Abstract:

Both the World Health Organisation's International Classification of Diseases and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association include communication disorders among the core symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder.

This paper aims to trace the differential response to a socio-communicative training program in students with neuronal diversity, specifically 10 students with autism spectrum disorder. To do this, we assess the initial level of pretest communicative competence in a group of children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder as compared with a control group of some other 10 students with typical development, the two groups being matched in gender, number of subjects, verbal mental age, and chronological age. Once both sets of students receive training in referential communication following the ecological paradigm, we evaluate their communicative competence by means of a post-test task in order to observe the differences obtained in the quality of the messages produced by both trained groups. Later we assess the generalisation of learning in terms of time and materials by using a transfer task.

The results obtained in both groups following the implementation of the training programme are presented together with the differential effects that this has had on students with Autism Spectrum Disorder compared with students with typical development.

We conclude our paper by discussing the educational implications of these findings for our target population in respect of the previous literature in this area of study. The importance of work conducted in the educational field of communication in general, and more specifically in referential communication, is particularly valued.

Keywords:

Special Education, Inclusive learning, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Referential Communication, Intervention.