People with autism often suffer unbearable pain because of they have multiple sensitivities. Many are hypersensitive to sounds. The intensity of their pain can be excruciating. Some indicators of that hypersensitivity are: -covering their ears with their hands to protect themselves from the incoming sounds -bursting into huge temper tantrums due to the frustration of having to deal with the constantly incoming sounds -repeating the same words, phrases or sentences perhaps as a way to soothe or stabilize themselves in the face of the barrage of intense and confusing sounds So, why are they hypersensitive to sounds? The reason lays in the way we listen. We all listen both with our ears and with our bodies. Our skin and our bones are excellent sound conductors. Our whole body responds to sounds. However, unlike most people, many autistic children (and adults) listen predominantly with their bodies. Sounds picked up by the body go directly to the brain, without being filtered. That means that the irrelevant background noise is not filtered out. So, many autistic people are continuously assaulted with sounds. When people listen predominantly with their ears, the sounds are filtered to reduce its intensity. Also, they are able to filter out all the background noises, so that they can tune in to what is really important. Many autistic people do not have the ability to filter out background noise and tune in to what really matters.
An individual sound is a unit of speech without concern as to whether or not it is a phoneme of some language. As the speech mechanism (jaw, lips, tongue, and throat) and voice mature, an infant is able to make controlled sound. This begins in the first few months of life with "cooing," a quiet, pleasant, repetitive vocalization. Usually by 6 months of age an infant babbles or produces repetitive syllables such as "ba, ba, ba" or "da, da, da." Babbling soon turns into a type of nonsense speech called jargon that often has the tone and cadence of human speech but does not contain real words. By the end of their first year, most children have mastered the ability to say a few simple words. Children are most likely unaware of the meaning of their first words, but soon learn the power of those words as others respond to them.
Play is a diverse and complex behaviour that is viewed as central to the normal development of children (Jordan and Libby, 1997). A child with autism will rarely be perceived as the playing child (Beyer and Gammeltoft, 2000) and their play can be impaired at all developmental stages. Most research, however, has concentrated on pretence, especially symbolic play. Research has shown that for young children with autism, sensory motor play dominates beyond the verbal mental age, at which it normally declines in infants without autism (Jordan and Libby, 1997). Further, having missed out the early experiences of manipulation and combination enjoyed by children without autism, toys and objects are used in an inflexible way. For example, a child with autism may be preoccupied with spinning the wheels on a toy car, rather than playing a racing or driving game. Roeyers and van Berckelaer-Onnes (1994) describe children with autism as missing the curiosity of typically developing children. They conclude that their play behaviour is often limited to simple manipulation, the quality of their play is lower than that of non-autistic children of comparable mental age and (spontaneous) symbolic play is usually absent or impaired. Some children with autism do not give any indication that they want to play with other children, preferring to play by themselves; other children would like to but they can have great difficulty in indicating this wish. A child may well be playing, even though we do not perceive it. Stahmer (1999) writes that although children with autism show a lack of spontaneous play in free settings, this is not the result of a complete inability to play, but may be due at least in part to the fact that they find play difficult, so they experience repeated task failure. This in turn can lead to frustration and a pervasive lack of motivation to play.
Children with autistic regression have regression of both language and behavior in association with significant social deficits; it occurs in approximately 30% of children with autism.Children with autism are more likely to regress earlier, usually prior to age 2. The occurrence of developmental regression in autism is one of the more puzzling features of this disorder. Although several studies have documented the validity of parental reports of regression using home videos, accumulating data suggest that most children who demonstrate regression also demonstrated previous, subtle, developmental differences. Counter to clinical intuition, the earlier development of social, language, and attachment behaviors followed by regression does not seem to support later recovery of skills or better developmental outcomes compared to children who never had speech or typical social responsivity. In fact, this regressive group may have somewhat greater developmental impairment than the nonregressive group, though the two groups do not appear to present different behavioral phenotypes. Although autism is not the only condition in which regression occurs, it appears to be the most frequent condition. PMID: 15362172
Comprehension is an ability to understand the meaning or importance of something (or the knowledge acquired as a result). Despite common areas of challenge, children and adults who have an autism spectrum disorder will differ from one another in the comprehension of the speech messages of others and in their response to strategies that might facilitate a communicative exchange.
Phonology is a science of speech sounds including especially the history and theory of sound changes in a language or in two or more related languages .Phonology is the area of language least likely to be impaired in people with autism.
