Assessing gestures in young children with autism spectrum disorder

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to determine whether scoring of the gestures point,give, and show were correlated across measurement tools used to assess gesture production in children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). METHOD Seventy-eight children with ASD between the ages of 23 and 37 months participated. Correlational analyses were conducted to determine whether performance of 3 key gestures related to joint attention and behavior regulation (point, give, show) were correlated across 3 different measurement tools: the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, the Early Social Communication Scale, and the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Gestures. To establish whether different measures were related at different points in development, children were subdivided into 2 groups based on their expressive language levels. RESULTS The scoring of gesture performance was not entirely consistent across assessment methods. The score that a child received appeared to be influenced by theoretical perspective, gesture definition, and assessment methodology, as well as developmental level. CONCLUSION When assessing the gestures of children with ASD, clinicians should determine what aspects of gesture they are interested in profiling, gather data from multiple sources, and consider performance in light of the measurement tool.