In the article "Infantile autism" by W.H. Fay focuses on many studies that have tested to gain a better understanding of autism. The article is broken down into three sections: The Syndrome, Characteristics of autistic communications, and Linguistic analysis of autistic language. To being autism is development disorder that causes problems with social interaction, communication, and behavior, which occurs during the first three years of life. Leo Kanner, a child psychiatrist defines the term infantile autism as “the earliest manifestation of childhood schizophrenia with extreme autistic aloneness from the start.” (pg 191)
The characteristics of autistic communication are mutism, echolalia, pronominal reversals and avoidance, and yes/no answer. Mutism is associated with deafness and a study says that eighty percent of autistic children were said to be deaf at one time. Echolalia is the meaningless repetition of a word or word groups just spoken by another person. Seventy-five percent of all autistic children go through and echolalia stage. Research has shown that after 29 months, this stage usually vanishes in the child. Pronominal reversal is considered to be a result of echolalia and it is when pronouns are avoided. Yes and no answers are referred to as when children are absence of the words “yes” and “no.” However, they use head gestures instead.
Next the article discusses linguistic analysis of autistic language, which includes phonology, grammar, semantics, and pragmatics. When it comes to grammar, there has not been a lot of research. Compared to normal children and mentally retarded children, some researchers have found differences in past tense words used by autistic children. Also, they were compared again, but this time with morpheme rules. The autistic children showed similarities of the rules, but they left out morphemes more than the normal group. Semantics is a fairly new development. A study was done and the results were that the overall comprehension was lower than normal children. Pragmatics deals with the social side and has started to be a major focus. Autistic children have problems with being social to others as well as other autistic children. .
The many factors that deal with autistic children like speech, language, and communication have a negative affect on these children. However, by observing and trying new strategies on these children help us gain a better understanding of the syndrome as well as provide a better life for autistic children.
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I did have some information about infantile autism prior to reading this article. However, I was surprised to hear that so many children had suffered hearing loss. This must be very confusing for a parent and/or doctor. A parent and the doctor may perhaps diagnose the child as deaf..and stop there. They may not have any idea that the child has problems that go deeper than hearing loss. The lack of social interaction may be confused with the deafness...not with any other problem. This is scary to me because I would not want my child misdiagnosed. I would just hope that my doctor would know to look further into my child's health if autism was involved.
I found the article to be very interesting. I did have some prior knowledge on the topic but learned a great deal from reading. The part that spoke about 80% of all children with Autism were deaf at one time or believed to be deaf at one time shocked me, as well. I had never heard that although it makes sense. I knew that they had trouble with pragmatics and speaking overall. I used to babysit a little boy with autism and I saw a lot of him in the article.
I find it very interesting that Autism has such a long history of being misdiagnosed. They were diagnosed as schizophrenics at first. This would be very difficult for the child. There is a certain stigma that goes with schizophrenia not to mention that they would be receiving the wrong medications. Autistic people are also often diagnosed as being deaf. This would be bad because what they really need is to be worked with. If someone takes the time to work with them they can learn well. But this cannot be done if they are misdiagnosed.
Bryan Norbut
I did not find the article interesting. It seemed to me that basically the author found a nice way of saying, "unfortunately we dont know anything about autism." Euphemistic statements don't help the problem. The author basically tells what studies have found which clealy seem inconclusive or meaningless, so the article should focus on what can be done to help infantile autism.
I didn't know a lot about infantile autism before reading this article. I was interested to learn that 80% of the children are deaf, and that 75% have echolalia the meaningless repetition of a word that is spoken by another person.
