Focus Comprehension in Mandarin-Speaking Children Aged 6 to 8: A Comparison Between Children With Cochlear Implants and Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

This study investigated how Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) comprehend focus using various cues. Participants included 21 CI children, 21 ASD children, 21 age- and gender-matched typically developing (TD) children aged 6 to 8, and 30 hearing adults. In a sentence-picture verification task, participants listened to simple subject–verb–object sentences paired with pictures, in which focus was indicated by canonical word order, prosody, the focus particle shì, or discourse context. They judged whether sentences matched pictures and corrected mismatched subjects or objects. Results showed that for adults, word order and context served as dominant cues for focus comprehension, while prosody and focus particle were less effective. TD children aged 6 to 8 demonstrated adult-like use of these dominant cues, while their independent use of secondary cues remained immature. CI children with comparable perceptual and language abilities showed patterns similar to their TD peers. In contrast, ASD children with comparable abilities did not use canonical word order effectively, correcting subjects and objects at chance level. Moreover, they displayed a relative preference for subject positions, resulting in a significant bias toward subject corrections in subject-focus contexts and in shì-marked conditions. These findings highlight the language-specific cue weighting in Mandarin and the distinct focus comprehension profiles of CI and ASD children.