Do Teachers’ Non-Verbal Behaviors Support the Verbal Production of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)?

Abstract

This paper discusses non-verbal strategies performed by teachers to stimulate children with autism spectrum disorders in producing verbal expressions. Four learning processes were selected for the study. All classes consist of verbal children with autism, and each class was executed by different teacher. Non verbal strategies performed by the teachers were described to see their impacts to number and types of verbal expressions the children can produce. The results show that the non verbal behaviors the teachers performed are classified into three, i.e. facial gestures, body language or movement, and position. Such a classification has subclassification and it has different function to the others. In general, all strategies for facial gestures were executed mostly to stimulate the children in producing verbal expressions and provide models for the children in producing the expressions. Meanwhile, more types of strategy were performed under body language/ movement. These were commonly exploited to control the children attention as well as to assist them in producing the expressions. Finallay, both teachers' standing and sitting position influence the way they control the children in following the learning process. The findings are expected to be beneficial for teachers or parents of children with autism spectrum disorders and assisting such children having the learning process.

Politeness Strategies Performed by Teachers: A Case of Assisting Elicitation in Children with Autism

“…It involves gesture, body language, paralinguistic features and kinesics. Non-verbal strategies have been reported to facilitate the production of verbal expressions in autism (Djatmika, Wibowo, & Sugini, 2019). Although looking at non-verbal aspect of interaction is not the primary objective of this study, this aspect is an integral part of teacher-student interaction, especially in the case of verbally autistic children.…”