Pointing Study in Children with Autism

Background: Pointing seems to be one of the first communicative tools used by babies. It is a key part of the shared attention mechanism in child-adult interaction. It seems to emerge, in stages, and in association with oral productions. What about autistic children with verbal skills? Do they develop pointing like typical children do?

Objectives: On the basis of our preliminary findings, we propose the following hypothesis: 1/ Autistic children with verbal skills seem to develop a declarative pointing like typical children while their communication remains impaired, 2/ Declarative pointing seems to play an important role in words and sentences development even if language is not used in order to communicate.

Methods: 30 autistic developmentally delayed children, participated in this study. Patients were recruited from the « Autism Resource Centre » of Child Psychiatric Unit of Ste Marguerite Hospital in Marseille (France). Children’s parents were assessed with the ADI-R (Autism Diagnostic Interview Revised). The developmental age was established with the PEP-R3. The early communication skills were assessed with the Guidetti-Tourrette scales (French adaptation of the Seibert-Hogan scales).

Results: Preliminary analysis of 30 autistic children reveals a significant correlation between declarative pointing and joint attention and another significant correlation between imperative pointing and behavioural regulation. These results indicate that declarative pointing is present in all autistic children with verbal skills and confirm our hypothesis that declarative pointing seems to be an important developmental step in language process. The autistic children, who haven’t developed language yet, present just an imperative pointing.

Conclusions: We will try to establish a link between language and communication in autism. Our findings will be discussed in relation with developmental theories.