Pragmatic Analysis of the Communicative Behavior of an Autistic Child
- 1 February 1982
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Speech Language Hearing Association in Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders
- Vol. 47 (1), 99-109
- https://doi.org/10.1044/jshd.4701.99
Abstract
Differential responsiveness to social stimuli was demonstrated in the communicative performance of an 8-year-old autistic boy. The pragmatic behavior of the subject varied with different communicative settings (waiting vs. interaction conditions) as well as with different communicative partners (mother, stranger, clinician). Communicative intentions, relational communication, topic strategies and differential responding of adults communicative and non-communicative utterances were analyzed. Results indicated that the adults' communicative performance was a function of their relationship with the subject (mother, stranger, clinician) as well as the different experimental conditions (waiting, interacting). The child's communicative behavior showed greater consistency in conditions with the same interlocutor than over comparable experimental settings. Conclusions were drawn on how to facilitate communicative behavior and how to enhance generalization of remedial effects to the subject's natural environment.This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit:
- Cerebral asymmetry and the development of early infantile autismJournal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 1978
- The ontogenesis of speech actsJournal of Child Language, 1975
- Acquisition of Imitative Speech by Schizophrenic ChildrenScience, 1966