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The Use of Mental States in an Adult Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder on Socio-Comunicative and Dialogical Processes

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Abstract

This work was developed based on the reaserching field named Cultural Psychology which takes into account transformative processes marked by relations/dialogues among I-Others-World in a cultural field that allows and/or restricts people’s possibilities for action. From this point of view, we propose a discussion about the socio-communicative capacity of a person diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), focusing on the dialogical capacity of human communication for an idiographic and qualitative analysis on the mental states use of words and attributions from reports collected from semi-structured interviews conducted with an adult person diagnosed with ASD and an adult woman who has no such diagnosis. The interviews focused on apprehending information on the participants’ understanding of the person diagnosed with ASD’s development, therapies carried out and its implications in the life of the person. Our results indicate that the person diagnosed with ASD has a significant deficit in the use of words, which accounts for mental states in socio-communicative processes compared to a person with a typical development. These data point to relevant impairments that the person diagnosed with ASD presents in dialogic processes.

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Acknowledgments

I thank Professor Ramiro Rial Gonzales for the important contributions in this study.

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  1. Institute of Psychology, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil

    Djalma Francisco Costa Lisboa de Freitas

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  1. Djalma Francisco Costa Lisboa de Freitas
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Correspondence to Djalma Francisco Costa Lisboa de Freitas.

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de Freitas, D.F.C.L. The Use of Mental States in an Adult Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder on Socio-Comunicative and Dialogical Processes. Integr. psych. behav. 55, 682–698 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-020-09518-3

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