Autism and Scaffolding Language Learning: A Case Study of Two Children with Autism

Abstract

Autism is a neuro developmental disorder, that is associated with social and interactive abnormalities and with other language impairments. Language learning is related to the embodiment and acquisition of thelinguistic concepts depends on the socio-physical experiences. Studies have also approved that assisted or scaffolding learning can also help in language learning and acquisition. The present research studied the role of scaffolding learning in autistic children. The level of the lexical concepts of autistic children was observed in pre and post experiment. Children were taughtthe concept of birthday party event with the help of video and pictures. The
results showed significant improvement in the acquisition of the concept of nouns; however, they were lagging in acquiring the concept of verbs related to the event of birthday party. It is assumed that visual experience helped the children in acquiring the nouns but no experience of performing the action can be the reason for the poor acquisition of verbs.