I really enjoyed this article and found it to be very interesting. I didn't know much about Autism before I read the article, so I definately learned a lot. It is interesting to learn there are different types of autistic communication. I have heard that autism is really hard to diagonse so it is no suprise that it is constatly being misdiagnosed. There are so many different signs of autisim and many children with autism show completely different signs of having autism so it is hard to tell if it is autism or something else. It is hard to believe that they thought some many of the children where deaf. 80% is a high percentage of children that were misdiagnosed. It is the same in the case of those who have Tourette's Syndrome. Many of those children were misdiagnosed as well. I can understand all the troubles that they have with learning language. It is different with every child. It is interesting to learn how they have trouble with pragmatics and the use of past tense words. I knew that they had some trouble speaking, but I never realized all that factors that contribute to their learning process and all the difficulties they had. The article was very imformative and I learned a lot about infantile autism.
It was kind of hard to read the article and the information was outdated. My cousin has autism and I have firsthand experience with dealing with children with autism. My cousin is not fully deaf, but does need a hearing aid. I learned that autism can be affected by what we eat. Many children who stop eating gluten often will do better than those who do not. My cousin went on a gluten-free diet and has now begun to talk and become more interactive with other people. Hid favorite saying right now is "Walt Disney Presents" he says it all the time and that was part of the article, where autistic children will repeat phrases. Overall this was a boring article for me, but if anyone wants to learn more I suggest reading Jenny McCarthy's book over how she dealt with learning that her child was autistic and what she learned about autism.
I have always been interested in autism because I believe it is just so difficult and frustrating when trying to understand it. The article points out how autism can easily be misdiagnosed. This adds to the confusion and aggravation on the condition. I think the article pointed to some great facts about autism, but after reading it I found that I had more questions than before. This points to the difficulty of autism comprehension.
I went to school with an autistic boy. He would always repeat things if he thought that they were funny, to make people laugh. He was super nice! I have heard that SIU also has a great autistic research/clinic and that if you work with a child while they are young it has a huge impact. I also think it is amazing how some autistic children have something they are esp. good at. There is a book out written by an autistic boy, called "Born on a Blue Day" by, Daniel Tammet, I haven't read it. (But, I want too!) The point being that he was capable of writing a book--- some people couldn't write a book that do not have autism! Anyway, the article was good.
I have a little cousin who was diagnosed with autism, but it took several different doctors before he was properly diagnosed. It was very frustrating for his parents when they were trying to find out what was wrong but doctors kept misdiagnosing their child. He had some hearing problems as well but I think after he had tubes put it in his ears that he has been able to hear fine. The problem is that while a child is being misdiagnosed he continues to fall behind other children as far as learning and social issues go. There are certain ways to deal with children with autism depending on the child. My cousin is very sensitive, so most the time raising your voice or talking to him sternly only upsets him. So you have to be aware of his sensitive nature.
I have a cousin who has autism and I have always been really interested in it because it has so many interesting characteristics. My cousin really did not have that much trouble communicating, so I am not sure whether or not he was deaf at any point throughout his life. However, that would explain why some children have a hard time communicating, even at an older age. I think that there should be a lot more research into autism because there is so much more that we do not know.
i found the article very interesting. One that I did not realize was that Autism, much like Tourettes before it, has a history of being misdiagnosed. I did not realize that there was such a lack of knowledge regarding Autism. Its sad hearing of someone being misdiagnosed, whenever they already have started life out behind, having a hard time as is aquiring language, even if they have the right medication.
I think that this article is interesting. I know little about infantile autism and how it affects speech and grammar. I did not know that most autistic childern experience a period of deafness in at least one ear. This seems odd to me that the hearing comes back later. Also interesting was that childern repeat things they hear and do this for several months. I was surprised to learn that autism was misdiagnosed so often when there seems to be such drastic symptoms.
I had very little knowledge on infantile autism prior to this article. It if definitely helpful to know what some of the characteristics are because it give me a better idea of how to interact with children who have this. Since I babysit for a local church, and have for the past six years, I can see this coming in handy if there is ever a child with autism there.
--bonnie bilyeu
I didn't realize so many infants with autism were deaf. I can't imagine being a parent and not knowing what was wrong with my child, thinking they were deaf and learning they were autistic.
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