Language development in children with Autism

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Language development in children with Autism

Jose Ybarra
University of Arizona
SERP 434
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Abstract

This paper will display the information gained from 5 different articles/websites that

report on the language development for children with autism. These articles range from different

autistic articles that discuss language development, communication, and communication skills.

The aspects that are explored are the language development delay, the language characteristics of

autism and the different ways to support autistic children with autism.
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In life there are many unique people with many unique traits and abilities, in this paper I

will discuss one of those unique cases and that deals with the world of autism or more

specifically children with autism. For me I see none of these, what I see is a child who can

progress further than many believe he can and all he needs is the support to overcome this

academic boarder. Im not saying this will cure them but it can help them be successful in life

and one of the first steps to help them achieve understanding on language development. The

reason why language development is the first step they need to take is because without some

form of communication they cant express their feelings, wants, desires, dislikes and much more

to show who they are as an individual. In this paper it will show how children with autism are

stricken with language development, the different ways to support children with autism and the

language characteristics. Since language delays occur in many children with autism it helps

them gain an understanding of communication in different ways, although different methods

from different forms of support and language characteristics to help language development.

Language development for children with autism will be the first subject to be looked at in

this paper, which will show the ways to support them and language interventions that can do well

with helping children with autism. I have separated this into three parts, the first is Language

development delay in children with Autism. In this section I will look into two main topics:

Producing and expressing language as well as the stages of communication. The first of these

will be Producing and expressing language this can be seen as the most recorded and seen

form in delay of language development for autistic children. Many studies have been done to

show this and in the article Language development: children with ASD it states, Expressing

relations such as big and little, correctly producing grammatical morphemes for plurals and verb

tenses, and using rising intonation when asking questions, have also reported that autistic
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children are less skilled than typically developing children. (grensbarcherlab.org) The next topic

that will demonstrate other language development issues is the stages of communication.

The second topic of Language development delay in children with Autism will be stages

of communication. In this topic Communication needs to build on, what is pre-intentional and

intentional, and finally the stages of communication. First when it comes to the stages of

communication, the stage that a person can depend on three determining factors which are the

person's ability to interact with another person, how and why they communicate, and their

understanding (autism.org). Before I go into the stages I will go about talking about pre-

intentional and intentional which display the way communication might be. First pre-intentional

is a form of communication to relax themselves or how they display their emotions during

particular events whether good or bad. While intentional can be done to ask someone a question

or speak up about something they disapprove/approve of. Make sure you are clear about who you

are talking about.

The first stage of communication is The Own Agenda Stage. In this stage children with

autism appear detached from other people and seem to be alone regardless of their current

situation, children with autism may also appear to be uninterested in others and tends to play or

do activities alone and they are seen with having their commutative abilities in the pre-

intentional stage. It states that The majority of children are at this stage when first diagnosed as

autistic. (autism.org). The second stage is The Requester Stage. During this stage they see

their own words and personal process can affect those around them more than they previously

knew about. Also they will try to communicate what they desire to do by introducing someone to

something they enjoy to do such as a favorite food or other enjoyments. The next stage is The
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Early Communicator Stage during this stage they begin to interact so much to the point the

conversations and interactions become second nature to them. It also states that they will begin

to point to things that they want to show you and begin to shift their gaze, beginning to engage in

a two-way interaction. The final stage is The Partner Stage and it is seen as the greatest form

of communication of the four because they can talk with others so simply to the starting a

conversation no matter the subject can be done. Though they can have some complications in an

unknown area for them to the point they may not follow their simple lessons to speak to others.

Overall these forms show the levels of communication for someone with Autism and the

struggles that carries with it, now I will discuss the next part of language development which

involves language characteristics. Look over my edits in this paragraph and edit the other

sentences accordingly.

Language characteristics in Autism in this topic this will demonstrate the different

ways . The definition of what language characteristics or language skills states Language skills

range from autism and little functional communication to relatively well-developed syntactic

capabilities and functional speech. (infant.fiu.edu) . four topics which help dive into the

understanding of what language characteristic is and these topics are pragmatics, semantics,

phonological skills, and systaltic skills. Each of these form an understanding of what can helps

language development through these language characteristics in their own unique ways. Ill

discuss what each of the following characteristics are, their definitions in the article and how

they affect children with autism.

Pragmatics will be the start of these four topics. The definition of pragmatics states that

Pragmatics reects social aspects of language use (infantlab.fiu.edu). this definition from the
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article it shows that social standing help alter language use for children with autism. Something

that is engaging with pragmatics is that The impairment does not affect all language functions

globally, but instead is selective to certain circumstances (infantlab.fiu.edu). Semantics is next

"Using lexical patterns have ben reported once word learning in initiated, including made-up

words, neologisms and echolalia (infantlab.fiu.edu) Phonological skills is the Prosody is of

interest because it carries social nuances above and beyond the formal articulation, and thus

might be considered part of the functional applications of phonology. (infantlab.fiu.edu) The

final of these characteristics is syntactic skills Comprehension of personal pronouns seem to be

intact in individuals with autism, even though personal pronouns are frequently reversed during

actual speech. (infantlab.fiu.edu) Now that the characteristics have been established we can dive

into the final main topic of this paper which is Different ways in order to support autistic

children with language development.

