Syntactic Defi cits in Autism: Can Interactive Technologies Help?

Sentence comprehension critically depends on our ability to decode syntactic information. Autistic individuals have diffi culty decoding and encoding syntactic information. Traditional treatments of syntactic defi cits in autism seem to neglect the idea that improvement of syntactic abilities in individuals with this disorder may occur via atypical cognitive pathways. Recent research on autism lends the theoretical grounds to the idea that autistic brain processes some types of information in atypical ways. It is not clear at the moment how and to what extent specifi c cognitive components can compensate for impaired processing in autism, but there is evidence indicating that treatments specifi cally designed to strengthen certain abilities in autism may be successful even when they rely on atypical cognitive pathways. As an example, the present paper explores the possibility of employing pictorial reasoning, which is typically spared in autistic individuals, in a treatment intended to strengthen these individuals’ syntactic abilities. Interactive systems - robotic and soft ware - are viewed as indispensable tools in such treatments, bringing together cognitive science, neurology, and social robotics. In terms of actual design, this approach opens up space in which creativity in employing interactive systems for therapeutic purposes could fl ourish. In terms of theory, learning via atypical pathways opens the questions on the principles governing atypical information structuring, its neural underpinnings, and transfer of skills acquired through interactive therapeutic devices to everyday life situations. interactive systems.