Topics in ASD: Language & Communication Flashcards
What three elements is communication defined through?
- Sender
- Receiver
- Medium/Message
What is language?
- it is rule governed
- it is symbolic and arbitrary
- it is cultural
What is speech?
speech is the vocal production of language
What is output?
other forms of language production (ie: ASL, Written language, etc..)
True or False: Altman said “Language, quite simply is a window through which we reach out and touch each other’s minds”
True
What are the levels of symbolic communication?
- Awareness
- Pre-symbolic
- Early Symbolic (concrete)
- Symbolic (abstract)
What is the “awareness” level of symbolic communication?
-no clear response and no objective in communication
What is the “Pre-Symbolic” level of symbolic communication?
communicates with eye gaze, gestures, purposeful, moving towards object/sounds
What is the “early symbolic” level of symbolic communication?
- it is concrete
- use of pictures or other symbols (sign language) to communicate, limited vocabulary
What is the “symbolic” level of symbolic communication?
- it is abstract
- uses a significant amount of vocabulary (speaking, signs, pictures) to communicate
What is the purpose of social communication?
- exchange and express intentions
- indirectly control the environment (obtain/reject something)
- regulate social interaction
- express an emotion or interact with someone
- receive and convey information and ideas
True or false: social communication is more than just talking or speaking?
TRUE
How is social communication more than just talking or speaking?
- attend, recognize, and interpret the thoughts/ideas of others based on the context, gestures, or words they use
- use language and thinking skills to engage in a mutual exchange of attentional and mental states with others so they can act upon the perceived message
What is pivotal to language learning?
joint attention and social referencing
When does joint attention emerge, when is it well-established, and what is the child doing?
- emerges @ 9months and well-established by 18 months
- child responding to other’s bid for joint attention
- child initiating joint attention
What is social referencing?
child looks at the adult to make sure they are watching
what is social pragmatic theory?
children need to understand the communicative intent of others
What are the preverbal and early language stages, and what are their coinciding months?
- perlocutionary stage (0-8 months)
- illocutionary stage (8-12 months)
- locutionary stage (12-18 months)
During the Perlocutionary stage what social behaviors does the child have?
- cooing
- crying
- fussing
- smiling
- laughing
- looking
- smiling
During the illocutionary stage what kind of intentional communication skills do babies have?
- gestures
- pointing
- gaze
- vocalization
During the illocutionary stage, what does Bates say are the functions of communication for babies?
- proto-imperatives: lay the basis for commands or requests
- proto-declaratives: allow a child not to ask, but to share things, so they call the adults attention to show them something (lays the basis for conversation skills later on)
How many communicative acts per minute does a child have during the illocutionary stage?
-2.5 acts/minute
During the illocutionary stage, what do children with ASD look like?
- they do not develop the full range of communicative intents
- they do a lot more of the proto imperatives
What are the child’s communicative abilities during the locutionary stage?
- 12-18 months
- able to name where things are, what things are, and how they’re feeling
- comprehension outside of routines (ie: able to understand “balance”)
- first words spoken
- rapid increase in spoken vocabulary
What does the rapid increase in spoken vocabulary look like for a child in the locutionary stage? (12-18 months)
- 15 months: 3 words
- 18 months: 50-100 words (+/- 100)
- 3-5 Communicative acts per minute
What does the child’s communicative development look like from 18-24 months?
- 300 words (+/- 150)
- telegraphic speech (ie: sit big boy chair” vs. “sit in the big boy chair”)
- pragmatic developments: answer and ask questions, take 1-2 turns per topic
What are some early communication deficits (i think she’s still talking about 18-24 months) for children with ASD?
- delayed onset of speech
- atypical preverbal vocalizations
- decreased rate of preverbal communication
- low responsiveness to speech
What does early communication look like for a child with ASD?
- delayed and deviant use of gesture
- less pretend and symbolic play
- limited imitation skills (orally, vocally, behaviors, sounds, etc)
True or false: the prevalence of nonverbal children is increasing
False, it is decreasing.
-it used to be about 40% of children w/ ASD were nonverbal now it’s 20-30%
For nonverbal children with ASD what does their communication look like?
- less use of gestures
- echolalia
- maladaptive behaviors
- It may be good to use AAC devices
What does Pre-K communication development look like at 24 months?
- 300 words
- uses grammatical morphemes
- sentences
- 50-70% intelligible
By age 5, what does Pre-K communication development look like?
- 6,000 words
- mastered of grammatical forms
- 4-6 word sentences
- 100% intelligible
- speech errors may persist (ie: /r, l, s/)
What do Pre-K pragmatics look like?
- use language to accomplish social goals
- range of functions increases (pretending, telling stories, talking about the future, hypothesizing)
- oral narratives emerge
- take longer turns and maintain topics for longer
- use polite forms
What do verbal difficulties with ASD look like for Pre-K communication development?
- pronoun reversals
- idiosyncratic word use (ie: happy birthday song=on the verge of breakdown)
- immediate and delayed echolalia
- atypical language learning
- perseverate
- voice and prosody
What do adolescent communication skills generally look like?
- complex syntax
- advanced semantics
What do pragmatics for adolescents generally look like?
- narration
- persuade/negotiate
- sarcasm
- slang
- figurative language
What do adolescents with ASD look like?
- topic management/termination (may use overly complex sentences, speak too formally, don’t adjust style depending on who they’re talking to)
- problems with changing and sharing of topics
- theory of mind deficits
- sparse conversation
- problems with eye-contact & prosody
In terms of ASD and social communication behaviors, what do they have issues with?
interpersonal relatedness
How do people with ASD have difficulty with interpersonal relatedness?
- not always able to interpret the intentions of others
- not always able to initiate/maintain shared focus with others
- restricted language development and use
- inadequate use of nonverbal skills
- narrow interests and exceptional abilities limits their conversational turn taking
In summary, what does communication with ASD children look like?
- there are central deficits
- pragmatic problems are core
- must address language and communication deficits!
