Children with autism spectrum disorders display atypical development of gesture production, and gesture impairment is one of the determining factors of autism spectrum disorder diagnosis. Despite the obvious importance of this issue for children with autism spectrum disorder, the literature on gestures in autism is scarce and contradictory. The purpose of this study was to analyze gestural communication in children with autism spectrum disorder during spontaneous mother–child interaction. Participants were children with autism spectrum disorder (n = 20), Down’s syndrome (n = 20), and typical development (n = 20) and their mothers. Children’s mean developmental age was 24.16 months (standard deviation = 1.45 months) and did not differ across the groups. Gestural communication was analyzed with a specific coding scheme allowing a quantitative and qualitative analysis of gestural production. Results showed the following: (a) differences between autism spectrum disorder, typical development, and Down’s syndrome groups in the total number of gestures produced; (b) differences between the three groups in the distribution of gesture types; and (c) specific correlations between gestural production, cognitive development, and autism severity scores. The study of gestures in autism spectrum disorder could help us to identify different phenotypes in autism and could also lead to the development of new therapies.

In order to improve the user experience and general accessibility, inclusive apps are essential. They promote independence and engagement in individuals with impairments and may be tailored for a broad range of situations. This article outlines the different steps of the co-design process to produce ACCESS+, an accessible application for navigating museum material for people with Intellectual Disabilities (ID). We conducted three research visits with 20 participants to understand their needs and collect requirements. Our qualitative approach aims to (i) understand the overall experience with an existing museum website and application; (ii) gather the understanding of specific UI elements; and (iii) assess the overall UX provided by the new app, including the challenges with specific features and the touch-based interaction. We concentrated on customized and inclusive features, allowing users to adapt icon and text sizes, backgrounds, labels, and voices to their own requirements and preferences. Users also made sense of the content by looking at symbols using Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) and listening to full-text text-to-speech with personalized tone, pitch, and highlight settings. Participants shared their thoughts, helping us to improve the accessibility of each choice. Together with technology experts, a psychologist, a museum professional, and two educators, they contributed invaluable insights, enabling this research to give helpful information for future application design.

Gestures have a central role in speaking and thinking about spatial information. The goal of the present study is to examine the function of gestures in Williams Syndrome (WS), a genetic disorder characterized by spatial impairments and a preservation of communication. The study’s subjects were 11 WS individuals and 22 typically-developing controls who performed a narrative task. We analyzed offline gesture production and its relation with language and spatial information. Compared to the control groups, WS individuals produced more representational gestures that anticipated, supplemented, or gesture-only communication. Gestures produced by WS participants serve a compensatory role particularly in representing spatial contents.

Unlike children's early ability to navigate by continuous boundaries, their ability to extract geometric information from an array of objects emerges gradually over childhood. To investigate children's developing representation of object arrays for navigation and its relation to their mental representation of the global spatial layout, reorientation behavior was tested in 146 children (4-9 years, 78 male children and 68 female children, Italian) with rectangular arrays made up of 20 objects. Posttest questions on children's spatial language and their mental and pictorial representation of the environment were administered. Although children of all ages navigated by the geometry of continuous boundary-like arrays, they only succeeded with separated object arrays at around 7 years of age. This developmental change was predicted by children's individual ability to extract the abstract geometry of the spatial layout in a two-dimensional picture of the room. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Early signs of autism often emerge through distinct developmental pathways, particularly in communication, social interaction, and play. While naturalistic parent-child interactions during free play are ideal for observing spontaneous social behaviors, few autism studies have adopted this ecological and developmental approach. To address this gap, we used a fine-grained microanalytic method to examine motor, gestural, and vocal behaviors in young children, integrating machine learning to explore how combinations of these traits distinguish early autistic neurodivergence.