Background

Understanding and therefore recalling spoken messages, including narratives, can be challenging for children with autism. While observing gesture can benefit narrative recall in typically developing children, whether observing gesture facilitates narrative recall in children with autism is unclear.

Aims

This paper examines whether observing iconic gestures affects narrative recall in children with a diagnosis of autism.

Methods and procedures

We first identified iconic gestures to be observed by participants in the main study. Once appropriate iconic gestures had been identified, children with autism watched one video narrative with iconic gestures and one without gestures. While watching the video narratives, children wore Tobii Pro Glasses-2 to track their eye-movements. After watching each narrative, children were asked questions about the narratives to assess recall.

Outcomes

Iconic gestures significantly benefitted narrative recall in children with autism beyond watching no gestures, and eye-tracking results suggested gestures helped children focus on the narrator.

Conclusions and implications

Through identifying appropriate iconic gestures and producing them alongside a verbal narrative, gestures may successfully enhance learning in children with autism.

中文翻译：

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简短报告：通过自闭症谱系障碍的标志性手势学习

背景

对于自闭症儿童来说，理解并回忆口头信息（包括叙述）可能具有挑战性。虽然观察手势有助于正常发育儿童的叙事回忆，但观察手势是否有助于自闭症儿童的叙事回忆尚不清楚。

宗旨

本文研究了观察标志性手势是否会影响诊断为自闭症的儿童的叙事回忆。

方法和程序

我们首先确定了主要研究中参与者要观察的标志性手势。一旦确定了适当的标志性手势，自闭症儿童就会观看一个带有标志性手势的视频叙述和一个没有手势的视频叙述。在观看视频叙述时，孩子们戴着 Tobii Pro Glasses-2 来跟踪他们的眼球运动。看完每个叙述后，孩子们被问到关于叙述的问题以评估回忆。

结果

除了不看任何手势外，标志性手势显着有利于自闭症儿童的叙事回忆，眼动追踪结果表明手势有助于儿童专注于叙述者。

结论和影响

通过识别适当的标志性手势并将其与口头叙述一起制作，手势可以成功地促进自闭症儿童的学习。