Early Motor Abilities and Communication and Linguistic Development in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Giulia Purpura, Annarita Contaldo
Recently, several authors have highlighted that the motor behaviour of children at risk of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) appears to be different quantitatively and qualitatively already in early childhood. These findings allowed us to reflect on the fact that delays or atypicality of sensorimotor development would seem to anticipate the onset of social and communication «core symptoms» of ASD children. As a matter of fact, some studies have suggested that there may be a close correlation between early motor skills and language skills after 36 months of age. This retrospective work aims to identify certain predictive motor signs of communicative and linguistic outcomes in a sample of 13 children with ASD, by using the Vineland-II Scales, The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory and the CARS Scale. Our findings highlight a correlation between bimanual skills at 24-30 months of age and the evolution of the number of produced words after a period of 11 months, but also a correlation between postural control skills at 24-30 months of age and the number of deictic gestures produced subsequently. Therefore, a close relationship between motor development and the development of expressive language is confirmed, and this work suggests the importance that the observation of certain early motor skills can have in the early identification and rehabilitative intervention of ASD.
Keywords
Autism Spectrum Disorder, Early motor development, Postural control, Linguistic development, Communication development.
