Evelyne Thommen

Attribution of Mechanical and Social Causality to Animated Displays by Children with Autism

Two studies are reported that compare the descriptions given by children with and without autism of animated stimuli depicting mechanical launching effects, intentional reactions or sequences of mechanical and intentional reactions. Children were matched on chronological age, verbal mental age and IQ. The children with autism were as able as the control groups at differentiating mechanical launches from intentional reactions. Moreover, their descriptions of the longer action sequence were significantly different neither in length nor in their use of mental state language from those of the controls. However, finer-grained analyses of the accounts showed that the children with autism involved themselves more in the narrative than did control children. They also made less reference to episodes showing actions between animate objects, especially when the objects were not in contact. The implications of these findings for theories of autistic social dysfunction are discussed.

Mapping the journey from home to school: a study on children's representation of space

This paper describes a study conducted with 235 children from Brazil and Switzerland. The children, from 5 to 13 years of age, were asked to draw the journey they undertake every day from home to school. The purpose of the study is to understand the relationship between the cognitive development and map-drawing abilities of children in both countries. The maps were analyzed qualitatively by focusing on elements of space representation such as paths and landmarks. The analysis shows that younger children can draw simple topological maps and then move on to egocentric landmarks. Older children can identify and draw more streets and buildings and move on to decentered maps. Country differences are mostly related to local geographic and social particularities. No gender differences were found. Results are discussed in relation to the underlying process in developmental abilities of children.

Le pointage dans l’autisme: Évolution de la compréhension et de la production après 6 mois d’intervention précoce

Resume Le pointage, dont les premieres productions apparaissent dans le developpement typique vers la fin de la premiere annee, est considere comme crucial dans le developpement de la communication et l’acquisition du langage dans la mesure ou, entre autres, il donne acces a une communication triadique moi-autre-objet. Ce geste est habituellement considere comme dysfonctionnel dans l’autisme. Il est soit absent soit produit de maniere moins frequente que dans le developpement typique, soit encore avec une moindre diversite de fonctions. L’objectif de la recherche presentee ici etait d’examiner l’effet d’une intervention concernant le developpement social sur la production et la comprehension du pointage chez 34 enfants avec un TSA (Trouble du spectre de l’autisme) âges de 19 a 43 mois. Les donnees ont ete extraites de la passation de l’ECSP – Echelle d’evaluation de la communication sociale precoce, Guidetti & Tourrette, 1993/2009 – avant et apres 6 mois d’intervention centree sur les habiletes sociales. Les resultats montrent une amelioration substantielle de la production et de la comprehension du pointage apres intervention. Ils sont discutes du point de vue des effets de l’intervention en autisme sur les dysfonctionnements communicatifs.