Pragmatics is the study of the aspects of meaning and language use that are dependent on the speaker, the addressee and other features of the context of utterance. Pragmatics is viewed as the linguistic conditions of appropriate use of sentences in context: the knowledge of basic speech acts types, such as assertions, questions and commands; the knowledge of all the systems of rules governing “things done with words”, such as congratulations and proclamations; the knowledge of what is to be included in talk-in interaction pragmatics, which is pragmatic knowledge governing basic aspects of conversation, such as organization of turn-taking, organization of sequences and organization of repair. (Kasher, 1991). It seems that autistic children have difficulties in achieving proficiency in pragmatic knowledge - the ability to understand and use basic speech acts. The high functioning autistic children acquire some rudimentary pragmatic knowledge and they learn to answer questions in yes/no or one word responses. Pragmatics skills include: knowing that you have to answer when a question has been asked; being able to participate in a conversation by taking it in turns with the other speaker; the ability to notice and respond to the non-verbal aspects of language (reacting appropriately to the other person's body language and 'mood', as well as their words); awareness that you have to introduce a topic of conversation in order for the listener to fully understand; knowing which words or what sort of sentence-type to use when initiating a conversation or responding to something someone has said; the ability to maintain a topic (or change topic appropriately, or 'interrupt' politely); the ability to maintain appropriate eye-contact (not too much staring, and not too much looking away) during a conversation; and the ability to distinguish how to talk and behave towards different communicative partners (formal with some, informal with others
Echolalia is 1)an infant's repetition of sounds uttered by others 2) mechanical and meaningless repetition of the words of another person. There are two types of echolalia: immediate echolalia and delayed echolalia. Immediate echolalia was once defined as "the meaningless repetition of a word or word group just spoken by another person" (Fay & Schuler, 1980). However, Prizant & Duchan (1981) and others have begun to see that echolalia may serve many functions for the person with autism (therefore, it is not "meaningless"). The researchers determined that immediate echolalia often was used with clear evidence of purposeful communication. Immediate echolalia appears to tap into the person's short-term memory for auditory input. For our purposes, immediate echolalia is defined as the repetition of a word or phrase just spoken by another person. Delayed echolalia has been defined as the "echoing of a phrase after some delay or lapse of time" (Simon, 1975). Persons with autism who repeat TV commercials, favorite movie scripts, or parental reprimands come to mind when we think of delayed echolalia.Delayed echolalia appears to tap into long-term auditory memory, and for this reason, may be a different phenomenon from immediate echolalia. Because it can involve the recitation of entire scripts, delayed echolalia, is often thought to denote evidence of near-genius intellect.
Late emergence of spoken words is an early sign of autism spectrum disorders, 1 2 but most children with ASD acquire at least some spoken language, with approximately 80% producing more than five words. Expression of words may be stronger than understanding. Words are the essential building blocks of spoken communication; therefore, it is important to understand how verbal children with ASD best learn words. In this paper, we describe the components and processes of word learning and summarize relevant evidence from studies of children with ASD. To know a word is to know its sound structure, its grammatical role, its meaning, and its appropriate usage. In our laboratory, we are particularly interested in what children know about the meanings of words and the processes involved in acquiring this knowledge. The initial process of word learning is termed “fast mapping” because, indeed, both children and adults typically are quick to attach meaning to a new word. 8 However, this new knowledge is fragile, in that it is easily forgotten, 9 and incomplete, in that it does not encompass a full appreciation of the word’s meaning. 10 The subsequent process of word learning is referred to as “slow mapping.” Given additional experiences with the word in meaningful environments, the learner establishes a stronger memory and a deeper knowledge of the word meaning. A third process of word learning is extension. 11 With the exception of proper names, words extend to members of a category, not just to a single item. For example, dog refers to all dogs, not just the family pet.
The development of understanding of object names usually precedes the ability to say the name,but both skills should be worked on concurrently. Expression does not only include saying a word, but may include pointing to an object, signing the word, pointing to the appropriate Compic or other symbol system, or writing the word. By saying words to the child, you are providing a model of appropriate language.
