Draft study - Autism and deafness

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Hi everyone,

I'm the Admin of an asperger's forum in France. I haven't really got time now to work on the topic, so here is what I find intriguing and worth studying, if anyone is interested in that.

Considering autism enhanced perceptions, it might be that autistic children hear much less words than a NT child. Language is mixed with the ambiant noise and can't be understood as "easily" as for NTs.

Speech-in-noise perception in high-functioning individuals with autism or Asperger's syndrome
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... ated=false

So autistic people can have common symtoms with deaf / hearing impaired people, especially on the use of language (concepts ...)

Autism and Hearing Loss
http://kejuelmi.pbworks.com/f/hearing+loss.pdf

Something like 5% of autistic people are deaf.

Current State of Knowledge: Language and Literacy of Children with Hearing Impairment
Mary Pat Moeller,1 J. Bruce Tomblin,2 Christine Yoshinaga-Itano,3
Carol McDonald Connor,4 and Susan Jerger5


Effects of Hearing Loss on Development
http://www.asha.org/public/hearing/diso ... ffects.htm

Cognitive development in deaf children: the interface of language and perception in neuropsychology
http://grammar.ucsd.edu/mayberrylab/pap ... ych_02.pdf

This last study is going on the same track as me.

More Is Less: Pitch Discrimination and Language Delays in Children with Optimal Outcomes from Autism
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23929787


To put it straight : if an autistic child is non-verbal, that's because he's deaf. Even if he's able to hear things, that's too hard for his brain to decode language out of all the mess and noise around.


That's the basic idea, as I said I don't have time to work on that anymore, and I think there is a lot to do to make it a serious work, not just bits of ideas mixed.
And anyway, it might concern only a part of autistic people, I don't think there is only one root cause for autism, at least in the way it is defined currently.

That was it !

that ties right into auditory processing disorder, doesn't it?

I once knew a girl from high school who was deaf. She was hot and she was a cheerleader. She could obviously read lips or else she woudn't have gone to public school. We both were in the same class and we both had IEP's. She was friendly to me. If it wasn't for my aspie traits, I probably would have asked her out eventually.

Last edited by Codyrules37 on 06 Oct 2013, 5:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Being nonverbal doesn't mean you're deaf. It means you have nothing to say. It means you are refusing to interact with the babbling geese because you DON'T WANT TO.

Children with High Functioning Autism usually do not begin speaking until much later than their non-autistic peers, but they are not hearing impaired.

If Autism meant hearing impairment, those of us with AS and HFA would not develop the rich vocabularies that we do and would not be so notoriously meticulous and precise about our use of language, which, if you peruse the forums here and pay attention to the communications of the adults, you'd see is rather common.

NO. You misunderstand the nature of our sensory hypersensitivity. An easy mistake to make if you take some of Autism Speaks' advocacy too literally. When it is said that incoming sensory signals tend to become overwhelming because the brain's filter does not "adjust the volume" automatically, that is not a reference to a purely AUDITORY phenomenon. It is a "psychic" phenomenon (and I'm not referring to the paranormal or ESP) - meaning a mental overload.

Yes, sometimes my auditory perception does seem enhanced and becomes a distraction - for instance, when someone is bullying and yelling at me, a sound that would normally be filtered out by my brain as unimportant, like the hiss of the air through the Central Air vents, suddenly seems very loud and I have a difficult time focusing on one over the other, but the sound didn't actually get LOUDER, my brain is just being overwhelmed by the sensory bombardment and that faulty filter begins to blow a gasket. It's got nothing to do with my physical ability to HEAR - it's about my BRAIN'S inability to PROCESS the sensations coming in.

Autistic people are not deaf - they're just ignoring you.

I've never quoted only a part of what somebody typed before, so I hope I did it correctly.
Anyway, I didn't understand before that when that happens to me that there's a "word for it."
Are you saying that whenever a sound irritatingly seems to have become louder to me actually is happening because my brain is getting overwhelmed from it? That happens to me a lot, and it is very distracting, and it makes me upset.

