Treating people as objects, agents, or "subjects": how young children with and without autism make requests.
A procedure previously used to investigate imperative communication in non-human primates was applied to young children, some of whom had autism. The goal was to examine closely how requests are made in a problem-solving situation. Each child's spontaneous strategies to obtain an out-of-reach object were analyzed in terms of the ways in which he or she used the adult who was present. Results showed that fewer children with autism used a strategy of treating the person as a "subject", and that more children with autism used object-centred strategies.
Phillips
W
W
MRC Child Psychiatry Unit, University of London, U.K.
Gómez
J C
JC
Baron-Cohen
S
S
Laá
V
V
Rivière
A
A
D000328:Adult; D000818:Animals; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D006071:Gorilla gorilla; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D009633:Nonverbal Communication; D009769:Object Attachment; D011340:Problem Solving; D012919:Social Behavior