[Relation between social cognitive aspects and the functional communicative profile in a group of adolescents of the autistic spectrum]

Abstract

Background: Issues concerning language development and their relation with social cognitive aspects give direction to the clinical practice when assisting the population with the diagnosis within the autistic spectrum. The deficits or differences in this development can result in different ways of analyzing and counseling this population. Adolescence becomes a question mark in this analysis since, in most cases, researches address only early childhood. The speech pathologist must assess the relationship between language abilities and communicative competence. Language abilities refer to the possibilities to understand and formulate spoken or written symbolic systems, whereas the communicative competence refers to the ability to use language as an effective tool to interact with other people in several social contexts.

Purpose: To verify the development of the functional communicative profile and of the social cognitive aspects of adolescents, who attend a specialized institution and who have a psychiatric diagnosis within the autistic spectrum in three different situations of communication during a 12 months period and to study the relation between these variables in the same situations, during the same period of time.

Method: Subjects of this study were five adolescents with ages between 12 and 17 years. Two recording sets, with a 12 month interval, were obtained for each subject. Each recording set was composed by three 30 minutes videotaped situations of different interactive contexts: Situation I--individual language therapy; Situation II--child in a group with coordinator; Situation III--child in a group without coordinator.

Results: Differences exist between the subjects in the three studied situations regarding the social cognitive performance and the functional communicative profile.

Conclusion: There is a relationship between the development of the social cognitive aspects and the functional communicative profile in the three situations of communication for the studied period.