A Case Study Of The Language Development And Communicative Skills For Chinese Young Children With Autism

Impairments in language and communication are one of the key diagnostic features of autism. Children with autism spectrum disorder show delays and deficits in the domain. Although increasing attention has been devoted to the nature of the language impairment in autism over the past several decades, we know little about them in Chinese children with autism spectrum disorder. Moreover, the existing research lacks such three-dimensional studies conducted under the guidance of systematic ideology: studies on the interaction between developing subsystems, studies on the mutual effects of such elements of real life scenes like general situation, practical results and environment.This study is a parallel case study, which aims to explore the development of language and communicative skills for four Chinese young children with autism. The study focuses on the developing rate of each subsystem of language (grammar, vocabulary, speech act, the ratio of functional language), the effective language using and interaction platform of language using for individual Chinese young children with autism. Information was collected as follows: the audiotapes of 18 months observation of the interaction between four children with autism, as well as four controlled typically developing young children matched on language capacities(MLU: mean length of utterance)and their caregivers; the audiotapes of 2-hour observation of the four children with autism during unstructured activities in kindergarten; the audiotapes of half an hour-observation of the interaction between four children with autism and the strangers and the interviews of their main members of family. Furthermore, Information was collected from the journals of more than one month for one child with autism during the unstructured activities in the integrated kindergarten. This study has both predictive goal and descriptive goals, so a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods has been used to analyses the questions.This thesis delivers three sets of findings. The first reveals that compared with the controls, the developing rates of each subsystem of language of four Chinese young children with autism are different, which shows the asynchronous form-function relationship of the profile. In specific, grammatical complexity of Chinese young children with autism begins from a lower level and the difference with the controls remains the same or expands during the course of development. Semantic diversity of the three cases is of low starting point and the developing difference tends to be narrowed or reversed. No differences are shown in pragmatic communication at starting point in the three cases, and higher estimated growth rate is accompanied. The estimated growth rate of initiated conversation portion conflicts with the controls. Different proportions of non-functional speech are found in the three cases. Comparing with similar studies abroad, both similarities and differences exist in the growth model of Chinese autistic children's language development and communication.The second reveals that, compared with the controls, some specific forms of communicative acts of the four Chinese young children with autism are limited, though they are of high frequency. In specific, language intention for information and emotional exchange and language forms used are limited. These inadequacies may result from such reasons as high rate of repetition of initiative and extended information, high frequency of no response or wrong response and tendency to create abnormal words which hinder the flowing of fluent conversation. In-depth study on the quality of language using shows that language information and communication is the only way to the effective development of language, while language operation is the deeper cause of whether language information and communication can be effective or not. Therefore, the whole of "language operation, language form, information using and communication" is real reflection of the quality of language.The third reveals that the scene of relation is a key aspect of language development and exchange of Chinese young children with autism. The characteristics of the scene of relation will put corresponding impact on their language development and exchange. In specific, language influence to Chinese young children with autism during the interaction holds a direct relationship with interactive direction, which in turn, has something to do with relation platform and language scaffolding. In-depth study shows that good scaffolding provided by interactive subjects is very important. But the premise is the formation of relation platform, which plays a basic supporting role in the language using and interaction of Chinese young children with autism. The key to the formation of relation platform is that whether the interactive subjects can satisfy the needs of interaction, such as "similar interests" "complementary capabilities" "personalities complement with each other", and etc.The content of the three studies complement each other and their conclusions support each other. On the one hand, the study indicates that some specific impairments are encountered in Chinese autistic children's language development and communication; on the other hand, the study points out the plasticity of Chinese autistic children's language development and communication.