The results reveal that autistic subjects do encode new information through lexicalization in single-word utterances and through contrastive stress in multiword utterances. However, the subjects encode old information almost as frequently as they encoded new information. The encoding of a new action or state change is marked relatively infrequently by the subjects, and they consistently produce repetitions of previously encoded information when they fail to offer new information to their listeners. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders Vol.50 230-240 August 1985. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
Request is 1) express the need or desire for; ask for; 2) ask (a person) to do something; 3) a formal message requesting something that is submitted to an authority; 4) inquire for (information); 5) the verbal act of requesting According to the studies, initial acquisition of requests for assistance follows by a brief period of overgeneralization. As independence in completing a task is increased, requests for assistance correspondingly are decreased. The conditional use of requests for assistance and independent task completion are achieved across time. One of the first communicative functions used by young children is the ability to request objects that they want. This involves understanding that people are a means of achieving their needs,however, children with Autism Spectrum Disorders usually need to be taught this. Gaining the child’s eye contact can assist in teaching them the relevance of people in communication. Encourage the child to use whichever form they are able (e.g. pointing to the object, using spoken or written words, signs, Compics or other symbol system) to request objects in their environment.
Some children exhibit echolalia, which is the repetition of words, signs, phrases or sentences spoken by other people. Some children use this as a communication device (i.e. the adult says “do you want a car?” and the child might say “want a car” to mean yes.) A child may repeat the same phrase over and over again as a means of regulating their own behaviour (i.e., a child repeats aloud “time to clean up” while cleaning). Some children may be delayed in acquiring speech, but progress eventually to form clear, fluent, well-formed sentences. However, their speech may remain repetitive and non-communicative, and may be marked by echolalia. That is, they may repeat back what another person says to them.They learn to talk by memorising words and phrases, while being unable to use these same words freely.Also, they repeat phrases out of context, especially phrases heard on TV.
Grammar - a set of generally agreed upon rules for language use in a certain community around specific tasks including punctuation, word use, sentence structure, etc.; grammar conventions may differ slightly or significantly according to audience, purpose, and context. Children with autism show extreme difficulties interpreting reflexives, as well as short and long passives of both actional and psychological verbs. The lack of distinct pattern in the interpretation of actional versus psychological passives resembles the performance of very young children who cannot yet employ the strategy of interpreting actional passives as adjectival. Poor interpretation of reflexive but not personal pronouns suggests an inability to compute the syntactic relationship between the reflexive and its antecedent, whereas poor performance on passives indicates an inability to interpret syntactic chains. Knowledge of important aspects of grammar is severely impaired in children with autistic developmental disorder, which contrasts the traditional observation that grammar is intact in autism.
Semantics is 1. the meaning or relationship of meanings of a sign or set of signs ; especially : connotative meaning 2. the language used to achieve a desired effect on an audience especially through the use of words with novel or dual meanings Semantics is the aspect of language function that relates to understanding the meanings of words, phrases and sentences, and using words appropriately when we speak. Children with semantic difficulties have a very hard time understanding the meaning of words and sentences. People with semantic processing difficulties have particular trouble with abstract words like 'curious' or 'vague', words that relate to feelings and emotions such as 'embarrassed' and 'anxious', and words that refer to status (for instance 'expert' or 'authority') or degree (for example, 'essential' or 'approximate'). They have difficulty with idioms, sayings and slang expressions, often taking them literally or interpreting them oddly. For example, when asked if he enjoyed spending time with his friends, a 14 year old with semantic processing problems replied, "I don't see how you can spend time, and I certainly don't see how you could enjoy it because spending time is not something you can do. You can only actually spend money". Another difficulty children with semantic problems experience is that they may not be able to identify the key point or topic in a sentence, and because of this may suddenly change the subject, very obscurely, apparently thinking they are on the same subject. Here is another real example from a girl aged eleven. Question: "Could you get the book off the shelf and give it to me?" Reply: "The Gulf Stream warms the coast-line"
Language Disorders - disorders that affect the way people talk and understand. These disorders may range from simple sound substitutions to not being able to use speech and language at all. Delayed acquisition of language is a common presenting problem in children. Most autistic children have difficulty effectively using language. Many also have problems with word and sentence meaning, intonation, and rhythm.The communication problems of autism vary, depending upon the intellectual and social development of the individual. Some may be unable to speak, whereas others may have rich vocabularies and are able to talk about topics of interest in great depth. Despite this variation, the majority of autistic individuals have little or no problem with pronunciation. Most autistic individuals do not make eye contact and have poor attention duration. They are often unable to use gestures either as a primary means of communication, as in sign language, or to assist verbal communication, such as pointing to an object they want. Some autistic individuals speak in a high-pitched voice or use robot-like speech. They are often unresponsive to the speech of others and may not respond to their own names. As a result, some are mistakenly thought to have a hearing problem. The correct use of pronouns is also a problem for autistic individuals.
