Introduction
Objective : In this presentation, I will examine four autism spectrum disorders, current research into the biology behind the disorder, and how autism spectrum disorders affect language and language acquisition.
Autism comes in many forms; it has been difficult for doctors and researchers to brand autistic children with certain types of the disorder because each case is often individualized. Despite the difficulty in categorizing individual cases, researchers group the disorder into four categories.
Autism, or autistic disorder, is the most basic. Children with autism will struggle to communicate and interact socially. They often do not acquire language, and if they do their language is idiosyncratic. They do not maintain eye-contact, and do not understand and respond to non-verbal cues. There is often a lack of empathy in autistic children. They withdraw into their own world, performing the same actions incessantly and maintaining the same interests. They cannot distinguish between literal and figurative language. When a researcher told an autistic child to “get a grip on yourself,” he started to grab his own body.
The second autistic spectrum disorder is Asperger's syndrome. A generic way to describe Asperger's is “autism with the ability to speak.” A child with Asperger's has awkward social behaviors, limited interests, and a tone of voice that is a drone and didactic not appropriate for a normal conversation. One researcher claimed that the child with Asperger's syndrome speaks at you and not with you.
The third autistic spectrum disorder is Rett's syndrome. This rare disorder only occurs in girls and is genetic. The infant appears to develop normally until she reaches between five months and two years, when a severe retardation of language acquisition, social, and motor skills develops.
The fourth autistic spectrum disorder is childhood disintegrative disorder (CDD). Children with CDD often develop normal social and language skills during their early years. It often occurs after age three, when children suddenly lose all social and language ability, and will begin to display other autistic behaviors.
There is no cure for autism; nevertheless, new research into motor neurons has led researchers to hypothesize that a deficiency in motor neurons often correlates with autism. Within the human brain, there are mirror neurons. These neurons fire when one performs an action, like ripping a sheet of paper. These neurons also fire when one sees someone else rip a sheet of paper. They also fire when one hears someone rip a sheet of paper. Just after birth, a mother can stick her tongue out at her infant, who will mirror her mother's actions. Researchers posit that it is through mirror neurons that infants and growing children begin to make sense of their environments. On tests performed on autistic children, researchers observed the motor neurons fired when the autistic children performed the actions themselves, but they did not fire when others performed the same actions.
Transcription
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Asperger's Speech Researcher : Tell about your life 8-year-old : My life is boring all the time. The thing is I don't know about life all the time. I always have to do boring stuff all the time that I have to do for- by her. And I can't take that. I'm real bored and I never get to do anything fun sometimes in the day. Researcher : What kinds of fun things do you want to do? 8-year-old : Well there's a ton of things I wanted to do in my life that I never got to do during the day. Researcher : Like what? 8-year-old : Like get some presents for my family although it's not their birthday or Christmas or something like that. And there's another things that I like to do stuff that's important to me… Researcher : Can you tell me about your house? 13-year-old : Yeah, um, I love it, I have my own a-bedroom downstairs. Researcher : Uh-huh 13-year-old : Yeah, the wall is the Mickey Mouse n stars, um um baseball, basketball, football, and hockey Researcher : Do you like sports? 13-year-old : Yeah, I like playing baseball Researcher : How do you play baseball? 13-year-old : You are on home base you hit the ball and somebody catches it with a glove you try to go on the base you are supposed to be before they tag you… |
Analysis
When researchers describe what the autistic experience is like for the autistic child, they often claim that the child is overwhelmed with all of the sensory input he faces. This is called sensory overload. Indeed, one researcher claimed that when an autistic child hears speech, it hears what is comparable to the speech that the Peanuts gang heard adults speak. It is much easier an autistic child to instead focus on the constant clicking of the fan, or the ticks on a clock, instead of listening to the actual speech. The same can be said for eye-contact. It is often too much for a child to look at someone directly in the face because there is so much movement, making it too difficult for the child to process it all. The child instead focuses on a pattern on the wall, because it is much easier to do.
