Context-situated Communicative Competence in a Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is often linked with difficulties in triadic interaction or joint attention. This paper investigated the communicative competencies that children with ASD might have in these skills. We report findings from a pilot case study that focused on a school-aged child with ASD who interacted with his adult coparticipants in various technology-enhanced contexts. The primary data consisted of video recordings that were analysed utilising mixed methods. Focusing on behaviours that were realised via the use of eye-gaze, we wanted to discover whether they would differ according to context. The results of this study show that the use of eye-gaze differed in the contexts studied. The communicative competence was revealed when the child’s behaviours were not investigated in isolation but rather in relation to the context of their occurrence. This paper discusses the implications of the described context-situated view of competence and suggests widening the approaches of studies of ASD.