Attention is the process whereby a person concentrates on some features of the environment to the (relative) exclusion of others . A dysfunctional attention hypothesis of the basis of savant skills was tested with a series of computerized tasks that assessed the ability to divide, shift, direct, and sustain attention. Ten healthy men with pervasive developmental disorders and unusual calendar-calculating skill, and 10 age- and sex-matched controls were tested. There were four general findings. First, the autistic savants and controls did not differ on a measure of visual sustained attention. Second, the savants failed to detect rare auditory targets significantly more than did the controls. Third, the savants were unable to efficiently divide their attention when required to detect both visual and auditory targets simultaneously. Finally, deficient orienting or a deficit in shifting selective attention from one stimulus location to another was evidenced in overall slower reaction times for the savants across tasks requiring shifts and redirecting of attention. This deficit was attributed to an inability to disengage attention as a result of deficient orienting and overselectivity. DOI: 10.1080/01688639308402609
Utterance is the use of uttered sounds for auditory communication. Utterance in autism can be described as: 1)Echolalic utterances which do not appear relevant to the situation or context (e.g., a child repeats utterances from a Disney video during a group calendar activity); 2)Utterances that may be triggered by something in the situation or context (e.g., a child walks into the lunchroom and begins to engage in echolalic utterances which have been heard in this context: "Everyone find a seat and start eating.") 3)Utterances that may be used as self-direction for his own actions (e.g., a child produces echolalic utterances to engage in a previously taught verbal routine to wash his hands: "Turn on the water. Get some soap. Rinse hands. Turn the water off. Get a towel and dry hands.").
Articulation is the aspect of pronunciation that involves bringing articulatory organs together so as to shape the sounds of speech.
Lexicalization is the process of making a word to express a concept.
Speech is 1. a) the communication or expression of thoughts in spoken words b) exchange of spoken words : conversation 2. a) something that is spoken : utterance b) a usually public discourse : address 3. a) language , dialect b) an individual manner or style of speaking 4. the power of expressing or communicating thoughts by speaking Almost anyone diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder will be recommended for speech therapy. This may seem odd, as many autistic people are either non-verbal (at the lower end of the spectrum) or extremely verbal (at the upper end of the spectrum). But even very verbal people with Asperger Syndrome are likely to misuse and misunderstand language on a regular basis. And even non-verbal people can certainly develop communication skills - and may even develop spoken language skills over time. Speech therapy involves much more than than simply teaching a child to correctly pronounce words. In fact, a speech therapist working with an autistic child or adult may work on a wide range of skills including: Non-verbal communication. This may include teaching gestural communication, or training with PECS (picture exchange cards), electronic talking devices, and other non-verbal communication tools. Speech pragmatics. It's all well and good to know how to say "good morning." But it's just as important to know when, how and to whom you should say it. Conversation skills. Knowing how to make statements is not the same thing as carrying on conversations. Speech therapists may work on back-and-forth exchange, sometimes known as "joint attention." Concept skills. A person's ability to state abstract concepts doesn't always reflect their ability to understand them. Autistic people often have a tough time with ideas like "few," "justice," and "liberty." Speech therapists may work on building concept skills.
The linguistic evolution of autistic children remains limited which can be explained by the relative stagnation of grammatical words. The extension of non-grammatical vocabulary is followed by an increase of grammatical vocabulary. Below 250-300 words, production, the MLU and grammatical vocabulary remain limited. So we may insist on the acquisition of non-grammatical vocabulary (in particular on verbs) for various reasons: - grammatical acquisition remains limited because of the relatively poor size of the lexicon of referential words in autistic children; - the referential lexicon is more important for communication even though the underdevelopment of the grammatical lexicon limits linguistic expression; -the hypothesis is that if autistic children reach the 300 words-point, the grammatical vocabulary and syntax would develop rapidly. It is better to be realistic about the possibilities for autistic children to follow the same development as for normal children, but it is nevertheless possible that the increase of referential vocabulary would trigger syntactic development.
Children with autism process sounds a split second slower than typically developing children, according to a new study that measured the magnetic fields emitted from the children's brains.In children with autism, this response is delayed by about 20 milliseconds compared with the response in typically developing children. Although preliminary, the findings may partly explain the language and communication problems that burden so many with the disorder. Reflecting the diversity of the disorder, some people with autism are also extremely sensitive to normal sounds, whereas others are insensitive to extremely loud sounds.