It is this inability to process normal amounts of sensory input that causes the child to struggle with orality and literacy. When the researcher told the autistic child to “get a grip on yourself” the child took the command literary and grabbed himself. This action reveals that the child could process the sensory input to the extent that he understood the literal meaning, but he could not process the illocutionary force, or the implication of the speaker. It is this inability to process language and other sensory input that dominates autistic children. The processing difficulties are mirrored in those who suffer from damage to their Broca's area, who struggle with language processing and speech comprehension. All suffer from processing language.
Autistic children often do not speak. Again, speaking requires responding to sensory input from their environment, which many autistic children simply cannot handle. For autistic children, it is too much to make sense of a question and respond. Some children with autism, those with Asperger's in particular, make gradual improvements and in time can speak. Their speech, however, often lacks rhythm and regular syntax, much like those who suffer damage to their Wernicke's area.
Determining where an individual child's case lies on the autistic spectrum takes an understanding of how that child can process sensory input. Indeed, it is easier for children who suffer from Asperger's to process many inputs at once, even if they face difficulty. On the other hand, if the child rarely responds to any external stimuli because it is too much to process, then the child has very severe autism.
Steven Pinker claims that normal humans are all geniuses at language. Language is infinitely complex, and it takes processing on many levels to comprehend language, but normal humans do it with ease. It is this inability to effortlessly process and comprehend language as well as speak that sets autistic children apart. To a large extent, the child's ability to process language determines the severity of the autism he suffers.
Sources:
Dobbs, David. “A Revealing Reflection.” Scientific American . May 2006.
Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct . New York : Perennial, 1994.
Rizzolati, Giacomo, Leonardo Fogassi, and Vittorio Gallese. “Mirrors in the Mind.” Scientific American . Nov. 2006.
http://pediatricneurology.com/autism.htm
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/autism.cfm
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/autism/AN01087
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3164386222378450506&q=Autism&hl=en
About the Author
My name is Alexander William Merritt, and I am called Alex. I was born and raised in Charlotte , N.C. I did not have the opportunity of growing up in a biligual household; thus, English is my primary language, especially the somewhat southern accent spoken around Charlotte . I cannot understand the English spoken in Britain . I have to turn on the subtitles when I watch the British version of The Office. Although English is my primary language, I hope to earn a degree in Spanish. I began my study of Spanish in elementary school. We only learned the greetings, the numbers, the alphabet, the rooms in the house, food, animals, and other generic vocabulary, but it gave me the the ability to listen, to speak, and to write in Spanish later in life with greater ease than those who began to study it formally for the first time in high school. Ross would argue that it has been my "effortful study" of Spanish for an extended period that has made me proficient. I was fortunate to travel for a week to Costa Rica for spring break and later to El Salvador on a mission trip, where I was able to use Spanish. I am not fluent. I have not had the opportunity to live in a Spanish-speaking country for an extended period of time, but I hope to do so while at UNC. My main passion outside of school is music. I was in the marching band as well as orchestra for all four years of high school, and have continued that commitment at UNC through my participation in the Marching Tar Heels. I agree with Professor Noblitt that the trombone is not an instrument one plays around the campfire; nevertheless, that has never stopped me from finding the music beautiful. I am not an "expert" by any means at trombone, even if I have played it for eight years. I rarely practice and am often forced to guess at difficult rythms. I took this class because I love languages. My three favorite movies are City of God (in Brazilian Portuguese), The Motorcycle Diaries (in Spanish), and Amelie (in French). Not only are the plots and cinematography incredible in all three movies, I enjoy just listening to the different languages, even if I have to read the subtitles. Language is something that most people take for granted: it is what it is. We rarely question why we speak, why we say what we do, or why we speak the language we do. From this class I expect to get a better understanding of these questions, which will help me not only in my continuing study of Spanish but in any discipline I may choose.