L'interprétation d'indices non verbaux par les enfants

Interpreting appropriately face expressions and analyzing social relations between people, according to their actions are useful competence for treating pragmatic aspects of communication. We do research on these competences by presenting a recognition emotion task, and a task in which movements of geometrical figures simulate social interaction, to 98 children (children aged 8, 10, 12 and 14 years, children with autism and mental retardation). Results show that answers qualitatively increase with age, even after 12 years. Children with autism encounter more difficulties to recognize emotional expression than to attribute intentional actions. Emotion recognition is related to simple intention attribution but not with complex one, which develops later.