Do Verbal Children with Autism Comprehend Gesture as Readily as Typically Developing Children?

• DOI: 10.1007/s10803-017-3243-9
• Publication Date: 2017-07-25T11:09:20Z
• Authors: Nevena Dimitrova; Şeyda Özçalışkan; Lauren B. Adamson
• Keywords: Male; Autism Spectrum Disorder/diagnosis; Autism Spectrum Disorder/psychology; Child Development/physiology; Child, Preschool; Comprehension/physiology; Female; Gestures; Humans; Male; Photic Stimulation/methods; Reinforcement (Psychology); Speech/physiology; Autism; Gesture; Gesture comprehension; Gesture production; Gesture–speech combination; Iconicity; Gestures; Autism Spectrum Disorder; 05 social sciences; Child Development; Child, Preschool; Humans; Speech; Female; 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences; Comprehension; Reinforcement, Psychology; Photic Stimulation

Gesture comprehension remains understudied, particularly in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who have difficulties in gesture production. Using a novel gesture comprehension task, Study 1 examined how 2- to 4-year-old typically-developing (TD) children comprehend types of gestures and gesture-speech combinations, and showed better comprehension of deictic gestures and reinforcing gesture-speech combinations than iconic/conventional gestures and supplementary gesture-speech combinations at each age. Study 2 compared verbal children with ASD to TD children, comparable in receptive language ability, and showed similar patterns of comprehension in each group. Our results suggest that children comprehend deictic gestures and reinforcing gesture-speech combinations better than iconic/conventional gestures and supplementary combinations-a pattern that remains robust across different ages within TD children and children with ASD.