Phoneme is one of a small set of speech sounds that are distinguished by the speakers of a particular language. The beginning signs of communication occur in the first few days of life when an infant learns that a cry will bring food, comfort, and companionship. Newborns also begin to recognize important sounds such as the sound of their mother's voice. They begin to sort out the speech sounds (phonemes) or building blocks that compose the words of their language. Research has shown that by 6 months of age, most children recognize the basic sounds of their native language. http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/voice/autism.asp
Receptive vocabulary skills can be taught through video taping (names of common everyday objects, toys, names of familiar people, animals, etc.). Directions to complete various routines can also be taught by the same video taping strategy (e.g., making the bed, setting the table, getting dressed, going to the library, etc.). The Receptive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test (Rev. ed.) (Gardner, 1990) obtains an estimate of a child's one-word hearing vocabulary based on what the child has learned from home and school. It provides information about the child's ability to understand language. This is a standardized test that provides age equivalents, stan- dard scores, scaled scores, percentile ranks, and stanines.
Sign language provides numerous social, emotional, cognitive and communicative benefits for children with autism, such as: 1.Stimulation of speech and language development The visual stimulation provided by sign language activates the same centers in the brain that are activated by speech. Many signs are iconic, meaning they are gestures that are visually associated to the object they refer to. These visual associations are easier for children with autism. Sign language acts as a bridge to speech and language by “turning on” areas of the brain that are inactive due to the breakdown in spoken language. 2.Reduction of negative social behaviors Children with autism typically display negative social behaviors such as tantrums, anxiety, self-injury, and aggression. These behaviors are intensified when the child cannot communicate basic needs and wants. Sign language offers access to communication and eases the frustration that a child with autism feels when they are unable to express themselves! 3.Increase in social interaction Sign language provides a way for children with autism to express themselves. It also makes it easier for your child to receptively associate gestures with meaning. Expressive and receptive language skills are the building blocks for social interactions. Children that are able to express themselves are more likely to seek out social interactions! 4.Development of cognitive structures Sign language supports development of cognitive structures that are important for speech and language. Communication through sign helps to establish connections in the brain that are necessary for encoding language. Encoding language early is the key to learning, and learning is the key to success. Sign language is a visual mode of communication and requires the ability to focus. In many cases, children with autism have attention deficits. In severe cases, attention deficits may prevent sign language from being advantageous to children with autism.
Imitation can be described as voluntary or automatic. Voluntary imitation involves the deliberate copying of another person’s actions. In automatic imitation our own actions are affected by observing the actions of others when there is no intent to imitate. For example, when sharing a conversation we often unconsciously imitate the actions and posture of the other person. Although the exact processes underlying imitation remain unclear, it is believed that imitation may involve specialised brain neurons that discharge during both observation and execution of an action (Iacoboni and Dapretto, 2006). These mirror neurons not only help us imitate but may also underlie our ability to understand other people’s behaviour. Consequently, it has been proposed that altered mirror neuron activity may contribute to Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) where affected individuals have difficulties understanding other people.
The communication problems of autism vary, depending upon the intellectual and social development of the individual. Some may be unable to speak, whereas others may have rich vocabularies and are able to talk about topics of interest in great depth. Despite this variation, the majority of autistic individuals have little or no problem with pronunciation. Most have difficulty effectively using language. Many also have problems with word and sentence meaning, intonation, and rhythm. Those who can speak often say things that have no content or information. For example, an autistic individual may repeatedly count from one to five. Others use echolalia, a repetition of something previously heard. One form, immediate echolalia, may occur when the individual repeats the question, "Do you want something to drink?" instead of replying with a "yes" or "no." In another form called delayed echolalia, an individual may say, "Do you want something to drink?" whenever he or she is asking for a drink. Others may use stock phrases such as, "My name is Tom," to start a conversation, even when speaking with friends or family. Still others may repeat learned scripts such as those heard during television commercials. Some individuals with higher intelligence may be able to speak in depth about topics they are interested in such as dinosaurs or railroads but are unable to engage in an interactive conversation on those topics. Most autistic individuals do not make eye contact and have poor attention duration. They are often unable to use gestures either as a primary means of communication, as in sign language, or to assist verbal communication, such as pointing to an object they want. Some autistic individuals speak in a high-pitched voice or use robot-like speech. They are often unresponsive to the speech of others and may not respond to their own names. As a result, some are mistakenly thought to have a hearing problem. The correct use of pronouns is also a problem for autistic individuals. For example, if asked, "Are you wearing a red shirt today?" the individual may respond with, "You are wearing a red shirt today," instead of "Yes, I am wearing a red shirt today." For many, speech and language develop, to some degree, but not to a normal ability level. This development is usually uneven. For example, vocabulary development in areas of interest may be accelerated. Many have good memories for information just heard or seen. Some may be able to read words well before the age of five but may not be able to demonstrate understanding of what is read. Others have musical talents or advanced ability to count and perform mathematical calculations. Approximately 10 percent show "savant" skills or detailed abilities in specific areas such as calendar calculation, musical ability, or math.
