Communication Issues in Autism and Asperger Syndrome

Do we speak the same language?

Olga Bogdashina

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9781843102670
• eBook ISBN: 9781846420023
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Autism Spectrum Disorders
• Index: Psychology

Providing a theoretical foundation for understanding communication and language impairments specific to autism, Olga Bogdashina explores the effects of different perceptual and cognitive styles on the communication and language development of autistic children. She stresses the importance of identifying each autistic individual's nonverbal language - which can be visual, tactile, kinaesthetic, auditory, olfactory or gustatory - with a view to establish a shared means of verbal communication. She offers an explanation of why certain approaches, for example PECS, might work with some autistic children but not others. Offering real insights, the `What They Say' sections enable the reader to see through the eyes of autistic individuals and to understand their language differences first hand.

`What We Can Do to Help' sections throughout the book give practical recommendations on what to do in order to help autistic individuals use their natural mechanisms to learn and develop social and communicative skills. The final chapters are devoted to assessment and intervention issues with practical recommendations for selecting appropriate methods and techniques to enhance communication, based on the specific mode of communication a person uses.

Part 1

Definitions, Theories
and Hypotheses

Chapter 1

Communication – Language – Speech

– Que?

– What?

– Si.

– Si? Que-si. What are you trying to say?

– Non, non, non. ‘Que’ – ‘what’.

– Que what?

– Si.

– Si que what? Who is Si-Que-What? What are you talking about, you, silly little man? (Fawlty Towers: Communication Problems)

Before we start to discuss our subject matter, we must clearly define and distinguish among the terms we are going to use: communication, language and speech.

Communication

Communication is the transmission and reception of information. According to this definition we may identify the elements necessary for communication to take place as being:

•a sender, i.e. someone who transmits information

•a receiver, i.e. someone who receives information

•something to transmit/communicate about, i.e. an awareness of one’s needs, ideas, etc.

•communicative intent, i.e. desire/necessity to affect the receiver’s behaviour, emotions, ideas, etc.

•a medium of transmission, i.e. a means of communication shared by both participants.

Many individuals with autism will lack one or more of these pre-requisites to communication. (The possible causes and consequences will be discussed further in Chapters 3 and 4.)

There can be different means of communication (media for transmitting information) – linguistic and non-linguistic ones.

Non-linguistic means of communication include:

•body language

•facial expressions

•gestures

•pictures/symbols (photographs, drawings, cartoons, Makaton system, etc.).

Linguistic means of communication are:

•sign language

•spoken/written language.

A range of communicative functions can be distinguished and grouped into three major categories:

•instrumental (‘non-social’ – Wetherby 1986), in other words they affect the behaviours of others in order to achieve desirable ends; for example, request for object or action, rejection

•social, in other words they affect mental states; for example, attracting or directing attention to self, object or action

•expressive, in other words they express one’s own mental states, emotions; for example, to comment.

Let us investigate how successfully we are able to communicate different messages (instrumental, social, expressive) using only non-linguistic means of communication. Try to communicate the following three messages using either body language or facial expressions, or gestures or pictures/symbols (choose the means of communication you think is most appropriate for the task or use several of them):

1.Will you give me your pen, please? (instrumental)

Box 1.1 Components of the structure of language

Bloom and Lahey (1978) distinguish three major components of the structure of language: content, form and use. The relationship among content or meaning, form or coding, and use or purpose provides a rationale for describing language development and understanding language disorders.

The content of language is the topics represented in a message and the relationships among these topics. Bloom and Lahey single out three main categories of language content: object knowledge, relations between objects and relations between events. Semantics, the content of language, is the linguistic representation of what persons know about the world of objects, events and relations (Bloom and Lahey 1978).

The form of language is represented by the units of sound (phonology), the units of meaning (morphology), and the rules of combination of these meaningful units (syntax).

The use of language has two components: purpose (the reason people speak) and context (the conditions of communication). Both purpose and context influence the form and content of the message.

The integration of content, form and use represents the speaker’s language competence.

2.The weather forecast for tomorrow is not very good, I am afraid. (social)

3.‘I wandered lonely as a cloud/ That floats on high o’er vales and hills.’ (expressive)

What difficulties did you experience in transmitting information by nonverbal means? What did this experience tell you about the use of language in communication?

Language is the best of all other means of communication because of its flexibility, expressiveness and efficiency. Unlike other forms of communication, language permits us to transmit an infinite number of messages (Moulton 1970). Only language can be used for all the messages that we want to transmit. But what is language?

Box 1.2 The brain: language areas

In approximately 95 per cent of people, the language areas are situated in the left hemisphere of the brain, in the temporal and frontal lobes. The two main areas associated with language have been known as Wernicke’s and Broca’s. Wernicke’s area is believed to be responsible for speech comprehension, and Broca’s area for speech production. The same brain activity was shown in deaf individuals ‘speaking’ sign language. This supports the idea of specific areas of the brain devoted to language. Brain-imaging studies, however, have revealed that other areas are also involved, and each main language area is probably split into many different sub-areas each of which is responsible for its own type of processing and production of speech. For instance, there are regions where only consonants are processed. Damage to different regions of the brain can result in a wide range of very specific language problems.

