Identifying Patterns of Similarities and Differences between Gesture Production and Comprehension in Autism and Typical Development

Abstract

Production and comprehension of gesture emerge early and are key to subsequent language development in typical development. Compared to typically developing (TD) children, children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) exhibit difficulties and/or differences in gesture production. However, we do not yet know if gesture production either shows similar patterns to gesture comprehension across different ages and learners, or alternatively, lags behind gesture comprehension, thus mimicking a pattern akin to speech comprehension and production. In this study, we focus on the gestures produced and comprehended by a group of young TD children and children with ASD-comparable in language ability-with the goal to identify whether gesture production and comprehension follow similar patterns between ages and between learners. We elicited production of gesture in a semi-structured parent-child play and comprehension of gesture in a structured experimenter-child play across two studies. We tested whether young TD children (ages 2-4) follow a similar trajectory in their production and comprehension of gesture (Study 1) across ages, and if so, whether this alignment remains similar for verbal children with ASD (M _age = 5 years), comparable to TD children in language ability (Study 2). Our results provided evidence for similarities between gesture production and comprehension across ages and across learners, suggesting that comprehension and production of gesture form a largely integrated system of communication.

Keywords: Autism; Developmental trajectory; Gesture comprehension; Gesture production; Nonverbal communication.

Fig. 1

Snapshots from child-parent play with picture book (A) and puzzle (B)

Fig. 2

Snapshots from gesture comprehension task testing children’s comprehension of a supplementary gesture + speech combination (A. Sitting + point at toy bench), followed by a forced-choice question by the experimenter (B. Which one?), and a response by the child (C. child points at picture of bench)

Fig. 3

Mean number of gestures children produced (A) and accurately comprehended (B) by age. The boxplot shows both the spread and the centers of the scores separately for production and comprehension. The measure of spread includes the interquartile range from 1st to 3rd quartiles (marked by the range of shaded columns) and score range (whiskers); the measure of centers includes the mean (x) and the median (marked by the dark horizontal line within the shaded column)

Fig. 4

Mean proportion of deictic, conventional and iconic gestures children produced (A) and accurately comprehended (B) by age

Fig. 5

Mean proportion of reinforcing and supplementary gesture + speech combinations children produced (5A) and accurately comprehended (5B) by child age

Fig. 6

Mean number of gestures produced (A) and accurately comprehended (B) by typically-developing (TD) children and children with autism (ASD). The boxplot shows both the spread and the centers of the scores separately for production and comprehension. The measure of spread includes the interquartile range from 1st to 3rd quartiles (marked by the range of shaded columns) and score range (whiskers); the measure of centers includes the mean (x) and the median (marked by dark horizontal line within the shaded column)

Fig. 7

Mean production (A) and comprehension (B) of deictic, conventional and iconic gestures by children with typical development (TD) and with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)

Fig. 8

Mean production (A) and comprehension (B) of reinforcing and supplementary gestures-speech combinations by children with typical development (TD) and with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)