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Social-communicative control and its effect on echolalia in children with autism
Abstract
The systematic study of the interrelationships between the cognitive, social, and language demands of interactive contexts is vital if we are to begin to understand the foundations of echolalia in autism. It is also important to investigate the dynamics of echolalia in natural contexts if we are to develop appropriate intervention models related to this complex behavior. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of adult styles of verbal interaction on echolalia and generative language in children with autism. Of primary interest were the types of adult verbal behaviors that tended to be associated with higher and lower incidences of echolalic and generative language behaviors. Adult interaction styles were differentiated in terms of the amount of social-communicative "control" the adults exhibited in their verbal interactions with autistic children during a free play setting. The adult facilitative style of verbal interaction was designed to allow opportunities for the subjects to control and maintain the verbal interaction and was intended to place few conversational constraints on their verbal output. In contrast, the adult directive style of verbal interaction was designed to more closely control the direction and flow of the verbal interaction, and was intended to place greater cognitive demands on the children's verbal output. The results of this investigation suggest that the level of social-communicative control exerted on the child interactants during naturalistic plays sessions affected their use of echolalia and generative language. The overall findings suggest that: (a) a directive adult interaction style elicited more total utterances, as well as a majority of the subjects' echolalia; (b) a facilitative adult interaction style elicited more subject high constraint utterances; and (c) adult interaction style did not appear to influence generative language complexity.
Subject Area
Speech therapy|Special education|Preschool education
Recommended Citation
Rydell, Patrick John, "Social-communicative control and its effect on echolalia in children with autism" (1989). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9004705.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9004705