After demonstrating the first two main topics in my paper I want to show the final main

topic on language development in children with autism which is the Different ways in order to

support autistic children with language development. The final main topic will be separated into

three topics which are using assistive technology, giving reason to communicate and modeling

Language. The first of the topics to be discussed is using assistive technology now instead of

discussing about the different technologies in a list I will talk about the two purposes for using

assistive technology. Before diving into this parents should know that "introducing any type of

AAC support will only enhance and increase verbal output (autismconsortium.org) This means

it wont cure or fix autism but it can help their child communicate with others. These two

purposes for using assistive technology are Alternative and Augmentative Communication

(AAC) and as a motivating teaching tool or strategy for increased independence.

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(autismconsortium.org) AAC can be classified under three different categories the first include

low-tech which is defined as Any communication system that does not require a power source

(autismconsortium.org). The second is mid-tech which states that Any communication system

that does not require a power source (autismconsortium.org). The third and final category is

high-tech that says it is Any communication system that does not require a power source.

(autismconsortium.org). Each of the levels of tech use a different type of communication system

that helps support many children in different ways. Examples of low-tech are communication

books and other types of non-electronic forms of communication, while mid-tech has different

higher levels of communication such as techtalk and StepsbySteps, while high-tech fall under

ipads and other technology such as dragon software. Under the second purpose for assistive

technologies is the support that they help children with. To be honest the forms of teaching tools

and supporting technology is pretty limitless in this day and age. They range from scheduling,

health assistive tools, social media communication, video makers and more. These different

types of assistive technology can help bring these children further into this technology savvy

generation and to better their communication skills.

Another way to help support autistic children with language development is creating

reasons to want to use language, this can occur in many different scenarios and with many

different people. This is a great method to support autistic children with language development

but it can also be tricky due to the fact of finding the reason to help them feel the want to use

language. At the same time though it can be easy to put them into the situation to want to use

language if its for something they want. A good example is placing their favorite blanket to the

side away from them to make them use their form of communication in order to garner attention

and need to use their language. After they gain some experience with this method then we can
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make it a little more difficult for them by using other words again with the blanket example we

can start with saying blanket and then go to use a phrase like blanket please. This may not

seem like a lot of work or very special but for these children it can be a great assist for them in

the future, now well progress to the final support which is modeling language.

The final way I had found to help support autistic children with language is modeling

language. A good definition for modeling language is Modeling involves speaking and using

facial expression and gestures in front of your child. It also means giving your child examples of

what you want him to learn, at a level thats right for him. (raisingchildren.net). This mean that

we need to truly show the children how to speak such as when a parent is teaching a toddler to

speak, it may seem odd but this method can help these children more than expected. A good

example of this is when discussing what the child is doing for example when eating his food with

his hands and you say fork to try and get them to eat with a fork. In the article it states that Its

best to use phrases that contain 1-2 more words than your child is currently using in their won

speech (raisingchildren.net) In other words when commenting, talking with them or discussing

with them add words to expand on their vocabulary but also help them understand how these

new additional words can be used to talk about similar things. For example I can tell the child to

use your fork when eating, this will help him understand slowly that your talks about their

passion since saying just fork could have them use someone elses fork and with use it tell

them what to do with the fork. These different supports are not the only ways to help autistic

children with language development but they are some I feel can benefit these children the most

especially during their early developmental stages.

how language development can affect many Autistic children as well as see how assisting

through different forms of support and language characteristics to help language development
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can be help to gain a better understanding of communication. In the first main topic Ive

discussed producing and expressing language and the stages of communication. The second

dived into the language characteristics of pragmatic, semantics, phonological skills and syntactic

skills as well as show how these characteristics affect autistic children. The final main topic

showed the different forms of support to help autistic children which were assistive technology

such as speakeasy and iPads, to creating reason to help children want to use language and finally

modeling language to get them used to how the words are presented. I do believe along with the

three main topics Ive talked about there is some ways to further help the special education

services for autistic students. One good way especially for those affected in language

development is find non-verbal ways to help communicate with these students. As stated many

children with Autism have a language development situation and thus we not only need to help

them learn language but we as teachers need to learn how to understand their non-verbal cues

because this is their starting ground and the foundation we can use to build upon their language

development. Along with that we also need to understand and pay attention to the childs sensory

sensitivities whether it be light, sound, smell, touch or something else entirely. This paper has

allowed me to gain a new view on how people with Autism such as my cousin have struggled

with language development and also allowed me to gain new strategies for my future as a

teacher. Overall Im not only glad I worked on this paper but Im proud that I got to grow more

for my future role as an educator.

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Work cited

1. Communicating and interacting - NAS. (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.autism.org.uk/about/communication/communicating.aspx
2. Gernsbacher, M. A., Morson, E. M., & Grace, E. J. (2015). Language
Development In Autism. 879-886. Retrieved from
http://www.gernsbacherlab.org/wp-
content/uploads/2012/06/Gernsbacher_HickokChapter_2015_AuthorCopy.pdf
3. Language development: children with ASD. (2015, December 15). Retrieved
from
http://raisingchildren.net.au/articles/autism_and_language_development.html
4. Schoenstadt, M. A. (n.d.). Language Development in Autistic Children.
Retrieved from http://autism.emedtv.com/autism/language-development-in-
autistic-children.html
5. Wilkinson, K. M. (1998). Profiles of Language and Communication Skills In
Autism. Retrieved from http://infantlab.fiu.edu/Courses/Fall 2009 DEP
5118/Wilkinson_1998_MRDDRR_language_in_autism.pdf