The role of caregiver gestures and gesture-related responses of toddlers with autism spectrum disorder.
When caregivers sync their gestures to a toddler’s focus, the child talks and looks more.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Lv et al. (2022) watched toddlers with autism and their caregivers during meals and play.
They counted how often the adult’s hand or head move matched the child’s focus.
They also counted how many times the child smiled, spoke, or looked back after these matched moves.
What they found
Toddlers with autism gave more smiles, words, and eye contact when caregivers moved in sync.
Caregivers of autism toddlers used fewer of these matched moves than caregivers of typical toddlers.
How this fits with other research
Gordon et al. (2015) and Veness et al. (2012) already showed that fewer early gestures predict later autism.
Lyall et al. (2014) found school-age children with autism gesture less and that more child gestures link to bigger vocabularies.
Those studies looked at the child’s moves; Lv et al. flip the lens and show the adult side matters too.
Lee et al. (2022) also filmed toddlers at home and saw caregivers of autism kids respond more to simple body bids.
Together the papers say: both partners adjust, but the adult’s matched move is the spark that lifts the child’s social reply.
Why it matters
You can coach parents to time their point, head turn, or wave with the child’s look.
No extra toys or hours needed—just watch, wait, and move with the child’s focus.
More matched moves can mean more child eye contact and vocal play, giving you easy, natural data that treatment is working.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by social communicative abnormalities. Deficits and delays in gestural communication are among the early deficits of ASD and also a major social modality in early caregiver-toddler interaction. Caregiver gestures have an important role in the cognitive and social development of children with ASD. Thus, it is urgent to further explore the role of caregiver gestures in early caregiver-toddler interaction. In this cross-sectional study, we observed the caregivers' gestures and responses of toddlers aged between 18 and 24 months during play (ASD = 44, TD = 29) and dining activities (ASD = 34, TD = 27). By observing the different frequencies and patterns of gestures by the caregiver-child interaction and the different proportions of children's responses to the caregiver's gestures, we found that, compared to caregivers of typically developing toddlers, caregivers of toddlers with ASD had fewer synchronized gestures and more unsynchronized gestures in the play activity and more supplementary gestures in dining activity. Toddlers with ASD produced more social responses to caregivers' synchronized gestures, whereas the use of synchronized gestures by the caregivers in caregiver-toddler interaction had a positive influence on social responses to toddlers with ASD. The findings suggest that effective use of gestures by caregivers during caregiver-toddler activities can improve children's social responses.
Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2022 · doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2022.895029