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Autism &
Autism-Like Disorders
Where to Start: Understanding
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How We Communicate
Successful interpersonal communication is a complex and
at times rapid dance of information between people
dependent on efficient functioning of the senses
(especially sight, hearing, and touch), verbal and
nonverbal language, emotional awareness, empathy, and
social reasoning.
This means challenges in any one of these areas can put
social communication out-of-sync. Even adults with a lot
of social experience behind them can miss the timing of
a joke, someone's sly or skeptical look, or the nuances
of how a statement was made.
Children may struggle with social interactions from a
wide variety of reasons, including other reasons like
sensory overload, introversion, or anxiety, but
identifying specific issues that have problems with can
help with even more than their social communication.
Visual Processing - or How
the Brain Sees
Visual processing problems are commonly missed in
children, because children don't know how their vision
is different from others, and few professionals test for
visual perceptual problems. Problems of eye contact and
visual overload definitely affect social communication -
and they usually indicate CNS visual processing
problems.
Auditory Processing - or
How the Brain Hears
Auditory
Processing problems contribute to mishearings (mistaken
for attention deficit disorder), misunderstandings, and
omissions. Children with auditory processing problems
may have an easier time learning from texts (books,
closed captioning), but then sound overly formal because
of their "bookish" pronunciation or sentence
construction.
Body Sense / Proprioception
We also communicate a great deal by touch.
Children with abnormal sensory regulation may shy away
from new sensations (or be distracted by others) and
have problems adjusting how they touch others. Instead
of reassuring pat on the shoulder, they may slap someone
roughly, or without thinking, they may upset other
children by leaning on them at school.
Verbal Language
Words are a very
important source of communication of closeness, so that
awkward word choice may not only prevent a child from
getting his ideas across, it may be distancing. "He
talks that way to everyone," is what one child said,
meaning that he didn't feel a language of closeness or
social difference (best friends, classmates, strangers)
in the words that came across.
Non-Verbal Language
Our non-verbal language includes our facial
expressions, our gestures, our tone of voice, and our
touch. It's said that more communication between people
is made through non-verbal communication than words, but
children (and adults) with visual, auditory, or sensory
/ motor issues will find aspects of non-verbal
communication tricky. Adults with challenges in
non-verbal communication find it easier than children to
devise go-arounds...like "Why don't you just shoot me an
email..." Children are more frequently put in situations
where they don't have that type of flexibility.
Emotional Awareness
Emotional
awareness develops over time, and girls in general seem
to better and emotional recognition and memory than
boys. Emotional awareness may relate to oneself (am I
feeling anxious? am I feeling angry or frustrated?) as
well as others (she said she's OK, but by the way she
looks, she must be sad), and it also can be affected by
visual or auditory problems.
Empathy and
Social Reasoning
Empathy can be emotional or cognitive, and it also
develops over time. Some young children can be very
emotionally empathetic - but others gain in this only
over time. Sometimes cognitive empathy is much stronger
than emotional empathy - but as life experiences grow
and feelings and thoughts are brought together, the
lines begin to blur.
Social reasoning is also a skill, and one that is picked
up more easily by some children than others. Social
reasoning involves perspective-taking, empathy, and
understanding of situation context. For some children -
contextual reasoning is the hardest part of social
relationships. What words should I use, what things
should I talk about, and how do I know if someone's
kidding me? It's harder to learn a pattern for social
extent if sensory cues (visual, auditory, etc.) are
being missed on a daily basis.
Contextual learning improves quite a bit with role play
and practice scenarios, but in order to become more
automatic - a great deal of practice might be needed.
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