Theories on how non-verbal dc think?

[MannyMoeAndJack]

I was pondering this today. My ds is 100% non-verbal and shows zero likelihood of ever developing speech. It doesn't seem to worry him! Instead, he communicates by taking people to where he wants to go, by using a few basic photo cards (when promted, rarely spontaneously) and via his body language (to include whingeing, stomping about, yelling, etc). He understands some language, for example, those words/sentences that he has heard countless times over the years and which apply directly to the situation at hand. I think he picks up on certain nouns to cue him in.

So...given a child such as my ds, just how does he think because I seem to think using words! Are my ds's thoughts likely to be a series of images, film-reel style?

My ds clearly calculates things 'on the hoof', for example, if he sees an opportunity (e.g. an exposed tap just begging to be turned on), then he will quickly check over his shoulder to see how likely it is that his fun will be interrupted or hindered in some way, then he will make a swift and determined dash towards the desired object.

He also thinks/plans mischief things in a more leisurely manner too. Then, when he thinks I'm napping, he will seize his moment.

Any theories about what is going through his head???

saintly, interesting that you use the word, 'feral' to describe your ds...we often say that our ds is like a wild, savage child

Oh Manny, I hope it's not your DS!

Children with SLD are truly amazing.

They may have no verbal language, limited ability to communicate, no sense of fear or danger but a sense of fun, a really good sense of humour and an incredible ability to think and to execute cunning plans (that they know they shouldn't be doing)

I am so lucky to have worked with such children.

do you work in a school sb? Give me its rough location...

Yes ds1 is incredibly cunning. I like it when he leads me out the kitchen, goes back in and shuts the door, - peeking in you can guarantee he will be stealing the sugar! He tests everyone new and if you are new and show that he his winding you up he will continue all the more.

He goes to great lengths to communicate with the resources he has.

Recently he found a particular YouTube video, watched it to a certain spot, paused it then went and fetched dh - pointed to the video (which was of a garage about 8 miles from here) then pointed out the door. DH took him and at the garage he hopped out and fetched some jelly babies

And his memory is just stupid genius levels.

Will pick up email later today and reply superbunny! Have to get ds1 to respite now- am wondering whether you work in ds1's school as well.

It's surprising really how little we know about the origins or development of human language at all, so that may be why we understand so little about non verbal children - as we don't know what the missing but is. I can understand that early humans may have developed basic language to share information about the location of mammoths or berries etc but why did we as a species go on to develop such a rich, complex, but in practical terms, redundant, verbal language?

Also about imitation. DS1 readily imitates speech now and can generate some spontaneous communicative speech. He appears to enjoy copying speech and has antenna like ears so even if I am in the next room I have to speak quietly to stop him coming in to pick up on what I am saying ( he does not understand that I am talking to DS2 not him). However he cannot or will not imitate anything else - at least not directly in the way he copies speech. Is it because speech gets him currant juice or trips to favourite places but co operating with 'Hands, Shoulders, Knees and Toes' generates little in the way of a treat or a necessity for him?

intresting as then if they don`t connect the sound with the word, wonder how that affects any potential for reading.

ds for example can sign s,t,r,and few others in his own fasion .

so i know he does know them but he cant say them as for blendin well lol thats not going to happen less anyone knows how to sign oo etc

Depends why they are non-verbal doesn't it riven? Of course some can. But in ds1's case he has so many language gaps (only really has a grasp on nouns) that he isn't; going to be able to do too much thinking using language.

there is a very interesting man called Ron Davis, who has a method for correcting dyslexia. He was autistic and was non-verbal until the age of 17 and couldn't read until his late 30s. I stumbled across him while debating reading techniques i.e. phonics vs whole word etc. What Davis says makes a lot of sense to me, because I tend to agree with him that a visual way of learning to read is more natural than a phonics based approach.

