Sometimes I feel like jumping up and screaming “FINALLY!” at the research end of things.\u00a0\u00a0 This summer there have been several really good research reports, some mentioned in national media as well, on autism-spectrum issues.\u00a0 But what I want to highlight tonight is the one that sparked the “FINALLY!” reaction.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The July 17th Science has two review articles on education that finally bring together the disciplines I’m convinced are crucial to the understanding of autism, its early detection in infants and young children, and the development of more effective therapies.\u00a0 These are cognitive science, brain imaging, artificial intelligence, and psychology.\u00a0 “Dyslexia: A New Synergy Between Education and Cognitive Neuroscience” focuses on dyslexia but has useful concepts for autism and other developmental problems.\u00a0 “Foundation for a New Science of Learning” discusses what is now known about the genetic and neurological components of learning–and also has gems that apply to spectrum conditions.<\/p>\n
At this point, the only actual mention of autism in these articles is minimal and tangential, but here’s why I think the articles are so important and may lead to good things.\u00a0 Finally the neurological and social basis of learning is being investigated in sufficiently fine grain–the relationship between brain structure, brain maturation, sensory input and brain plasticity, the understanding of neural networks, and so on.\u00a0\u00a0 You still find terms like “effortlessly” (for the way “normal” children learn language before age seven) which gloss over the complexity of the problem, but there’s also increased recognitiont that there is complexity, that every part of the body and brain that cooperate to create language learning are necessary for it to appear “effortless.”<\/p>\n
For instance:\u00a0 neurotypical babies have not only the hearing acuity, but the auditory processing, to notice the very brief consonant sounds.\u00a0 Thus, during the first year of life, they are easily able to start building their “phonological library” of the sounds in their native language.\u00a0\u00a0 They can tell that human speech is human speech and not ambient noise.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s now possible to test infants for this ability,\u00a0 and sure enough, the earlier the sound patterns are mastered, the faster language itself advances in the next stage.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Any child who has a problem hearing or processing language sounds as an infant will have a slower acquisition of verbal language later.<\/p>\n
I’ve been hammering on this for years:\u00a0 if the child cannot distinguish speech from noise–for any reason, but for autistic children usually an auditory processing problem related to speed of capture–then a delay in speech and difficulty in speech is both inevitable and may cause (but does not result from) “emotional” or “psychological” problems.<\/p>\n
Similarly with difficulties in imitative learning and gaze following, where a visual processing can prevent someone from following the rapid movements another person follows with ease.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The typical adult does not hold an averted gaze at a target as long as some children need–we look at the target and then quickly look back to see if the child is looking where we looked.\u00a0\u00a0 (Our adult autistic son still has trouble looking where he is directed to look: he moves his head to face that direction but his eyes continue to look where they were looking, or he will sometimes turn his eyes, but not his head.\u00a0 It’s as if he needs the referent of his existing position.\u00a0\u00a0 If, however, I move very slowly and hold the target gaze position long enough,\u00a0 he will match gaze the usual way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sometimes I feel like jumping up and screaming “FINALLY!” at the research end of things.\u00a0\u00a0 This summer there have been several really good research reports, some mentioned in national media as well, on autism-spectrum issues.\u00a0 But what I want to highlight tonight is the one that sparked the “FINALLY!” reaction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,35,17,46],"tags":[13,33,14,21,7],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-disability-issues","category-interventions","category-sensory-processing","tag-communication","tag-language","tag-news","tag-research","tag-sensory-processing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions\/85"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}