Wolfer, Pauline, Baumeister, Franziska, Cohen, David et al. (3 more authors) (Accepted: 2025) Co-speech gesture comprehension in autistic children. Journal of Child Language. ISSN 0305-0009 (In Press)
Abstract
Co-speech gesture accompany or replace speech in communication. Studies investigating how autistic children understand them are scarce, inconsistent and often focus on decontextualized, iconic gestures. This study compared 73 three- to twelve-year-old autistic children to 73 neurotypical peers matched on age, non-verbal IQ and morphosyntax. Specifically, we examined (1) their ability to understand deictic (i.e., pointing), iconic (e.g., gesturing ball) and conventional (e.g., gesturing hello) speechless video-taped gestures following verbal information in a narrative, and (2) the impact of linguistic (e.g., vocabulary, morphosyntax) and cognitive factors (i.e., working memory) on their performance, to infer on the underlying mechanisms involved. Autistic children displayed overall good performance in gesture comprehension, although a small but significant difference advantage was observed in neurotypical children. Findings suggest that combining speech and gesture sequentially may be relatively spared in autism and might represent a way to alleviate the demand of simultaneous cross-modal processing.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the University’s Research Publications and Open Access policy. |
Keywords: | Autism Spectrum Disorder,co-speech gestures,gesture comprehension,gesture recognition,non-verbal communication |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (York) > Language and Linguistic Science (York) |
Depositing User: | Pure (York) |
Date Deposited: | 13 Mar 2025 05:33 |
Last Modified: | 13 Mar 2025 05:33 |
Status: | In Press |
Refereed: | Yes |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:224370 |
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Filename: JCL-full-accepted-final.pdf
Description: JCL-full-accepted-final
Licence: CC-BY 2.5