He says that he was a visual thinker (and that most dyslexics are) and that phonics was torture for him and didn't work. He has interesting thoughts about why there is delayed speech etc. based on the fact that there is a lack of motivation due to the fact that the other senses are so much more heightened that speech becomes less important in how the world is explored. He thinks that dyslexia is a gift, in that it endows people with a different type of thinking which often is attached to extremely high IQs. He believes that dyslexia is due to a disorientation that can be corrected, and that ADHD etc. is also similar.

He has some extremely strange views that I disagree with. But he also has some very interesting views that make sense and may throw some light on understanding the thinking of autistic and dyslexic people.

I would agree that relatively little is really known about the complete workings of the brain....although I've read that the brain can sometimes rewire itself to compensate for any damage.

I wonder if my ds just learns to recognise specific sounds (words) that have importance to him (so food and drink words) without really ever absorbing the wider language. I would love to know how Chomsky's theory of Universal Grammar deals with people such as my ds, who has no apparent hearing loss and who is growing up around language (so is not a true feral child being raised by dogs or wolves). Perhaps the theory only applies to NT brains...

Steven Pinker coined the term, 'mentalese' to describe his idea that thoughts are represented in the mind with visual images and auditory images, rather than with words so perhaps this is what is going on in my ds's head??

I guess we shall never really know!

Marne posted an amazing incident of a non-verbal child talking for the first time

"We arrived early at nursery this morning, we waited in the corridor (for nursery to open) along with another mum and her little boy who is similar to dd2 (asd), the little boy is younger than dd2 (maybe 3 years old) and is non verbal (only makes sounds/grunts), anyway the electric went off and we were plunged into darkness, i was worried dd2 would get upset so i started talking to her, Dd2 said 'oh dear' then there was silence (still pitch black) and the little boy said 'oh dear' , his mum said 'was that your dd2 or my ds', i said 'your ds' and she was so excited as he had never spoken before. So the little boy spoke for the first time "

It made me wonder if the child used his latent speech abilities because that was the only way that he could communicate his fear. The visual sense, which is possibly his strongest way of thinking, could not be used because it was pitch black. It seems to be similar to Davis's view of the importance of the motivational aspect in using verbal communication.

thinking more about it, I think I am wrong. He could easily have communicated his fear by screaming the house down. There was no need to speak.

claig, a lovely story for that little boy. I've heard similar stories of non-verbal dc not speaking until they are late teens!! It seems that such dc have all the innate (i.e. Chomskian) apparatus in place and have absorbed their native language as a whole, which enables their initial sentences to be 'well formed'. In the case of my ds, the more I think about it, the more I wonder whether he has the actual ability to absorb speech as a whole, to learn its rules, etc.

If this is the case, then it's likely that he won't be thinking in words.

I think you are right MannyMoeAndJack. I think your son is very likely to be able to internalise the language, but is just not speaking for some reason. Ron Davis seems to be the same, it was only at the age of 17 that he began to speak. Many people disagree with Chomsky's view, but I tend to agree with it. There does seem to be an innate universal grammar. We know that there are cases of children who have been locked in a room by their parents for years and that the children created their own language to communicate with each other. Whether a child learns English or French really depends on what language the child is exposed to. The universal grammar underlies everything and seems to make it all fall into place.

There's some evidence that a lot of non-verbal autistics are very strong on auditory senses, rather than visual. There's a paper published by Bonneh et al in 2008- cross modal extinction - that explores this a little.

My son, although in many ways quite clever has some definite cognitive oddities. For example recently he cannot cope with seeing people outside their usual environment. So bumping into a TA from school in a different environment terrifies him. I don't think he understands they can exist elsewhere. And he'll do strange things like try and climb playmobil ladders.

I found Donna Williams answer re the difference between verbal and non-verbal and give it below:

Hi Donna,

I've just been asked by someone in France whether there is a fundamental difference between a non-verbal individual with autism who appears to be cut off from the world and a higher-functioning autistic person who is able to write articulately about his or her experiences. What is your view on this?

