Action,the foundation for cognitive development

It is argued that action constitutes the foundation for cognitive development. Action is a principal component of all aspects of cognitive development including social understanding. It reflects the motives of the child, the problems to be solved, the goals to be attained, and the constraints and possibilities of the child’s body and sensory‐motor system. Actions are directed into the future and their control is based on knowledge of what is going to happen next. The child’s sensory‐motor system is especially designed to facilitate the extraction of this knowledge. In addition, the infant is endowed with motives that ensure that these innate predispositions are transformed into a system of knowledge for guiding actions. By acting on the world, infants develop their cognition.     

Autism and receptive dysphasia: Evaluation of comparative studies

Ten different studies comparing children with autism and receptive dysphasia are reviewed. Most of the studies aimed to characterize autism as a language disorder. The representativity of the samples are discussed according to heterogeneity of the autistic and dysphatic populations, and sex and social class distributions. Group differences and similarities are listed and discussed according to sample selection and matching procedures, age and sex distribution, social class membership, and the defining criteria of the two illnesses. It is concluded that the studies do not fullfill their aim, and that the project of comparing dysphatic and autistic children seems unfruitful. Group differences which seem unconnected with methodological difficulties, selection procedure, or group defining criteria, were found in parental background, use of gestures, articulation, and reading.     

Facilitation of early speech development in a dysphatic child by use of signed Norwegian

Non-vocal language intervention is mostly used to develop communication skills in severely dysfunctional children. In the present study, a 3-year-old dysphatic boy was taught signs to facilitate his speech development. After 6 months of sign instruction, he showed substantial improvement in spoken language, and had gained one year on the Receptive and the Expressive scales of Reynell Developmental Language Scales in half a years time. Behavior problems were markedly reduced. It is concluded that sign instruction may be used with a wider range of subjects than is usual today.