I tawt i taw a puddy tat: Gestures in canary row narrations by high-functioning youth with autism spectrum disorder.
Laura B Silverman, Inge-Marie Eigsti, Loisa Bennetto
PMID 28371492WHAT IT FOUND
High-functioning youth with ASD produced fewer gestures while retelling a cartoon, and their gestures were harder to read as gestures or as meaningful messages.
The same range of gesture types appeared, so the concern was clarity and amount, not repertoire.
Key findings
01Youth with ASD produced fewer total gestures and fewer gestures per clause than matched typically developing controls.
02Coders rated gestures from youth with ASD as less well formed and less semantically interpretable than gestures from typically developing controls.
03Lower gesture clarity ratings were related to greater impairment on clinician and parent gesture ratings, while gesture rate was not related to those clinical measures.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample included only high-functioning youth with fluent speech, so it does not show what happens in lower-functioning individuals or in high-functioning individuals with expressive language difficulties. The task was a controlled laboratory retelling of a cartoon to a standardized listener, so it may not capture gesture use in everyday conversation or classroom settings. The dual viewpoint result was based on very few gestures, and the paper itself says it should be interpreted with caution. The study compared groups once and did not test whether teaching gestures changes communication.
Declared interests
The authors declared no competing financial interests. The supplied text does not name a funding source.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that these youth lack a gesture repertoire or that simply increasing gesture count will improve communication. The groups used a similar distribution of gesture types, and the study did not test an intervention.