Hi Adam,

the question is a useful one so I'm sending my answer out to my mailing list.

non-verbal can mean infant depression with acute social anxiety and selective mutism
it can mean brain starvation and toxicity due to gut/immune/metabolic disorders
it can mean dominated with mood, anxiety, compulsive disorders till everything is too chaotic to dare build bridges through communication
it can mean lack of simultaneous processing of self and other together with oral dyspraxia
it can mean someone meaning deaf, perhaps also meaning blind who has been unable YET to learn the one word-one meaning system.

If a high functioning person has NEVER been ANY of these things, then they are psychologically, cognitively, perceptually very different
to a high functioning person who HAS once been AT LEAST SOME these things during a conscious phase of childhood (ie AFTER the age of 5)

If a high functioning person outgrew such stages before the age of 5, I wouldn't feel they had the neurological development to retain a comprehensive and cohesive memory about daily life, perception and functioning to really convey that stage in anything but glimpses.

On this basis, anyone diagnosed as a psychotic or autistic infant who was functionally non-verbal and lacked simultaneous processing of self and other, WHO OUTGREW SUCH EXPERIENCED BY AGE 3-5 will not really understand what it is to take for granted that this state is simply one's daily life as a GROWN person.

For example, I came to understand the one word-one meaning system at age 9-11.
Before this I was largely meaning deaf.
I came to hold a simultaneous sense of self and other for 45 mins, long enough to become consciously aware of this process, at age 30 (I had had moment, minutes of it previously, but not enough to become consciously aware of it enough to grasp it as a system or something to seek).
At age 9-11 one is relatively a GROWN PERSON, at age 30 one is certainly a GROWN PERSON
but at age 3 or 5 one is still a DEVELOPING PERSON so one lets go of the earlier phases.
At age 9-11 that is much harder because it is just 'what life is', 'what being a person is'.

I'm now someone who can speak fluently. But there's much of me finds this a foreign system, foreign language, and its tiring. I'm far more about BEING and DOING.
This is perhaps because I came to understand language quite late (had a massive stored repertoire of stored strings before this) or it could be the other way around, that I was late to develop functional speech because the semantic-pragmatic system was not my natural neurological strength.

Just because I can learn to do handstands doesn't mean I was designed to walk on my hands.

So I don't actually relate to those who outgrew these things by age 3 or 4.
Even though I may be in the same HFA group as them now.

Being 'feral' until such a late age changed me in fundamental ways, neurologically I'm more rusty than earlier developers, my batteries go flat quicker, my natural instincts work in other ways, my soul is geared for a more animalistic style of processing and responding and it takes more to consciously try and dominate that in order to survive in the non-autistic world.

I also think that most people with Asperger's can't grasp the world of meaning deafness, meaning blindness and a time when there was NO concept of simultaneous self and other.
Some people with HFA can (generally those who developed communication late childhood-puberty) but most if not all of the verbal HFA people I've met either began in the HFA range or outgrew all but their BEHAVIOURS by age 4.

Autism is not BEHAVIOURS
One can become attached to behaviours long after their cause or necessity has passed.
And one can dump behaviours even when the causes persist.

Some in the HFA range don't GET THIS
but in my world the issue is the perceptual and cognitive challenges
playing on behaviours is circus stunts.

pardon my vulgarity, but I'm logical and practical and I'm almost 45
and I think circus stunts and parading, cloud the gaining of understanding in the field.

Autism has become trendy, like dolphins and unicorns, and I think we need to distinguish identity/culture politics from the realities of the condition.
The cultural phenomenon is real and often useful to those who gain emotionally and socially from it.
But it is NOT where many families of severely challenged kids with autism are living and as a consultant I see this ALL THE TIME.

