Gérard, Christelle <br/><br/>
Microanalysis of imitation in an adult with autism spectrum disorder in the context of a French Sign Language workshop 

 -  2025.<br/>							 
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<br/><br/> This article presents a case of exposure to French Sign Language (LSF), focusing on imitation as conceptualized by Nadel (2021), in the context of an adult with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) considered “non-verbal.” His development is analyzed within a linguistically homogeneous LSF environment, co-constructed with two other adults with intellectual developmental disorder (IDD), described as “minimally verbal” (Koegel et al. 2020). This longitudinal study is based on a microanalysis of thirty-two hours of video recordings from an LSF workshop led by a Deaf instructor over twenty-seven months in a residential care facility—an ecological setting conducive to close observation of daily interactions (Blanchet 2012). An annotation grid was developed using ELAN software (Crasborn and Sloetjes 2008) to characterize each instance of imitation. The analyses reveal that, for the participant with ASD on whom this study focuses, both synchronous and delayed imitation increased over the course of the sessions, suggesting a process of continuous learning. However, these results should be interpreted with caution, given the specificity of the workshop context and the microanalytical focus on a single subject, which limits the generalizability of the findings.