Making Meaning Together: Embodied Narratives in a Case of Severe Autism.

Shared understanding is generated between individuals before speech through a language of body movement and non-verbal vocalisation, expression of feeling and interest made in gestures of movement and voice. Human understanding is co-created in these embodied projects, displayed in serially organised expressions with shared timing of reciprocal actions between partners. These develop in narrative events that build over cycles of reciprocal expressive action in a four-part structure shared by all the time-based arts: "introduction," "development," "climax," and "conclusion." Pre-linguistic narrative establishes the foundation of later, linguistic intelligence. Yet, participating in social interactions that give rise to narrative development is a central problem of autism spectrum disorder. In this paper, we examine the rapid growth of narrative meaning-making between a non-verbal young woman with severe autism and her new therapist. Episodes of embodied, shared understanding were enabled through a basic therapeutic mode of reciprocal, creative mirroring of expressive gesture. These developed through reciprocal cycles and as the relationship progressed, complete co-created narratives were formed resulting in shared joy and the mutual interest and trust of companionship. These small, embodied stories enabled moments of co-regulated arousal that the young woman had previous difficulty with. These data provide evidence for an intact capacity for non-verbal narrative meaning-making in autism.

Behavioural observations of adult-child pairs at pedestrian crossings.

Pedestrian accidents are a serious health risk to children in the UK and other Western countries. There remains a considerable amount to be learned about children's behaviour in real-traffic environments. The present study was intended to help fill this gap, by observing unobtrusively the behaviours of 123 adult-child pairs as they crossed the road at pedestrian light-controlled crossings. Eight behaviours were coded, including whether or not the pair stopped at the kerb, waited for the light to change, and checked to ensure traffic flow had stopped. Results showed that the adults observed provided reasonably good models of pedestrian behaviour, but that they rarely treated the crossing event as an opportunity to teach children explicitly about road safety. The only gender difference to emerge revealed that adults were more likely to hold girls' hands than boys' hands. No differences were observed in relation to (estimated) age of child. The implications of these findings for parental training programmes are explored.

Stop, look, listen, and think? What young children really do when crossing the road.

This study sought to provide basic information about children's behaviour in realistic traffic situations. Most literature in this area has focused on children's knowledge about road safety or has assessed their behaviour in simulated traffic environments. However, until more is known about what children actually do in traffic environments, our ability to identify the important elements for inclusion in educational programmes remains limited. Fifty-six children, aged 5-6 years, took part in a 'treasure trail' activity in which they were confronted with two road crossings, one at a T-junction with a moving car and the other between parked cars. Children's performance was videotaped and coded for relevant behaviours such as stopping at the kerb, looking for traffic, direction of gaze, and style of crossing (i.e. walking vs. running). Results revealed that performance was extremely poor. Sixty percent of the children failed to stop before proceeding from the kerb onto the road. Looking for oncoming traffic was exhibited by no more than 41% of the sample, dropping to as low as 7% in some instances. When looking did occur, it was initially as likely to be in the inappropriate direction (i.e. to the left) as in the appropriate direction (i.e. to the right). Consideration of individual performance revealed the existence of individual differences within the sample; such differences were relatively stable across the two road crossings. These findings, based on controlled naturalistic tasks and detailed observational methods, build on earlier studies that are generally able to provide only estimated rates of children's behaviour.