A comparison between Grammatical Development and Non-Verbal Language in children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder

The purpose of this work was to investigate the relationship between grammatical development and non-verbal language in preschool children with autistic spectrum disorder. Findings from three case studies are presented. Two children with mild-moderate autism (3;6 and 6 years old) and one typically developing child (4;6 years old) were videotaped interacting with their teachers in familiar places in order to make the children feel comfortable. The teachers have presented to the children three different tasks: describing images, responding to some questions and drawing.  The videotapes were coded in order to assess the grammatical development and non-verbal language. To the assessment of grammatical development, the mean length of utterance (MLU) was employed. While, in order to analyze non-verbal language, the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), and Body Coding System (BCS) were used. The present research has wondered whether children with autistic spectrum disorder tend to use the same modalities of normally developing children to compensate their lower verbal and nonverbal abilities.