Al ritmo del senso. Condizioni autistiche, intersoggettività e ritmo: una proposta semiotico-cognitiva

This paper presents a cognitive semiotics investigation of the role of the rhythm within Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC). Adopting a pragmatist, structural, and enactive conception of cognition, it offers an analysis of autistic phenomenology aimed at illustrating the effectsof what, in certain approaches developed within developmental psychology and psychoneurobiology, has been described as an impairment in the organism’s attunement with the environment. These considerations are further articulated through the analysis of a device designed to enhance sensorimotor and social coordination in individuals with ASC. The hypothesis advanced is that such efficacy can be ascribed to the modeling function of rhythm, understood as a morphology capable of structuring the spatiotemporal organization of the experience through the cycles of action and perception it brings forth and orients and which, eventually, ensures the attunement with the environment.