A comparison of the gesture use in children with Autism and typically developing children

This study aimed to compare the gestures exhibited by children with autism and typically developing children (TDD) during narrative tasks. Fifteen children with autism and fifteen TD children aged 4-9 years participated in the study. In the study, tasks were implemented in four areas: spatial, motor, abstract, and animation narrative tasks. The gestures exhibited by children in the video recordings were coded into four subcategories. The frequency and types of gesture use, as well as the narrative quality of children with autism and TDD, were compared between groups. Additionally, the relationships between the types of gestures used by children with autism and their autism scores, language skills, and narrative quality were examined. The analyses recorded that in children with autism, the total gestures emerged sequentially in spatial, abstract, motor, and animation narrative tasks; in TD children, the total gestures emerged sequentially in spatial, motor, abstract, and animation narrative tasks. The study results showed that children with autism used more gestures in abstract narrative tasks compared to TD children, while TD children had better narrative quality in motor and spatial narrative tasks compared to the children with autism. In children with autism, increases in gesture frequency in different task types were associated with decreases in various dimensions of narrative quality, whereas increases in the frequency of certain gestures during animation narrative tasks were associated with decreases in narrative quality scores in children with TDD. The research findings were discussed, recommendations for future studies were provided.