ABSTRACT

Children's relations to objects are often seen as operating in a physical, asocial realm distinct from the sociocultural realm of other people. The most influential theories of autism exemplify this assumption, emphasizing problems in relating to other people alongside relatively intact dealings with objects. This article challenges the notion of a rigid social-material divide. It examines evidence of widespread disruption in the object use of children with autism, alongside developmental ecological and sociocultural research highlighting the mutuality of our relations to people and things, to argue that difficulties in relating to other people should themselves lead us to expect corresponding problems in object use.

In support of this argument findings are presented from an empirical study comparing the triadic (parent-object-infant) play of children with autism (ages 1–6) and their parents to that of developmentally matched typical and Down syndrome dyads. Children's response to parental invitations and the proportion of time each child spent engaged with objects and/or their parents were compared. In contrast to the children in the comparison groups, those with autism were more likely to show no interest in parental invitations to act on an object in a particular way due to being preoccupied with their own use of an object and less likely to comply with such invitations. They also spent less time jointly engaged with their parent and an object and more time unengaged or focused exclusively on their own use of an object. These findings are discussed in the context of Gibson's (1979 Gibson, J. J. (1986). The ecological approach to visual perception. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. (Original work published 1979). [Google Scholar]) concept of affordances to further our understanding of the social mediation of object use in children with and without autism and the role unusual child-object relations in autism might play in disrupting ongoing interaction.

摘要

儿童与物体的关系通常被视为在与他人的社会文化领域截然不同的物理，社会领域中运作。自闭症最有影响力的理论就是这种假设的例证，它强调了与他人有关的问题以及相对完整的对象处理。本文对僵化的社会物质鸿沟的概念提出了挑战。它研究了自闭症儿童在对象使用上广泛破坏的证据，同时强调了我们与人与物之间的相互关系的发展性生态学和社会文化研究，指出与他人交往的困难应该使我们自己期待与之相关的问题。对象使用。

为支持这一论点，一项实证研究提出了发现，该研究将自闭症儿童（1-6岁）及其父母的三联症（父母-婴儿）游戏与发育匹配的典型和唐氏综合症儿童进行了比较。比较了孩子对父母邀请的反应以及每个孩子花在与物体和/或父母互动上的时间比例。与对照组的孩子相比，自闭症患者更倾向于对父母邀请以特定方式对某物采取行动没有兴趣，因为他们专注于自己使用某物，而不太可能遵守邀请。他们还花费更少的时间与父母和物体共同订婚，而花费更多的时间不参与或专注于自己对物体的使用。1979年 Gibson，JJ（1986）。视觉感知的生态学方法。新泽西州希尔斯代尔：埃尔巴姆。（1979年出版的原始著作）。 [Google Scholar]）提供能力的概念，进一步加深了我们对有自闭症和无自闭症儿童使用对象的社会中介的理解，以及自闭症中异常的儿童与对象之间的关系可能会破坏正在进行的互动。