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This article focused primarily on the acquisition of language by autistic children and the influence of social interactions. The article states that "autism is a pervasive developmental disorder that is characterized by delays and deficits in language acquisition, the absence of imaginative behaviors such as pretence play, repetitive or stereotyped activities, and profound impairments in social functioning."
Many people believe that language is basically determined by social interactions. This article reports that there are other factors involved in acquiring language. By studying the language development in autistic and Down syndrome children, researchers have found that one's social impairments are an important factor.
Autistic children tend to have difficulties with personal pronouns. They often reverse the 'you' and 'I' in conversations. In a study of pronoun usage amongst children with Down syndrome and children with autism, research revealed that autistic children had more problems with pronoun reversal while Down syndrome kids had issues with 'me' and 'my.' The study also revealed that the children only misused one or the other. They did not incorrectly use 'me'/'my' and 'you'/'I' at the same time. This study leads researchers to believe that autistic children are confused about speaker/listener roles.
Forming questions is also an important part of language. Studies show that Down syndrome kids ask more information seeking questions compared to autistic kids. As the children advanced, the autistic kids asked more complex questions but the DS kids still asked mostly information seeking questions.
The research leads people to believe that there is a disassociation of form and function for autistic children learning language(more specifically, grammar).
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17 comments:
I feel that this article made a mistake in comparing autistic children and children with down's syndrome. The two are completely different and therefore should not be studied side by side. However, I do not find it surprising that autistic children ask more complex questions as they grow older. Some autistic children have outrageous intelligence or show signs of it. They simply cannot communicate well because of the speaker/listener problems. Confusion of simple pronouns only shows their disability when it comes to language, not to intelligence.
This was a bit like comparing apples to oranges. The two studied groups are vastly different and it might have made more sense to study autistic and aspergers syndrome. I have had some experience with autistic children and find them lacking socially but generally very intelligent. While I do not have much to go on personally with DS children I am suprised they show similar findings in that they confuse the me/my in the same way autistic children do the I/you. But this tends also to show me that this is just a matter of linguistics and not intelligence.
I am confused as to why there was a study done between the two TOTALLY different issues. Autistic children and children with downs syndrome are different in many ways. In the classroom that I am in now, I work with a child who is autistic and I think he is super intelligent. He has problems talking especially the use of pronouns but he is great in mathematics. I would not compare the two in saying that they are similar just because they both have one similar problem with language.
I agree with the other comments. These comparisons were totally different from one another. I have not had any personal experience with autistic children but my God son has down syndrome. Down Syndrome is a birthing defect that has a lot more too it then just a learning disability
Personally, I dont know too much about children with autism.I have never had any affiliation with anyone with autism or down syndrome.Therefore,my response to this article will be very brief. Although I dont know very much about autism and down syndrome, I believe that this article did not make a good choice of comparing autistic children with children with down syndrome. I believe that children with down syndrome would require more attention than autistic children. From the article,it looks like autistic children just suffer from a little dyslexia. It seems to me that autistic children needs help, but not as much as children with down syndrome. So this article was not very good at explaining the difference between the two.
How can researchers even begin to compare Down Syndrome to Autism? They are two completely different disorders. I understand, though, that social interaction plays a large role in the lives of everyone. Social interaction is how we first learn to speak, and is how we continue to express ourselves. I see how it could hinder someone that can't always interact socially.
I'm not quite sure why the writers and researches of this article compared children with autism to children with down's syndrome. How do these two disorders compare? They are completely different. I have seen some autistic children who are extremely intelligent. It makes sense they they show less speech problems than those children who have down's syndrome. This article makes a huge mistake by comparing children with these two disorders just because they have one similar problem with pronouns.
I worked with a person who had autism, he was a very smart kid, but he had a lot of speech problems. He was only 2 years younger then I, but was at a level of speech really low. So I believe that autism does slow a child's language development. He seemed to stutter quite a bit and also had a problem pronouncing words. It seems as if when a child with autism develops they cannot control the way they say thing not like a normal speech impediment. He could speak, but his ability was much more broken then someone who grew up without autism.
My only experience with an autistic person was with a child who didn't speak at all. This child had tons of social interaction, even from a very young age. I find it sad that we still don't know a definite cause of autism. While I don't personally see the relevance in comparing children with autism to children with downs syndrome, I did find it interesting that both groups of children had problems with pronoun usage. Since the autistic children had a bigger problem determining who was the speaker and who was the listener, I think it might be difficult to try to work on this concept with these students.
I couldn't agree more with the others who have already posted comments in relation to this article. Comparing autistic children to down syndrome children is ccompletly flawed. They are two very different diseases which absolutley SHOULD NOT be compared side by side. Personally I know very little about either disease but do know enough to say they are completely different. However, I do know that some autistic children are very very intelligent. I forget the name of the Bruce Willis movie that centered around autism, but it proved that children with the disease are quite intelligent. For me, if you are going to make assumptions like this, there needs to be seperate studies done.
I used to have a friend whose mom worked at the school for the impaired (Jefferson Elementary in Marion). She dealt with a lot of autistic children and did mention a few of these students who had trouble with all kinds of speech. There is no doubt that this article's statements are factual, but I still have to wonder why on earth autistic kids were compared with those having down's syndrome.
I agree with everyone that it is impossible to compare two diseases like this in any kind of study. The symptoms/effects are very different and I think any kind of comparison between them would skew information. Each issue has its own problems, and it seems like a mistake to lump them in together like this. Autistic children are generally very intelligent, and if they show some of the same language development problems as Down's Syndrome children it is probably not for the same reason.
I think that the interesting part of this post is the idea that language is not completely social. The problems that autistic children and children with down syndrom seem to have a problem with certain language development seems to say that language and the use of it is born with us.
I volunteered at Camp Little Giant in Touch of Nature as part of the MAT. I met several kids with autism who were high-functioning. Because of the expectations created by media representation of autism, I didn’t even recognize the children as autistic until someone told me. They were very interactive and inquisitive. I don’t have experience with more severe cases of autism or with cases of down-syndrome. I have seen in comments above that many of you who have this experience don’t agree with the comparison. I think the major problem is that we are left asking these questions of ourselves. The introduction doesn’t convince us very effectively of the need for a comparison, but we also don’t have access to the entire introduction.
I agree with everyone on the whole that autistic children cannot be compared with children who have down syndrome. I also think that we cannot group these children alone within their syndromes because no two children can be exactly the same. You can take two autistic children, but you cannot label them as exactly the same and say they have the same problems because there are tons of different levels and stages of autism. The thing that we can all agree on is that these children need extra help. This doesn't mean we should group them all together and teach them the same way. We need to look at every child as a individual student and teach them in the way that is best for them.
I have to agree with the lack of logic in this study. Autism and Down's Syndrome are massively different, and a difference in language acquisition is just the tip of the iceberg in the difference of these disorders. I'm surprised that the differences found during the research were limited to these examples, as opposed to speech patterns in their entirety.
I was surprised in the way the article compared down syndrome and autism. The two diseases are completely different and should not of been paired together. I would not of guessed that as autistic children become older they generally tend to ask more complex questions. Language is their big hurdle, not a question of intelligence.
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