Ameneh Zare - Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics, Marvdasht Branch, Islamic Azad University, Marvdasht, Iran

This research was conducted to find the similarities and differences between ASD and TD children’s speech with regard to the use of different lexical and grammatical cohesive markers and to find if there is a significant difference between them Some autistic children may be unable to speak, whereas others may have rich vocabularies and are able to speak about each topic. the present study explores different types of cohesion devices in children with autism speech The sample of the study includes ۷۷ children with autism (۴۱girls, ۳۶boys) between the ages of ۴ to ۸ years and were selected from a special school for autistic children in Shiraz. The Children were diagnosed with autism using DSM-IV criteria. The required data was collected through a simultaneous speech by a tape recorder. The results obtained showed that Normal children group employed all types of grammatical and lexical cohesion, despite the differences regarding their frequencies in their speech while in ASD’s speech ellipsis and substitution device represented only by the total usage of cohesion strategies. Also, the findings indicated that conjunctive devices were absent in their interactions and the problems encountered by the ASD is mainly misusing and inadequate using some cohesion strategies in their speech

Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics, Marvdasht Branch, Islamic Azad University, Marvdasht, Iran