Autistic people use less expressive gestures than non-autistic people. They might use a lot of instrumental gestures, which can regulate or modify others’ behaviours. They may use pointing gestures but usually to designate a wanted object. Unlike ordinary children, children with autism rarely use pointing gestures to direct someone’s attention towards an object for the purpose of sharing experience. Instead they tend to grab someone’s hand and use it as a tool to fetch what they need (Frith, 1993). Nevertheless, behaviour varies a lot from one person with autism to another.
Syntax can be defined as the way in which linguistic elements (as words) are put together to form constituents (as phrases or clauses). In autism it has been argued that this central processing function is critically dependent on the hippocampus. Thus autism is postulated to be the developmental syndrome of hippocampal dysfunction. The hippocampus is postulated to be necessary for normal development in the child of language syntax. PMID: 1553107 It is now possible to produce improvements in the verbal behavior of language-delayed and developmentally disabled children that previously would have been considered impossible. Not only is it possible to teach language-delayed children a wide variety of individual elements and forms of speech, such as plurals, adjectives, syntax, and grammar, but it is also possible to achieve functional language in nonverbal children and produce total recovery in some autistic and functionally mentally retarded preschool children. PMID: 2274466
Sentence is a word, clause, or phrase or a group of clauses or phrases forming a syntactic unit which expresses an assertion, a question, a command, a wish, an exclamation, or the performance of an action, that in writing usually begins with a capital letter and concludes with appropriate end punctuation, and that in speaking is distinguished by characteristic patterns of stress, pitch, and pauses http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sentence For individuals with autism,the nature of difficulties in using syntactic cues in acquiring new verbs is not clear, for individuals with autism are also impaired in their ability to determine the speaker's intention without explicit cues, over and above any specific impairment in the comprehension of syntactic cues.The tendency to learn language in chunks and to assign idiosyncratic meanings to the learned chunks has been described as a prominent characteristic of autism.
Joint attention refers to the propensity of a child to engage another's attention to share enjoyment of objects or events. Children display joint attention skills by initiating bids to others to pay attention to what they are attending to and by following the line of visual regard and point gestures of a social partner (Mundy & Thorp, in press. Thus, children both initiate and respond to joint attention bids. Joint attention behaviors represent a critical area in typical development, emerging between the ages of 9 and 15 months. Joint attention skills have been found to be concurrently related to receptive and expressive language skills among typically-developing children. In addition, research indicates that joint attention is important for the development of a host of other, later-emerging, skills, such as more complex expressive language, symbolic play, and theory of mind. Impairments in the development of joint attention skills are a hallmark of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD's). While children with ASD's do not differ from typically-developing children or children with global developmental delays (but not autism) in the amount of requesting behaviors, they exhibit far fewer joint attention behaviors (Mundy et al. 1994; Mundy et al. 1996). Other studies have also found that while children with autism consistently used gestural communication to request objects or actions, they rarely attempted to direct adults' attention through the use of gestures (Wetherby & Prizant, 1984). Kasari, Sigman, Mundy, and Yirmiya (1990) have further noted that, even when joint attention is shown, children with autism are much less likely than either typically developing or other developmentally delayed children to display positive affect along with joint attention behaviors. Finally, joint attention deficits have been observed for responding (RJA), as well as initiating (IJA) and skills (e.g., Mundy et al. 1994). Despite the salience of joint attention deficits in autism, research also suggests that there are individual differences among children with autism in their joint attention development. In other words, some children with ASD's tend to display better developed joint attention abilities than others. Research suggests that children with autism who display more intact joint attention skills exhibit better outcomes with respect to the development of cognitive, language, and symbolic play skills (Sigman & Ruskin, 1999). This body of research implies that joint attention skills may play a pivotal role in the early development of young children with autism. ABA research literature defines pivotal skills as those which, “once strengthened, result in positive changes in other areas of functioning and improvements in subsequent learning” (Jones & Carr, 2004). Evidence for joint attention's role as a pivotal skill is provided by research indicating that there may be a significant interaction between individual differences in joint attention development and later outcome (Charman, 2003; Sigman & Ruskin, 1999). Therefore, it appears especially important to develop interventions to improve joint attention skills in children with ASD's.
