Telling stories with gestures helps children with autism and language disorders speak better
Researchers at Pompeu Fabra University and the Open University of Catalonia tested a method combining stories, gestures and movement with 50 children aged 3 to 7. After nine sessions, children with neurodevelopmental disorders told a new story almost as well as their peers.
Telling a story helps many children organise what they want to say. Adding gestures and movement helps even more for children with autism or language disorders, according to researchers at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) and the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) in Spain.
How it works
The study involved 50 children aged 3 to 7 from seven schools and eight clinical centres in Catalonia, who speak Catalan and Spanish.
- Nine one-to-one sessions of 30 minutes, once a week, mostly with a speech therapist.
- Children watched videos of three stories about a capybara who solves problems: first without words, then with them.
- They then retold the story, or made up a new one, guided by the professional, using gestures and movement.
The results
When telling a story they had never heard, children with disorders who followed the method scored 3.77 out of 6, close to the 4.04 of children without difficulties. Children with disorders who did not take part scored 2.29.
They improved most in what gives a story its shape: who is in it, what the problem is, what they do to solve it and how it ends. Children who needed fewer hints during the sessions learned the most.
What is still missing
It is a small study, and the authors are clear about its limits:
- They have not yet measured whether the gains last.
- Children did not get better at understanding what characters feel or think, which stories rarely spell out. That may need more targeted or longer support.
The study is by Julia Florit, now at the University of the Balearic Islands, Pilar Prieto, head of UPF’s Prosody and Gesture Studies Group, and Alfonso Igualada, a speech therapist and researcher at the UOC. It is published in the Early Childhood Education Journal.
Why it matters
How a young child speaks helps predict their later language skills. A simple method that works in classrooms and clinics could give many families and professionals another tool. The authors believe it could reach schools if teams coordinate well.
