PURPOSE: this study aims at describing the functional communication characteristics of institutionalized autistic adolescents for a period of six months approximately as for: number of communicative acts per minute, interpersonal proportion and means of proportion communication use (gestural, vocal, verbal) as well as to describe the subjects' characteristics as for social cognitive performance in this period. METHODS: the subjects were eight institutionalized adolescents with autism. Their functional communicative profile and social-cognitive performance were assessed during a six-month period and resulting data were analyzed with non-parametric statistic methods. RESULTS: it was possible to observe that there was an improvement in the number of communicative acts per minute and in the proportion of interpersonal communicative functions. No significant change was observed as for the social-cognitive performance. CONCLUSION: it was possible to observe evolution in the language of institutionalized adolescents with autism during a six-month period, but it was not possible to identify its correlation with their social-cognitive performance.
Autistic Disorder; Adolescent; Language; Cognition
