Autism and Language Disorders
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This paper will discuss the topic of autism and language disorders. Autism is a condition in which the subject shows little or no inclination for social interactions with family, peers or caregivers (McCormick & Schiefelbusch, 1984, p. 99). In addition to social unresponsiveness, autistic persons tend to show an obsessive interest for sameness in their environment and ". . . often exhibit inappropriate repetitive actions such as hand flapping, rocking, or head banging" (Hecht, 1986, p. 111). The majority of children with autism show low intellectual ability as well as signs of mental retardation (MacCormick & Schiefelbusch, 1984, p. 99). Because of this factor, autistic children tend to exhibit a variety of learning disabilities. Among the most devastating of these to the social integration of autistic children are disabilities that relate to the development of language disorders. The level of language difficulty in autistic children varies widely from one child to the next. Some children may be altogether mute; others may appear to comprehend at certain times but not at others; still others may utilize odd or unusual words and phrases (Hubbell, 1981, pp. 123-124). All autistic children show signs of delayed language development. However, more essentially, researchers have found that autism is a "cognitive disorder which involves impaired coding, sequencing, conceptualization and abstraction" (Rutter, 1980, p. 148). Thus, it is important for educators and therapists
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In recent years, there have been many developments in the concepts for treatment of language disorders in autistic children. It has been traditionally understood that intervention in this area poses a number of unique difficulties for the educator or therapist. For example, autistic children possess a serious problem with attention, in which they "tend to focus on one stimulus to exclusion of others" (McCormick & Schiefelbusch, 1984, p. 184). Since the external stimulus so chosen is often meaningless to the context of what is being taught, autistic children tend to show little if any progress in learning in a classroom setting.
Attempts have been made in recent years to develop comprehensive methods for the treatment of autistic language disorders. Because of the difficulties with attention abilities exhibited by autistic children, some researchers have recommended an operant approach based on the reinforcement of positive behaviors. Such an approach, as described by Howlin (1980), utilizes a combination of prompting, modelling, and reinforcement techniques for the development of language and communication skills (p. 116). This treatment technique is based on the concept of fading, which involves ". . . the gradual re
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Approximate Word count = 1647
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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