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Alvarez, Dr. Manny. “Autistic Boy Playing with Blocks.” Foxnews.com, FOX News Network, 12 Apr. 2017, www.foxnews.com/health/2017/04/12/is-your-child-showing-signs-autism.html.
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Language acquisition in autistic children is observed with curiosity. Their ability to comprehend and exercise language continues to be a mystery undergoing investigation. There was an article published by the University of Texas that explains how autistic children are unable to use pronouns. This deficit is due to the child’s “language confusion or echolalia, automatic repetition of noises or phrases” (“A New Look”). The child either has difficulty processing how to use pronouns or compensates with words or sounds in place of the pronoun. The issue with pronouns comes from the child’s sense of self (Shields, qtd. in “A New Look”), where they refer to themselves in the third person because it is easier to make the association when shown their name and a picture of themselves. The language delay in using pronouns has moved researchers and linguists to look into how the autistic brain expresses its first words.
Speech-language pathologist Marge Blanc examines how autistic children are able to speak for the first time. In her article, she explains that one way autistic children develop language is by “rewarding the caregiver” (Blanc). The child attempts to follow along with the parent who was signaling which word to say, referred to as an analytic processor. The girls were successful, but the boys took longer to perform. There are also babies, classified as Gestalt processors, who just naturally make sounds as though they are saying words in regular conversation. It’s much better than struggling or being mute altogether. Blanc describes an experiment by a Dr. Deb Roy where caregivers isolated the same single word in spoken sentences in hopes that the child picks up on that word to use in sentences they make on their own. It took a long time to for the child to learn what that word was and how to use it because the area of the brain that is responsible for language is so large that it is more difficult to parse words, delaying the child’s ability to speak their first words (Blanc).
The brain activity in autistic children also tells us how language is distorted. Nicholette Zeliadt writes that brain scans have become so accurate that they could determine the risks for language disorders early on. Children as young as the age of 1, based on these scans, will struggle with language later in life. To further confirm if brain scans work as well as they are believed to, researcher Eric Courchesne evaluated 60 children with autism. He found that through their MRI scans, there was dampening in the area of the brain responsible for sound and language processing, conveying that “impaired activation of the region may be involved in the later emergence of language deficits.” (Zeliadt). As more work is done with brain imaging technology, recognizing language disorders in autism is more precise.
