We report the first study on pronoun use by an under-studied research population, children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exposed to American Sign Language (ASL) from birth by their deaf parents. Personal pronouns cause difficulties for hearing children with ASD, who sometimes reverse or avoid them. Unlike speech pronouns, sign pronouns are indexical points to self and other. Despite this transparency, we find evidence from an elicitation task and parental report that signing children with ASD avoid sign pronouns in favor of names. An analysis of spontaneous usage showed that all children demonstrated the ability to point, but only children with better-developed sign language produced pronouns. Differences in language abilities and self-representation may explain these phenomena in sign and speech.

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who have native exposure to a sign language such as American Sign Language (ASL) have received almost no scientific attention. This paper reports the first studies on a sample of five native-signing children (four deaf children of deaf parents and one hearing child of deaf parents; ages 4;6 to 7;5) diagnosed with ASD. A domain-general deficit in the ability of children with ASD to replicate the gestures of others is hypothesized to be a source of palm orientation reversal errors in sign. In Study 1, naturalistic language samples were collected from three native-signing children with ASD and were analyzed for errors in handshape, location, movement and palm orientation. In Study 2, four native-signing children with ASD were compared to 12 typically-developing deaf children (ages 3;7 to 6;9, all born to deaf parents) on a fingerspelling task. In both studies children with ASD showed a tendency to reverse palm orientation on signs specified for inward/outward orientation. Typically-developing deaf children did not produce any such errors in palm orientation. We conclude that this kind of palm reversal has a perceptual rather than a motoric source, and is further evidence of a “self-other mapping” deficit in ASD.

Children with autism spectrum disorder present with a variety of social communication deficits such as atypicalities in social gaze and verbal and non-verbal communication delays as well as perceptuo-motor deficits like motor incoordination and dyspraxia. In this study, we had the unique opportunity to study praxis performance in deaf children with and without autism spectrum disorder in a fingerspelling context using American Sign Language. A total of 11 deaf children with autism spectrum disorder and 11 typically developing deaf children aged between 5 and 14 years completed a fingerspelling task. Children were asked to fingerspell 15 different words shown on an iPad. We coded various praxis errors and fingerspelling time. The deaf children with autism spectrum disorder had greater errors in pace, sequence precision, accuracy, and body part use and also took longer to fingerspell each word. Additionally, the deaf children with autism spectrum disorder had poor receptive language skills and this strongly correlated with their praxis performance and autism severity. These findings extend the evidence for dyspraxia in hearing children with autism spectrum disorder to deaf children with autism spectrum disorder. Poor sign language production in children with autism spectrum disorder may contribute to their poor gestural learning/comprehension and vice versa. Our findings have therapeutic implications for children with autism spectrum disorder when teaching sign language.

The manual gestures that hearing children produce when explaining their answers to math problems predict whether they will profit from instruction in those problems. We ask here whether gesture plays a similar role in deaf children, whose primary communication system is in the manual modality. Forty ASL-signing deaf children explained their solutions to math problems and were then given instruction in those problems. Children who produced many gestures conveying different information from their signs (gesture-sign mismatches) were more likely to succeed after instruction than children who produced few, suggesting that mismatch can occur within-modality, and paving the way for using gesture-based teaching strategies with deaf learners.

Background and aims Praxis, the ability to plan and execute a series of gestures or motor sequences, is impaired in individuals with autism spectrum disorder. In this paper, we present the first study of praxis during a gesture imitation task in a unique population of children with autism spectrum disorder: deaf children who have been exposed to American Sign Language from birth by their Deaf parents. Lifelong exposure to sign language in deaf individuals entails practice with gesture imitation. We ask if deaf, signing children with autism spectrum disorder present with praxis impairments similar to those reported in the literature for hearing children with autism spectrum disorder not exposed to sign. Methods Thirty deaf children of Deaf parents (16 typically developing and 14 with autism spectrum disorder), matched for chronological and mental age, were tested on a simple gesture imitation task. Children were asked to imitate 24 gestures performed by an adult model on a laptop computer that varied along dimensions of movement type (16 trials) and palm orientation direction (eight trials). Data were coded for nine praxis parameters (five formation parameters and four manner parameters) and three timing measures. Results Results showed that the deaf children with autism spectrum disorder produced more errors than the typically developing deaf children on six of the nine praxis dimensions (hand orientation, final orientation, modulation, directness, pace, and overflow) and were more impaired on manner parameters than formation parameters, suggesting underlying deficits in motor control/coordination leading to dyspraxia. Praxis scores were strongly related to severity of autism spectrum disorder symptoms and receptive sign language scores. Conclusions We thus find evidence that praxis is impaired in deaf, signing children with autism spectrum disorder, despite lifelong exposure to a gestural language and extensive practice with gesture imitation. Implications Our findings suggest that interventions targeted toward enhancing praxis and coordination of finger and hand movements could help facilitate language development in children with autism spectrum disorder.