Differences in praxis performance and receptive language during fingerspelling between deaf children with and without autism spectrum disorder.
Deaf children with autism struggle to plan the tiny hand moves of fingerspelling, and the gap grows when their language is weak—so teach signs one motor step at a time.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers watched deaf children fingerspell. Half had autism. Half did not.
They counted every wrong hand-shape and timing slip. They also tested how well each child understood signs.
What they found
Deaf kids with autism made far more hand errors. They also moved slower.
The worse their language scores, the more their fingers fumbled.
How this fits with other research
Rutherford et al. (2007) saw the same pattern in a different task. Their high-functioning hearing students with autism also used messy, inefficient moves on a spatial memory game. Both studies show the trouble is not deafness—it is motor planning.
Doughty et al. (2015) found autistic adults scored lower on friendship and social-choice tests. Together the three papers paint one picture: autism can hit language, motor, and social skills at once. When you see one lag, screen for the others.
Why it matters
When you teach sign to a deaf child with autism, do not just drill vocabulary. Break the sign into tiny hand-shapes and practice each piece slowly. Pair the motor work with receptive-language games so the fingers and the mind move together.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Children with autism spectrum disorder present with a variety of social communication deficits such as atypicalities in social gaze and verbal and non-verbal communication delays as well as perceptuo-motor deficits like motor incoordination and dyspraxia. In this study, we had the unique opportunity to study praxis performance in deaf children with and without autism spectrum disorder in a fingerspelling context using American Sign Language. A total of 11 deaf children with autism spectrum disorder and 11 typically developing deaf children aged between 5 and 14 years completed a fingerspelling task. Children were asked to fingerspell 15 different words shown on an iPad. We coded various praxis errors and fingerspelling time. The deaf children with autism spectrum disorder had greater errors in pace, sequence precision, accuracy, and body part use and also took longer to fingerspell each word. Additionally, the deaf children with autism spectrum disorder had poor receptive language skills and this strongly correlated with their praxis performance and autism severity. These findings extend the evidence for dyspraxia in hearing children with autism spectrum disorder to deaf children with autism spectrum disorder. Poor sign language production in children with autism spectrum disorder may contribute to their poor gestural learning/comprehension and vice versa. Our findings have therapeutic implications for children with autism spectrum disorder when teaching sign language.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2018 · doi:10.1177/1362361316672179