MINIMUM GESTURE: Study of multimodal resources (verbal aspects, gestures, body and material world) in the interactions involving children with ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorders)

Abstract

This proposal aims to investigate and systematize, descriptively and analytically, the relations between language, body and material world constitutive of our human interactions. These relationships will be explored in a specific empirical context: everyday co-presence interactions between children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and various interlocutors. The ASD correspond to a relatively heterogeneous group of conditions that affect neurocognitive development and compromise the development of language and social interaction. We will work based on an audiovisual corpora. The records were carried out in institutions for children diagnosed as ASD. This project focuses on 1) the analysis of daily interactions that have the presence/participation of subjects with a diagnosis of ASD based on an embodied interaction perspective; 2) the study of the status and role of gestures, body and material world in the construction and constitution of human interaction and its relation with linguistic-cognitive processes; 3) to highlight questions related to the field of videoanalysis, such as: procedures for recording interactions in complex environments (involving many participants, use of objects and body movement); the construction of audiovisual corpora for linguistic-interaction research; the invitation to a visual analytical mentality of human social interactions involving not only the verbal aspects that constitute it, but also the physical space, the body and the material world. (AU)