Colorful Semantics in Cypriot-Greek-Speaking Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Objectives: The aims of this study were: (1) to investigate the effect of colorful semantics (CS) on the morphosyntactic and semantic development of Cypriot-Greek (CG)-speaking children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to obtain a better understanding of its role in an augmentative communication (AC) intervention program; (2) to address the paucity of intervention tools geared for CG-speaking children with ASD.

Participants and methods: The study included 24 boys and 16 girls with ASD, all preschool-aged 4-6 years. All were verbal but with limited production and minimal mean length of utterance. The study followed a randomized control trial design with equally sized experimental and control groups. The experimental group followed a therapeutic program using the AC with a CS protocol, while the control group's AC intervention did not include the CS protocol.

Results: The use of CS significantly improved the children's semantic and morphosyntactic development.

Conclusions: The intervention results illustrate the effectiveness of CS in this study; however, generalizability of effectiveness to other similar CG-speaking children with ASD requires further evidence.

Keywords: Augmentative alternate communication; Autism spectrum disorder; Colorful semantics; Morphosyntax; Semantics.