I use my space not yours: Use of gesture space for referential identification among children with autism spectrum disorders

摘要

Background: Speakers move their hands (gesture) when they talk. They indicate non present referents by gesturing those referents in the same locations as the previous gestures for the same referents (spatially-consistent referent-identifying gestures). We examined whether children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), whose gesture development is slow, produce this kind of gesture in two circumstances: (1) demonstration task in which they had to follow experimenters' established referents and spatial locations; and (2) spoken narrative task in which they created their own referents and locations.