University of Trento, Italy
Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (ISTC), CNR, Italy.
Autism. 2015 May;19(4):469-81. doi: 10.1177/1362361314528390. Epub 2014 Apr 3.
Children with autism spectrum disorders display atypical development of gesture production, and gesture impairment is one of the determining factors of autism spectrum disorder diagnosis. Despite the obvious importance of this issue for children with autism spectrum disorder, the literature on gestures in autism is scarce and contradictory. The purpose of this study was to analyze gestural communication in children with autism spectrum disorder during spontaneous mother-child interaction. Participants were children with autism spectrum disorder (n = 20), Down's syndrome (n = 20), and typical development (n = 20) and their mothers. Children's mean developmental age was 24.16 months (standard deviation = 1.45 months) and did not differ across the groups. Gestural communication was analyzed with a specific coding scheme allowing a quantitative and qualitative analysis of gestural production. Results showed the following: (a) differences between autism spectrum disorder, typical development, and Down's syndrome groups in the total number of gestures produced; (b) differences between the three groups in the distribution of gesture types; and (c) specific correlations between gestural production, cognitive development, and autism severity scores. The study of gestures in autism spectrum disorder could help us to identify different phenotypes in autism and could also lead to the development of new therapies.
患有自闭症谱系障碍的儿童在手势生成方面表现出非典型的发展，而手势障碍是自闭症谱系障碍诊断的决定因素之一。尽管这个问题对自闭症谱系障碍儿童具有明显的重要性，但自闭症领域的手势文献却很少且相互矛盾。本研究旨在分析自闭症谱系障碍儿童在自发的母子互动中进行的手势交流。参与者包括自闭症谱系障碍儿童（n = 20）、唐氏综合征儿童（n = 20）和典型发展儿童（n = 20）及其母亲。儿童的平均发育年龄为 24.16 个月（标准差 = 1.45 个月），且在各组间无差异。使用特定的编码方案分析手势交流，该方案允许对手势生成进行定量和定性分析。结果表明：（a）自闭症谱系障碍、典型发展和唐氏综合征组在产生的总手势数量上存在差异；（b）三组在手势类型分布上存在差异；（c）手势生成、认知发展和自闭症严重程度评分之间存在特定的相关性。对自闭症谱系障碍中的手势进行研究可以帮助我们识别自闭症中的不同表型，也可以为新疗法的发展提供线索。
