Learning the word access on autistic children speech production

Language disorder is an impairment in the ability to understand and/or use words in context. Some characteristics of language disorder include improper use of words and their meanings, inability to express ideas, inappropriate grammatical patterns, reduced vocabulary and inability to follow directions (Bernthal, 1993). One or a combination of these characteristics may occur in children who are affected by language impairment or developmental language delay. Children may hear or see a word but not be able to understand its meaning. They may have some problems getting people to understand what they are trying to communicate. Language disorders are related to other disabilities such as mental retardation, autism, or cerebral palsy. It is estimated that communication disorders (including speech, language, and hearing disorders) affect one of every ten children in the world (www.kidsource.com)
Furthermore, autism is one of the language disorders which affects more than 400.000 children in the world (www.AutismResearchInstitute.Org). Historically, Autism was derived from the Latin word ‘autos’ means ‘self’ to describe the fact that the autistic child seemed to have lack of interest with other people (Handoyo, 2004). Frizh (1991:93) defines autism as a pervasive developmental disorder that was firstly termed ‘infantile autism” by an American physician, Leo Kanner in 1943. He described 11 children who shared the following symptomatology: extreme autistic aloness, anxiously obsessive desire for the preservation of sameness, excellent rote memory, oversensitivity to stimuli, limitation in the variety of spontaneous activity, repetitive behaviour and good cognitive potentialities. Hoeksema (2004) defines Autism as a complex developmental disability that typically appears during the first three years of life and it is the result of a neurological disorder that affects the normal functioning of the brain, impacts the development of social interaction areas and communication skills. However, one should keep in mind that autism is a spectrum disorder, which affects each individual differently and at varying degrees.
Moreover, there is an unknown single cause for autism but it is generally accepted by several causes such as abnormalities in brain function which affected on parietal lobe, cerebellum and limbic system that makes them difficult to process and respond to the world. Nowadays, many researchers are also investigating the possibility causes for autism in genetic code, possibility under certain condition (a cluster of unstable genes may interfere brain development) or problems during pregnancy or environmental factors such as viral infection, metabolic imbalances, and exposure to environment. Whatever the causes, children who have been diagnosed with autism seldom engage in effective communication, speech and language.
In addition, the process of acquiring the language through the children’s life is considered a unique process. Children with autism also acquire the language normally in the first until third years of life, just like normal children. In the first three years, children master few simple words because at that time the brain is developing and maturing. By 18-24 months they rapidly learn words represent objects, actions and thoughts. At age three to five, children vocabulary rapidly increases; they begin to master the rules of language such as phonology, morphology and semantics. In semantics development according to association theory, the process of associating the names of the object can be learned by them (Gleason, 1993). On the contrary, the autistic children have disability in those aspects of language, as a result diminishes may occur. In semantic fields, for example, autistic children demonstrate a broad range of semantic difficulties including word finding problems (storage and organization of known words) and lexical access (Cohen, 2001). As a matter of fact, words are stored in the lexical storage associated with other words. The process of lexical access involves comparing the letter pattern as the stimulus with the orthographic specification of each lexical entry until an exact word is found. For example, when the autistic children hear the word walk, it would trigger automatic with the word foot instead of food and fool. However, the process of retrieving words from the lexical storage does not always run smoothly. If such difficulty occurs during the process of lexical access, then word retrieval problem may occur in it.
Word retrieval problem implies that children and adults know and understand the word and have used it correctly before. They have difficulty in retrieving such known words at times. Children with autism frequently have word retrieval difficulties. It usually occurs when they are at the age of three to five and have already recognized the concepts of objects. When autistic children have difficulty in retrieving a word they will produce error of actual word as the result of ‘slips of the tongue’ or ‘tip of the tongue’ in their actual utterances; or they seem simply to ‘go blank’ (www.language-therapy.org). Word retrieval errors sometimes cannot be fully assessed in isolation because it has to be seen in the context of each autistic’s cognitive social and linguistic skills.
One of the participants diagnosed as an autistic since she was three years old. The participant sometimes uses improper word or misselected word in the conversation as illustrated below:

Participant B : “Bu, tempat isi jepitnya dimana? Itu lo.. tempatnya habis.”
Mother : “Apa, nda? Jepitan atau jepretan?
Participant B : “Oh, ya, maksudku jepretan bu.”

Within the framework of an interaction with the adult, the participant was able to transfer what she wanted to say even though with misselected word (the actual word is jepitan but the target word is jepretan). According to Adi, et. al (1995) jepitan means any various plastic or metal devices used for holding things together; while jepretan means a small instrument used for forcing staples into paper. Beside that, jepitan and jepretan belong to the same semantic field that is stationery equipment. As a matter of fact, tip of the tongue occurred when the participant produced the word jepitan instead of the word jepretan. When the mother asked her what she wanted, she revised her utterance jepitan to jepretan. It proves that the participant seems difficult to retrieve the word jepretan even though she knows the meaning of those words and those00 are two different things.
However, this type of error is not systematic; it does not result from consistencies in the child’s misperception of speech or an inability to articulate certain sound.

Add a comment Mei 29, 2009
Tag: autissm, speech production, word retrieval on autism