Gestures in Prelinguistic Turkish Children with Autism, Down Syndrome, and Typically Developing Children.
2011; EDAM-Education Consultancy Limited; Volume: 11; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2148-7561
Autores Tópico(s)Hearing Impairment and Communication
ResumoAbstract The purpose of this study was to examine gesture use in Turkish children with autism, Down syndrome, and typically developing children. Participants included 30 children in three groups: Ten children with Down syndrome, ten children with autism between 24-60 months of age, and ten typically developing children between 12-18 months of age. Principal Caregiver-child and researcher-child interactions were video-recorded in this descriptive study. Significant group differences were found for total gesture use, communicative functions, and types of gestures. Results revealed significant differences for gestures within the category of behavior regulation between the groups. The typically developing children used gestures more frequently than other groups. The lowest frequency of gesture use have been found for children with autism. It was found that children with autism have more difficulties in gesture use within the category of Social interaction and joint attention than Down syndrome and typically developing groups. Children with Down syndrome have become more successful in the use of these gestures than other two groups. It was found that researcher-child interaction provides more information about the frequency of gestures than parent-child interaction. The differences between groups are discussed in terms of the communicative functions of gestures. Key Words Prelinguistic Communication, Gesture Development, Autism, Down Syndrome. Prior to the use of language in children, prelinguistic communicative skills develop. Prelinguistic development occurs in the first 18 months of life in typically developing babies. During this period, children first learn the basic rules of communication. Intentional communication, which is agreed to be one of the important stages of the prelinguistic period, is a major predictor of language development. Wetherby and Rodriguez (1992) argued that intentional communication behavior could be used in the assessment of communicative development. One of the ways in which communicative intent is conveyed during the prelinguistic period is the use of gestures. Bruner (1981) indicated that three communicative functions appeared in the first three years of life: behavior regulation, social interaction and joint attention. Moreover, this taxonomy is used in the classification of gestures in terms of function and intent (Wetherby, Cain, Yonclas, & Walker, 1998). According to Bruner, behavior regulation involves actions used to regulate the behavior of another person in order to obtain a particular result. Regulative behavior is the earliest behavior to emerge in the development of typically developing children (Carpenter, Nagell, Tomasello, Butterworth, & Moore, 1998; Crais, Douglas, & Campbell, 2004). Behavior regulation and social interaction gestures develop prior to joint attention gestures (Crais et al., 2004). Joint attention, which is another communicative function, is defined as the simultaneous concentration of two or more persons on the same external thing (Baldwin, 1995). Tomasello (1995) pointed out that joint attention is more complex than simply two people looking at the same object. The use of eye contact and compromise-based gestures by babies to create joint attention with others on an object or event develops in stages. Joint attention encompasses initiation and response. Joint attention initiation is defined as the initiation of behavior having communicative intent used to direct the attention of another person to an object, event or communicative behavior (Murray et al., 2008). This joint attention behavior includes the use of eye contact, pointing, and the use of gesture to share interest or an object with another. Joint attention response is defined as the joint attention response of the other person (Mundy, 1995). Iverson and Thal (1998) divide gestures into two main categories - deictic and representational. Deictic gestures are used to point or call attention to an object or event (Bates, Benigni, Bretherton, Camaioni, & Volterra, 1979). …
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