Conversational Gestures in Autism Spectrum Disorders: Asynchrony but not Decreased Frequency
Conversational Gestures in Autism Spectrum Disorders: Asynchrony but not Decreased Frequency
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DOI：
10.1002/aur.159
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发表时间：
2010-12-01
期刊：
影响因子：
4.7
通讯作者：
Eigsti, Inge-Marie
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
de Marchena, Ashley;Eigsti, Inge-Marie
对话手势在交流中起着重要的作用，可以促进话轮转换，提供视觉空间信息，澄清重点的微妙之处，以及其他语用线索。与其他语用语言缺陷一致，自闭症谱系障碍(ASD)患者据说产生的对话手势较少，正如许多诊断措施所规定的那样。令人惊讶的是，尽管研究表明自闭症儿童的指示性手势较少，但有一些关于其他形式的手势的经验证据。临床观察和经验观察之间的差异可能反映了与频率无关的损害，如手势质量或与语音的整合。患有高功能自闭症的青少年(n=15)，在年龄、性别和智商上与15名典型的发展中青少年相匹配，完成了一项评估言语和手势自发产生的叙述性任务。天真的观察者将这些故事评为沟通质量。总体而言，ASD小组的故事被评为不那么清晰和引人入胜。尽管发音和手势的频率是相似的，但与对照组参与者相比，ASD组的手势与同时出现的语音的同步程度较低。这种手势语言的同步性特别影响了参与者之间的交流质量。此外，尽管在TD青少年中，故事评分与手势计数有关，但在患有自闭症的青少年中没有观察到这种关系，这表明在这一群体中，手势不会放大交流。然而，质量评级与ASD症状严重程度得分相关，因此ASD症状较少的参与者被评级为讲述更高质量的故事。这些发现的含义在ASD的沟通和神经心理功能方面进行了讨论。
Conversational or "co-speech" gestures play an important role in communication, facilitating turntaking, providing visuospatial information, clarifying subtleties of emphasis, and other pragmatic cues. Consistent with other pragmatic language deficits, individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are said to produce fewer conversational gestures, as specified in many diagnostic measures. Surprisingly, while research shows fewer deictic gestures in young children with ASD, there is a little empirical evidence addressing other forms of gesture. The discrepancy between clinical and empirical observations may reflect impairments unrelated to frequency, such as gesture quality or integration with speech. Adolescents with high-functioning ASD (n = 15), matched on age, gender, and IQ to 15 typically developing (TO) adolescents, completed a narrative task to assess the spontaneous production of speech and gesture. Naive observers rated the stories for communicative quality. Overall, the ASD group's stories were rated as less clear and engaging. Although utterance and gesture rates were comparable, the ASD group's gestures were less closely synchronized with the co-occurring speech, relative to control participants. This gesture speech synchrony specifically impacted communicative quality across participants. Furthermore, while story ratings were associated with gesture count in TD adolescents, no such relationship was observed in adolescents with ASD, suggesting that gestures do not amplify communication in this population. Quality ratings were, however, correlated with ASD symptom severity scores, such that participants with fewer ASD symptoms were rated as telling higher quality stories. Implications of these findings are discussed in terms of communication and neuropsychological functioning in ASD.