Pronoun reversal is a language disability observed in the speech of children affected with autism. According to a description, pronoun reversal is when the person with autism confuses first and second person pronouns in speech.Autistic subjects are significantly less likely to employ the pronoun "me" in a visual perspective-taking task (when instead they tended to say: 'I can see the . . .'), and lower ability subjects are more likely to use their own proper names rather than personal pronouns in certain photograph-naming tasks. Autistic subjects are less likely to employ the pronoun "you". A high proportion of autistic subjects are reported to have current difficulties with personal pronouns in their everyday life.
The concept of cohesion refers to relations of meaning that exist within the text, and that defines it as a text. Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some element in the discourse dependent on that of another. Odd speech, as manifested by at least two of the following six is one of DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA FOR ASPERGER'S DISORDER (SZATMARI, ET AL. 1989) 1. abnormalities in inflection. 2. talks too much. 3. talks too little. 4. lack of cohesion to conversation. 5. idiosyncratic use of words. 6. repetitive patterns of speech.
Past research has shown a superiority of participants with high-functioning autism over comparison groups in memorizing picture-pitch associations and in detecting pitch changes in melodies. A subset of individuals with autism, known as "musical savants," is also known to possess absolute pitch. This superiority might be due to an abnormally high sensitivity to fine-grained pitch differences in sounds. To test this hypothesis, psychoacoustic tasks were devised so as to use a signal detection methodology. Participants were all musically untrained and were divided into a group of 12 high-functioning individuals with autism and a group of 12 normally developing individuals. Their task was to judge the pitch of pure tones in a "same-different" discrimination task and in a "high-low" categorization task. In both tasks, the obtained psychometric functions revealed higher pitch sensitivity for subjects with autism, with a more pronounced advantage over control participants in the categorization task. These findings confirm that pitch processing is enhanced in "high-functioning" autism. Superior performance in pitch discrimination and categorization extends previous findings of enhanced visual performance to the auditory domain. DOI : 10.1162/089892903321208169
Syllable is a unit of spoken language that is next bigger than a speech sound and consists of one or more vowel sounds alone or of a syllabic consonant alone or of either with one or more consonant sounds preceding or following .
Behaviour is the response of an individual, group, or species to its environment. There are various stereotypical behaviors which are commonly seen among people with autism. Some of the most common are ‘body-rocking’, hand and limb ‘flapping’ and ‘head-banging’ and ‘spinning’. These might be engaged in at various times: when agitated, when aroused or active, when happy, when excited, when angry and even when simply comfortable and relaxed. Where these behaviors are a problem (for example see ‘self-injurious behavior’) the reason for their presence must be carefully considered. These behaviors can be simply automatic, they can be learned and copied, they can be exaggerations of rhythmical habits which nearly everyone has (foot-tapping for example), mostly they express arousal of some kind or elicit an interesting feeling or sensation. Rhythmical motions are good ways of imposing order and control on one’s self and the environment and this order is something most people with autism seem to both desire and need. There is a common incidence of interest in spinning around and in watching spinning objects, the dizziness spinning evoke may be enjoyable, as may be the elimination of other information. The physical sensation of some stereotypes may also be pleasurable or interesting. The figure-of-eight motion, which some people with autism display (with hands, arms, heads etc.), may represent an unconscious effort to integrate the activity of the brain’s hemispheres. It is an exercise prescribed for people who have had the corpus collosum damaged or have experienced a stroke. Some repetitive stereotyped behaviors can be explained in terms of an executive function deficit: the ability to over-ride or inhibit the natural basic responses might not function adequately and such behaviors become self-fulfilling. Stereotyped behaviors do not cause any harm in and of themselves, unless they cause damage to self or other people, or they inhibit the ability to learn or take part in activities. In this case certain interventions can be tried, the most effective being those that involve the learning of new skills or abilities.