Social communication skills of school-aged children with high functioning autism or specific language impairment in analogous to Korean classroom setting

Abstract

Objectives: Social communication is generally considered to comprise ongoing verbal and/or nonverbal behavior during interactive social contexts. This study aims to compare the social communication skills of school-aged children with high functioning autism (HFA) to those with specific language impairment (SLI) and typical developing children (TD). Methods: Forty-five children with HFA, SLI, and TD participated in a structured task that was similar classroom setting in order to elicit social communication behavior. The total frequency of social communication, the frequency of verbal/nonverbal behavior, and the frequency of initiation/response as assessed across four types of social interaction types were measured to compare the social communication abilities of three groups. Results: There were no significant differences in the total amount of social communication among the HFA, SLI, and TD groups. Children with HFA used nonverbal behavior less frequently than did SLI or TD children. HFA children responded and initiated more irrelevantly and assertively. The SLI children in this study showed similar pattern to the TD children in initiation and response behaviors although some SLI children used passive responses more frequently compared to those with TD. Conclusion: Social communication behaviors seemed to be validly elicited in a structured task representing a classroom setting. It thus seems to be of considerable importance to tap into social communication behaviors that involve more than two partners. The findings of this paper implicitly support the importance of providing structured group tasks in addition to assessment and/or intervention designed to improve social communication skills.