Autism: Communication & Occupation

Motor Skills Effecting Verbal Language

Children with ASD struggle from many communication deficits, including language and motor impairments identified through difficulty with interpreting facial expressions and even more so with voice processing abilities. Couple this with the known fact that ASD children also struggle with imitation skills and the ability to reproduce facial expressions and sounds from early infancy which are necessary for later development of speech (Boucher et al. 2000). Speech production is more than a motor deficit and it has been suggested that “language impairments and behavioral/psychiatric problems may arise from, neurological immaturity or limited processing capability” (p. 854). Individuals struggle with auditory processing from comprehension and retaining information to actual retrieval of words (autismsociety .org).

Phonation is identified as vocal quality, and many ASD children produce syllables with atypical phonation (Volkman et al. 2005). A study by Sheinkopf et al (2000) also identified that ASD children did not have “difficulty with expression of well-formed syllables (canonical babbling) but did demonstrate atypical phonations. These same individuals also exhibit poor joint attention behaviors (p. 345). These behaviors include lack of eye contact, lack of eye gaze, more hand over hand direction. ASD individuals struggle with initiation tasks, imitation ability, hand-finger tasks, diadochokinesis and gross motor movements secondary to required increased processing time and decreased reaction time (Frietag et al. 2008). Respiration rates can be altered as ASD individuals experience greater anxiety in social-communication activities. The rise and fall of pitch can also be affected. Articulation is somewhat slower in ASD children, and commonly struggle with /r/, /l/ pronunciations (Volkman et al. 2005).

Collectively these behaviors effect speech prosody and can alter the meaning of conversation in an ASD individual. Pragmatics has been identified earlier in thsi blog and is also essential for communication styles. The tone or pitch may not be what was intended and can offer a command, when the intent was a question. The impaired gesture comprehension can inhibit the social reading of verbal exchange in conversations. Lack of intonation can yield a robot-like voice. Failure to maintain eye gaze and comprehend facial expressions can also alter verbal productions.

References

Frietag, C., Konrad, C., Haberlen, M., Kleser, C., von Gontard, A., Reith, W., Troje, N., & Krick, C. Perception of Biological Motion in Autism Spectrum Disorders. (2008). Article in press. neuropsychologia