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A Familiarization Protocol Facilitates the Participation of Children with ASD in Electrophysiological Research
Published on: July 31, 2017
Potential communicative acts in children with autism spectrum disorders
Barbara A Braddock1, Colleen Pickett, Jamie Ezzelgot
1Department of Pediatrics, Saint Louis University , St. Louis, MO , USA .
Developmental Neurorehabilitation
|July 23, 2013
Summary
For children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who are non-verbal, a greater variety of gestures is linked to better language skills. Body movements were common but not associated with ability.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Linguistics
- Autism Spectrum Disorder Research
Background:
- Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often involves challenges with verbal communication.
- Early communication development in non-verbal children with ASD is crucial for intervention.
- Understanding diverse communicative acts is key to supporting language acquisition.
Purpose of the Study:
- To characterize potential communicative acts in young children with ASD and limited speech.
- To explore the relationship between different types of communicative behaviors and cognitive/language abilities.
Main Methods:
- Parental reports were collected on children's communicative acts across 10 functions.
- A potential communicative act was defined as any behavior with a possible communicative intent.
- The study included 17 children with ASD (mean age 32.82 months) with minimal intelligible speech.
Main Results:
- A higher number of distinct gesture types correlated with higher scores in language comprehension, language expression, and non-verbal thinking.
- Children utilized a greater proportion of body movements compared to other communicative acts.
- The number of body movement types did not show a relationship with child ability.
Conclusions:
- Gesture diversity is significantly associated with receptive and expressive language abilities in young children with ASD.
- The findings highlight the interconnectedness of language and gesture development.
- Results support an ecological systems perspective, emphasizing environmental influences on language learning in ASD.
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