La conducta comunicativa de los niños autistas en situaciones naturales de interacción

Abstract

In this study recent research on the prelinguistic communicative problems of autistic children was reviewed. Next, a comparative empirical study of contingency relations was made. We analysed the contingency relations among communicative and expressive acts shown by an adult, and prelinguistic communicative behaviour shown by autistic, normal, and Down syndrome children, under 24 months of MA. The study of mother-infant interactions was made using the Lag Sequential Analysis (Sackett, 1980) which to date, had not been used to analyse interactive characteristics of autistic children. Results indicate that autistic children, in addition to a lack of declarative acts, stowed deficits in the imperative function and also in their response to positive emotional expressions displayed by the adult. Our data support the hypothesis that autistic children have problems in communicative skills which have been considered precursors to the metarepresentational capacity