 – 581, ISSN 2619 – 7782.
5. Nguyen Thi Giang (2021), “Vocabulary characteristics of 5 to 6 years old autistic children”, HPU2 Journal of Science: Natural Sciences and Technology (75), pp. 42 – 53.
6. Nguyen Thi Giang (2021), “The results of the application of methods to develop the utterance structures for children with autism (aged 5 to 6 years old)”, Proceedings of the National Conference: Treatment and Intervention Services for developmental disorders based on scientific evidences, Social Science Publishing House, pp. 420 – 431, ISBN: 978 – 604 – 342 – 943 -5.
7. Nguyen Thi Giang – Pham Hien – Nguyen Dong Hung (2021), “Speech characteristics in communication of 5 – 6 years old autistic children”, Language and Life Journal (11b), pp.23 – 30.
8. Nguyen Thi Giang - Pham Hien (2022), "Characteristics of proactiveness in the usages of utterances of autistic children from 4 to 5 years old", Language Journal (2), pp.46 - 56.
9. Nguyen Thi Giang (2022), “Comparing the speech intention characteristics of children with autism aged 3 – 4 years old to that of children with autism aged 5 – 6 years old”, Proceedings of the National Conference: The linguistic issues, 2022, Social Science Publishing House, pp.98 – 107, ISBN: 978 – 604 – 364 – 280 - 3
10. Nguyen Thi Giang (2022), “Word – class characteristic of 5 to 6 years old autistic children”, The first international conference on the issues of Social Sciences and Humannities, pp.1042 – 1064, ISBN: 978-606-9990-98-4.