Ralentir la parole pour favoriser la compréhension verbale des enfants porteurs d’autisme ?

Abstract

BackgroundThe aim of this study is to verify if slowing down the flow of speech facilitates verbal comprehension, in particular the comprehension of verbal concepts used by 4- and 6-years-old kids, and if it is even more effective when the stimuli are complex. Our second objective is to check whether slowing down can improve the child's ability to memorize a sentence faithfully in order to repeat it without error. Test groupsThe experimental sample was composed of 62 pupils aged 4 to 6 years split into two test groups in an elementary school in Meurthe-et-Moselle. One group was made of 22 children with ASD according to the CIM-10 (World Health Organization, 1994) and DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, 1985) criteria. The control group was made up of 40 typically-developing children. Test methodsThe first test focused on the understanding of 16 verbal concepts from the BOEHM 3 test; the second was a sentence repetition from the NEPSY-2 test. We compared the children's results when the teacher's speech was slowed down and when it was not. We slowed down the speech's speed by 30% without distorting the voice using the LOGIRAL app. This free time stretching software, developed by Tardif and Gepner from the University of Aix-Marseille, with the Auticiel company, is very easy to use in schools. The slowing down of audio-visual signals promotes attention and concentration. ResultsOur results show that the slowing down of speech is beneficial for all children, with or without autism. In our first task, we observed a significant improvement in the comprehension of verbal concepts, even more so as the word-concept evaluated was complex (the pair, the shortest, the last one…). In the task of repeating sentences, which exposed the child to higher levels of complexity, the slowing down was all the more effective as the level of complexity was not too far removed from what the pupil was able to repeat without the teacher's slowed down speech. PerspectiveAccording to our study, slowing down speech's speed by 30% improved comprehension and memorization for all children and is especially important for children with ASD. It makes verbal learning more accessible, mainly when it relates to concepts located in the zone of proximal development (Vygotski, 1985). Taking such results into consideration can improve the inclusion of young pupils with autism disorders in mainstream classes, effectively making verbal learning more achievable.