Yes, it IS a spectrum
Yes, there are different autism 'fruit salads'
But if verbal people are going to proclaim to have extensive experience of the perceptual and cognitive realities of functionally non-verbal people
then this is more than a bunch of flag waving of behaviours.

claig, no, I'm saying that I don't think my ds can internalise language in its entirety, not that he can. I think he has learnt certain important nouns, certain sentences but not more; he also cannot understand novel sentences even if they are constructed with his small repertoire of learnt words. He seems not to understand verbs at all.

However, if he suddenly starts stringing together well-formed sentences in the future, then I will eat my words!!

saintly, wow thank you for sharing that email. You really are the resident MN autism expert!! Interesting that your ds seems to separate out his experiences (ref. the TA). My ds doesn't do this at all. Sometimes, it's even the opposite: if we bump into a member of his school staff/holiday scheme/respite unit, etc, then he usually affects total indifference, just like they are supposed to be there anyway!

In terms of the email, this bit shouted out at me: 'I'm far more about BEING and DOING.'

My ds has only ever lived in the here and now and he lives to be and to do.

Also: 'my soul is geared for a more animalistic style of processing..'

Does 'animalistic' in this sense refer to a system that is infinitely less complex than that of verbal humans?

The being terrified of people being out of their environment is new and I wonder if it represents a developmental leap in some way. I have pondered. But I'm not sure. Last year he began to become very upset/afraid if my car moved whilst he was out (having not noticed it before - or not demonstrated that he did), so I talked to him about how when he goes to school I go out in the car, then come back so the car has moved. I have no idea how much of that went in but it seemed to help.

Verb comprehension just coming for ds1. I don't think he had any ability to learn verbs until he learned to imitate. Before then someone else doing something was of no relevance to him at all. He could only experience jumping or dancing by experiencing it himself. So we would go horse riding and try and shove a hat on him and he would scream the place down - if we managed to get him on a horse he might relax. Now we can go and do a new activity- eg surfing and because he can imitate seeing other people surf gives him a 'concept' of surf- and we had no problem getting him on a board. I think pre-imitation days all those people surfing around us would have been meaningless and he would have wondered why we were trying to shove him in an uncomfortable suit and dunk him in cold water.

Something he can't do is sit and contemplate. He just can't do it. I am sure a lot of the way he experiences the world is through moving through it - and I think that's why he so feral outside of closed environments (add in his compulsive behaviour and it's doubly bad - but I think that in part relates to sensory processing of the type described by Bonneh et al - that paper I can email if anyone wants it).

see my ds and Maybe Rivens dd it seems be a physical issue that stops them talking .so maybe there brain is wired diferntly .to say a nt dc or a dc tahst on the asd spectrum

though ds also has problems with receptive delay and wondering if has problems with adutiory processing to

Given that my ds is such a doer, it's odd that he doesn't grasp the meaning of verbs! I mean, he jumps, runs, leaps, taps, licks, whinges...! Why is a verb any harder to learn than a noun although I seem to recall reading once that Korean?? (could be wildly wrong, it was years ago that I read it) children grow up learning verbs either before (or simultaneously with) nouns due to the way the adults speak to them.

My ds doesn't contemplate either. If he is unwell, then he will relax and want cuddles but this is as close as really gets to fully relaxing. There is always some part of him that is active, even when he is having 'quiet' time.

it is possible that a verb is more abstract than an noun. A noun such as "house" is a real physical entity that can be imagined visually. Something like "to cook" is a more complex, possibly abstract, process which involves many different concepts such as food, grill and also the time needed to complete the process. Does he understand imperatives like "stop" and "come here"?

ok tougher one wonder about the differnace between dc with asd being non or minmally verbal

and dc that are not on the asd spectrum that are non/vernally minimal

wonder how the thought process differs

verbs are signifying actions over time, changing states. Nouns are cnostants.

Yes but if you can't imitate then you can't watch someone running and realise that they are doing the same thing that you do when you run.

When ds1 learned to imitate he developed that sort of understanding and it made a big difference.