ACCOMPAGNEMENT DES ENFANTS AUTISTES A LEPREUVE DES REPRESENTATIONS SOCIALES DES ORTHOPHONISTES : UNE APPROCHE PSYCHOSOCIALE

This article sets two main objectives. The first consists of identifying the social representations of autism among Moroccan speech therapists. The second objective consists of analyzing the impact of these social representations on the communication support practices of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Although several studies have addressed the problem of autism, especially with the increase in the number of children suffering from this disorder in recent decades, few have approached it from the angle of the theory of social representations in context Moroccan. In this article, we used the psychosocial approach, with the theory of social representations of Moscovici (1961) to understand how speech therapists who are supposed to welcome and support autistic children construct their social representations on the autism. The empirical investigation is part of a mixed study, combining an exploratory qualitative method and a quantitative method. Indeed, our study took place in two parts: The first qualitative one was carried out through a free association questionnaire (the inducing word is autism) with 80 Moroccan speech therapists working in the private and public sector. Then, we used the hierarchical evocation technique of P. Vergès (1992) to show the importance of expressions and to assess their knowledge about autism. The second step, quantitative, makesit possible to collect quantitative data with the aim of illustrating the qualitative data obtained previously, and to understand the reality as objectively as possible, of the impact of social representations of autism among speech therapists on communication support practices for autistic children. Finally, we proceed to a discussion of the results obtained through this research.