Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.
Today's article is right in line with last week's article, showcasing another neurological autistic oddity. This time, rather than social behavior patterns, it's a reactive behavior, which is even more curious to me. Essentially, this study tested whether (probably) autistic babies would turn their heads to pay attention to new and interesting speech sounds. They didn't do so as much as their neurotypical counterparts.
In normally-developing children, this speech-focused selective attention helps teach the baby the correct syllables and sounds to communicate with their family and the people in their area. This reactive learning is what psychology calls "receptive language." But it seems the (probably) autistic babies weren't as good at recognizing relevant speech to learn from.
The differing attention patterns of the autistic versus neurotypical babies strikes me as a good reason that some of us develop speech later, or even never. I'd always assumed it was more of a "slower brain development" thing, or a "sensory sensitivities interfering with learning" thing and I suppose those might also factor in. Usually the story of autistic lives is "here's my laundry list of diagnoses and complicating factors, it's as long as your arm." With so many extra drains on the child's mental resources, it would be hard to learn at the same rate an unhindered child would.
This is honestly fascinating, but I really wonder if it applies to me. As of a few years ago, minimum, my brain has had the uncontrolled tendency to drop whatever it's doing and listen to speech over anything else. This was great for conversations with friends while I was wearing headphones, but very bad for ignoring a TV in a waiting room or conversations I'm not a part of. Or, really, ignoring one conversation in a public space to listen to another. So it's kind of like my brain went for the polar opposite, I guess?
I couldn't tell you what I was like as a baby, though. I don't recall having any specifically focused attention as an elementary school child, but there's a good chance I simply wasn't self-aware enough to know if I did or not. At the time, I had very different priorities, like not getting bullied, passing my classes, and surviving each day.
If pressed, I suppose it might've been possible I developed this way? The thing is, pretty much as soon as I could read, I dove into books. I had a knack for reading, and generally had a book with me wherever I went. Over the years, I osmosised a good sense for grammar, as well as gained enough exposure to how US English spelling works that I didn't have to try that hard at it, either.
I do recall various incidents with people correcting my pronunciation of various $1 and $5 words I learned from books, because English is a flighty language that steals words from everywhere, and pronunciation rules that work in English don't work in French or Spanish or even Latin. I recall pressing my mother on this unpredictability a few times after being corrected on a word's pronunciation, and she essentially shrugged and said that English didn't really like to follow rules, and that I shouldn't be bothered by it.
(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)
Today's article is right in line with last week's article, showcasing another neurological autistic oddity. This time, rather than social behavior patterns, it's a reactive behavior, which is even more curious to me. Essentially, this study tested whether (probably) autistic babies would turn their heads to pay attention to new and interesting speech sounds. They didn't do so as much as their neurotypical counterparts.
In normally-developing children, this speech-focused selective attention helps teach the baby the correct syllables and sounds to communicate with their family and the people in their area. This reactive learning is what psychology calls "receptive language." But it seems the (probably) autistic babies weren't as good at recognizing relevant speech to learn from.
The differing attention patterns of the autistic versus neurotypical babies strikes me as a good reason that some of us develop speech later, or even never. I'd always assumed it was more of a "slower brain development" thing, or a "sensory sensitivities interfering with learning" thing and I suppose those might also factor in. Usually the story of autistic lives is "here's my laundry list of diagnoses and complicating factors, it's as long as your arm." With so many extra drains on the child's mental resources, it would be hard to learn at the same rate an unhindered child would.
This is honestly fascinating, but I really wonder if it applies to me. As of a few years ago, minimum, my brain has had the uncontrolled tendency to drop whatever it's doing and listen to speech over anything else. This was great for conversations with friends while I was wearing headphones, but very bad for ignoring a TV in a waiting room or conversations I'm not a part of. Or, really, ignoring one conversation in a public space to listen to another. So it's kind of like my brain went for the polar opposite, I guess?
I couldn't tell you what I was like as a baby, though. I don't recall having any specifically focused attention as an elementary school child, but there's a good chance I simply wasn't self-aware enough to know if I did or not. At the time, I had very different priorities, like not getting bullied, passing my classes, and surviving each day.
If pressed, I suppose it might've been possible I developed this way? The thing is, pretty much as soon as I could read, I dove into books. I had a knack for reading, and generally had a book with me wherever I went. Over the years, I osmosised a good sense for grammar, as well as gained enough exposure to how US English spelling works that I didn't have to try that hard at it, either.
I do recall various incidents with people correcting my pronunciation of various $1 and $5 words I learned from books, because English is a flighty language that steals words from everywhere, and pronunciation rules that work in English don't work in French or Spanish or even Latin. I recall pressing my mother on this unpredictability a few times after being corrected on a word's pronunciation, and she essentially shrugged and said that English didn't really like to follow rules, and that I shouldn't be bothered by it.
(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)
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