Analysis of receptive language skills of children with autism and normal development from the point of different variables

The purpose of this study is to compare the receptive language skills of full time mainstreaming students diagnosed with autism, with normally developing children both are attending primary school.The study group of this investigation consists of 20 full time mainstreaming students with autism who are attending Merkez İlgi Private School of Special Education and Rehabilitation Center in 2012 and also consists of 20 classmates from their full time mainstreaming group in other schools. Before actually defining this study group, certain pre-conditions such as calendar age of the students, existing or non-existing language problems in their families and bilingualism are specified and students who are matching these specifications are included in this study group.Data collection tool of this study is the Picture-Vocabulary Test of Peabody, which was developed in 1959 by Lyod M. Dunn and Lecto M. Dunn. The Turkish version of this test is developed by Kantz and Friends in 1974.Picture-Vocabulary Test of Peabody, the data collection tool of this research, was applied one-to-one by the investigator to the students of individual education class designed especially for children with autism in Merkez İlgi Private School of Special Education and Rehabilitation Center.This research is a casual comparative model and two-way analysis of variance is used as analysis method. Results are interpreted according to .05 significance level.As a result of this research, it is observed that the difference between of receptive language skills of full time mainstreaming students diagnosed with autism and normally developing children, who are attending primary school, is significant. It is also observed that the gender does not have any effect on receptive language skills and also that the receptive language skills develop in direct proportion to grade.