Uso e funcionalidade da linguagem em crianças do espectro autista

Abstract

The autism is considered a behavioral syndrome due to different unspecified etiological factors that causes a disturbance in overall development. It was investigated the use and functionality of language in children diagnosed with autism spectrum and an adult speech pathologist. The sessions were recorded on video to have the sample of the communicative means, adult and child initiatives in dialogue and pragmatic functions. The ethics committee on human research approved the paper. Three autistic children who undergo speech therapy were subjects of the study. During three sessions, they were filmed. It was observed that the subject I takes initiative in the dialogue, uses as means the verbalization and the gestures and the most used functions were shared game, comments and narrative. The subject II despite using verbalizations and gestures still uses vocalizations to interact, the initiatives in the dialogue now are the child, now it is the adult and the most used functions were shared play and action request. The subject III uses verbalizations, gestures and few vocalizations to interact, the initiatives in the dialogue are now the child, now the adult and the functions most used are recognition of the other, shared play and protest. In the three children the communicative function of shared play was present in the communicative interactions. This is because in shared play activities are organized between adult and child. Even if they are autistic children, they can overcome some of the difficulties of interacting with each other and demonstrate the possibility of maintaining a dialogue and sharing actions.