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. 2020 Sep 8:11:573212.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.573212. eCollection 2020.

Gestures in Storytelling by Preschool Chinese-Speaking Children With and Without Autism

Ying Huang  1 , Miranda Kit-Yi Wong  1 , Wan-Yi Lam  1 , Chun-Ho Cheng  1 , Wing-Chee So  1
Affiliations

Gestures in Storytelling by Preschool Chinese-Speaking Children With and Without Autism

Ying Huang et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

Previous findings on gestural impairment in autism are inconsistent, while scant evidence came from Chinese-speaking individuals. In the present study, preschool Chinese-speaking children with typical development and with autism were asked to generate stories from a set of wordless Cartoon pictures. Two groups were matched in chronological age and language developmental age. Their speech and gestures were coded. Compared to children with typical development, children with autism produced fewer gestures and showed lower gesture rate. Besides, children with autism produced fewer emblems and fewer supplementary gestures compared to their TD peers. Unlike children with typical development, children with autism tend to produce emblems for reinforcing, rather than supplementing information not conveyed in speech. Results showed the impairments in integrating the cross-modal semantic information in children with autism.

Keywords: autism spectrum disorder; emblem; gesture; storytelling; supplementary relation.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Number of gestures by gesture type and gesture-speech relation.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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