The specific functions of these sub-areas are identified by studying people with different language disorders caused by brain injuries. For example, damage to the connections between the auditory cortex and Wernicke’s area results in a specific language disorder, called word deafness. People with word deafness cannot understand spoken language, though they are able to speak, read and write normally.

People with damage to Broca’s area, on the contrary, can understand spoken speech but are unable to produce meaningful sentences. Although they know what they want to say, they are unable to produce any intelligible verbal speech.

In addition to Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, other regions of the brain are involved in language function; for instance, motor control areas. Furthermore, the language areas of the brain differ slightly from one person to the next, and even from one language to another in people who are multilingual (Ojemann 1991). (See an extensive review of the brain basis of language and speech in Damasio and Damasio 1992.)

Language

Language is typically defined as a structured symbolic form of communication, consisting of the use of words in agreed way. Another definition of ‘language’ is a system of symbols (words) and methods (rules) of combination of these symbols (words) used by a section or group of people (as a nation, community, etc.).

Box 1.3 Language and intelligence

‘Are you brainless? You almost got us killed!’ The creature looked offended:

‘Brainless? I can speak!’

‘The ability to speak does not make you intelligent!’

Qui-Gon was having none of it. (Star Wars. Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, Brooks 1999, p.43)

In the case of autism, level of language competence is often considered to be a precursor of positive outcome. But is it always the case? And what is the connection between language and intelligence?

There are some conditions that bring doubts as to whether there is any direct link between the level of communicative/language development and the person’s IQ, and whether language can be an indicator of a good prognosis. For instance, Williams syndrome is a syndrome of infantile hyper-calcaemia, heart abnormalities and a characteristic facial appearance. It is believed to be caused by a genetic mutation that produces considerable mental retardation (the average IQ of people with Williams syndrome is between 50 and 70) and yet very remarkable linguistic skills, empathy and intuition. People with this condition seem very articulate and can talk fluently and very expressively; however, they use language not for conveying information but for its own sake – they enjoy talking without saying anything.

On the other hand, sometimes patients have lost their speech, both internal and external, as a result of a specific brain injury; however, there is no evidence that the loss of speech has brought cognitive deficits. In his book The Origins of the Modern Mind (1991), Merlin Donald compares the loss of language in these patients to the loss of a sensory system: they have lost a tool that simplifies their functioning but, as in the case of a blind or deaf person, this loss is not accompanied by diminished intellect or consciousness.

Thus, the main characteristics of language are as follows:

1.Language is a system of signs, or a code, whereby ideas about the world are represented through a conventional system of arbitrary signals for communication (Bloom and Lahey 1978). Sounds form words and words form sentences according to a system of rules. These rules determine which sounds can be combined. For instance, in English it is atypical to find the words with more than two consonant sounds combined together, whereas in the Polish language four or five consonant sound combinations are very common. As a code, language is a way to represent one thing with another without reproducing the original stimuli. In order to represent information in a message we have to encode this information, i.e. combine the code’s elements using the rules and methods used by the people speaking this language. In order to extract the information from a message, the receiver has to decode it, i.e. recognize the code’s elements.

2.Language is a convention. The members of a particular community have agreed on the usage of words. Language represents shared knowledge (Bloom and Lahey 1978). This conventional characteristic means that each language contains distinctive elements of the culture of people who speak it.

Language can be receptive (the language we understand) and expressive (the language we use).

Moulton (1970) defines language as an abstract structure connected at two ends with concrete reality: at one end there is a sound/letter, at the other end are the receiver’s experiences. Outside language (i.e. at either end, sound or experience) there is no linguistic structure. Inside language, however, there is a structure.

The smallest units of language structure are phonemes. Standing alone, phonemes usually have no meaning. We get meaning out of a sequence of phonemes arranged in a particular order. We can understand the meaning of these sequences of phonemes only if we know the language of the speaker, as different languages structure sound in different ways. The smallest unit of language to have meaning is the morpheme. Morphemes consist of phonemes.

Syntax or grammar represents the combination of morphemes into meaningful sentences.

At the other end, language connects with the cognitive reconstruction of the reality based on the experiences of the receiver. Moulton (1970) states that there are major differences between the concrete realities at either end of language. The number of meaningful units at the experience end is much larger than the number of phonemes.

We can only speculate how structured sound is translated into meaningful units. Given the diversity of experiential background of, for example, a child and an adult, and the diversity of cognitive processes of, for instance, autistic and non-autistic people, the exact meaning of the language units will be different.

Speech

Language (an abstract structure) finds its reflection in speech. Speech is defined as the faculty or art of speaking. As speech is the form of language existence (realization) it can be external (to perform a communicative function of language) and internal (to reflect a cognitive function). External speech is subdivided into spoken and written. Different types of speech reflect different ways or mechanisms of expressing or formulating the thought. Thus, thinking is reflected in the formulation of the thought in the form of internal speech. Speaking is the expression of the thought in the form of external speech.

Thus, language is an abstract structure that can be filled in with symbols (representing particular language) in accordance with the rules of this language. So, given this defin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Of Related Interest
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Introduction
• Part 1: Definitions, Theories and Hypotheses
• Part 2: Language Characteristics, Learning Styles and Development in Autism
• Part 3: Key Strategies to Enhance Communication in Autism
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• References
• Subject Index
• Author Index