Improving Language Comprehension via Hand Gestures in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders and/or Language Impairment in Rural Montana

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Modyanova, N., Bolton, A. P., Storrusten, C., & McCrory, B. (2024). Improving Language Comprehension via Hand Gestures in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders and/or Language Impairment in Rural Montana. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Human Factors and Ergonomics in Health Care, 13(1), 191-196. https://doi.org/10.1177/2327857924131012

Publication date: 1 Jun 2024 Added to AutiHub: 8 Aug 2026 Type: Other Article language: English
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Authors

Publication authors
4
Publication authors identified as autistic
1 / 4 (25.0%)
  1. Nadezhda (Nadya) Modyanova *
  2. Addy P. Bolton
  3. Carter Storrusten
  4. Bernadette McCrory

Abstract

Background: Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are lifelong challenges, dramatically impairing communicative abilities with long term impacts on outcomes. Children with DLD and/or ASD benefit from interventions to improve language skills, but those are hard to reach in rural areas. Caregiver hand gestures can improve comprehension of content words in DLD/ASD via multimodal processing. However, little is known about how gestures affect comprehension of grammatical determiners (e.g., “ the” or “ an”). Methods: We investigate whether combining determiner phrases (e.g., “ the apple” or “ another apple”) with specific gestures (signs for [same] or [different] from American Sign Language) can improve language comprehension in hearing children with DLD/ASD, compared to TD controls. Operating Gazepoint or Tobii eye tracking at participants’ homes or a university space, we use a constrained act-out task presented via a custom-made interactive computer game with pre-recorded video prompts, or a toy and paper version, using a pretest-training-test-posttest protocol. Results: After evaluating 35 participants with ASD, DLD, and TD, ages 2-31, we identified three subgroups (across diagnoses) based on their knowledge of determiners at pretest. 51% of participants showed good (adult-like) knowledge across determiners and tests. 26% of participants were unable to complete our interactive game. However, 23% of participants showed initial poor knowledge of “ the”, followed by improvements in the comprehension of “ the” with gestures in the test, which were mostly retained in the posttest. Eye tracking demonstrated consistency between children’s attention to gestures and answers and their behavioral responses. Conclusion: Hand gestures can improve language comprehension in some children with DLD/ASD and TD. Our findings may lead to designing an inclusive intervention, for both children and their caregivers, to improve communication using multiple modalities – both speech and simple gestures which emphasize the main points of the spoken message, thereby supporting rural & underserved families.

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Cited bibliography overview

These indicators describe the bibliography cited by this publication. An author name is counted each time it appears in one cited reference, so the same person can be counted more than once. Names not yet linked to an author already present in AutiHub are treated as unknown, not as non-autistic. Last computed: 27 Oct 2026 10:33.

Cited references
38
With a DOI
26
Without a DOI, from raw bibliography text
11
1 / 38 (2.6%) cited references include at least one author identified as autistic.
References with data to complete
7 / 38 (18.4%)
References with detected author names
32 / 38 (84.2%)
Without detected author names
6
Without a structured title
5
Without a stable identifier
11
References with raw author names still to review
0
References with external metadata lookup issues
0
These indicators apply to cited references displayed on this page, after technical duplicates have been merged. A reference without a DOI can still support author statistics when a title and author names are available.
Author names detected in the cited bibliography
139
From DOI or external metadata
139
From validated raw bibliography text
0
Raw names already validated
0
Raw names still to review
5
19 / 139 (13.7%) names are linked to an author already present in AutiHub. 120 / 139 (86.3%) names are not yet linked.
Names linked to a person identified as autistic
1 / 139 (0.7%)
Calculated across all author names detected in the cited bibliography. Among names linked to an author already present in AutiHub: 1 / 19 (5.3%). Distinct people identified as autistic: 1 / 133 (0.8%).
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