While I absolutely agree that the OP is rather confused and coming to the wrong conclusion; in the above quote you seem to have jumped to a faulty conclusion. As a profoundly Deaf autistic who has always had very advanced language skills in multiple languages, I am an excellent example of how patently untrue your assertion is. Many Deaf people are highly educated with extensive vocabularies and most are bilingual. It is absolutely within the realm of probability to find genuine Deaf autistics who are highly gifted linguists, such as myself. By all means go ahead and correct the OP where you see fault, but please refrain from spreading fallacies about Deaf people and our language skills and ability - Be it unintentionally or otherwise.

I agree, like you point out many deaf people are bilingual knowing both ASL and English (or the primary languages of their country). Just like any other large group of people you're going to get a variation in abilities, education and experiences.

It does seem that a not insignificant amount of people with autism also have auditory processing disorder. I do and the way it affects me is much the same way a person who is hard of hearing experiences things. Depending on the environment auditory information essentially becomes useless, just a bunch of white noise. In these situations I cannot understand anything that I hear and am essentially deaf. There are obvious differences between being hard of hearing and APD but there are also some big similarities especially when it comes to communication.

It does.



Depends if you consider hyperacusis as a hearing impairment.


This is usually compensated by a high IQ.
Anyway you point out that there is a specific use of language, which is my point as well.



You haven't read the articles I have posted. This is no interpretation from me : autistic people hear less than NTs in a noisy environment.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... ated=false

This is consistent with Temple Grandin's perceptions as well.
Whether it is "auditory" or "psychic" is irrelevant : what matters is what is actually understood in the end, and the previous study answers the question.

I do have auditory processing issues, though my hearing, as far as I know is fine. My mom had my hearing checked in my teens and they said I had very good hearing. It is likely in my brain... which if I do have auditory processing disorder, it is by definition an issue with how the brain processes not with how the ears work.

In noisy envirnoments I have problems hearing, while NTs in the same environment seem to have no or few problems hearing. Even one NT I know that has some hearing loss seems to hear better in noisy environments than I do.

However, I know some Deaf and some hard of hearing people who are definitely not autistic.

This would be interesting to study.

I didn't realize it until a few years ago, I had my hearing tested to see if I needed a hearing aid, as usual my hearing tested perfect, I explained I couldn't understand or at times even hear a voice in a crowd or noisy area. Same problem with TV, radio, recordings etc.
He explained it was an inability to concentrate on or pick out voice from background noise. Didn't know of any hearing aids that would work.

As a kid was always in trouble for "selective" hearing, or not paying attention, even now still. Didn't know why. As far as I was told my hearing was normal, so I assumed everyone heard the same as I did, had no way to explain as a kid, and no reason to as I was told my hearing was normal, I can't explain the frustration that caused, leading to an attempt to deafen myself with a piece of wire, which was too painful to follow through, and other ideas didn't work, (never would have worked). I felt if I was deaf I wouldn't get in as much trouble. 6 to 8 yrs old I think I was. (I've never mentioned any of this to anyone before), main universal answers to problems were "you need to concentrate better" or "it's your imagination" or "you're just saying that because you don't want to do it" I am still quite bitter about my childhood, and have flashbacks. Probably PTSD.

Knowing about apd has mostly eliminated the anxiety of appearing to be going deaf, thought the deafening attempts were catching up, i know playing stuff loud has probably caused the "permanent whistle", and maby some loss.

I use closed captioning, at least captioning has helped keep the tv volume normal, as I can read the dialogue. But when captioning is too fast or garbled, volume goes almost full. Need it loud to understand for some reason. When at my mothers I have to ask if it is too loud, a few times she's asked why I was watching with no sound, I said you asked me to lower it twice after I stopped hearing it.

If i am on the radio cb or ham, or telephone, I often have to ask others to slow down, and often to repeat, and keep things short, especially if I am dealing with brain fog.

Talking is best in person, talk slow, I rely on partial lip reading,

Would like an old speaking tube, have improvised with an oil funnel or phonograph horn, I am well known for being eccentric.

Thought about learning to sign, but no one around me uses it, people who are deaf or hearing impaired often exaggerate expressions and speech, even if mute, it is sometimes easier to talk with them, I was once talking with a girl at a noisy job site, I got tired of lip reading and got out a pad, she wrote she was deaf, we found that funny.

When using the old phonograph I often have my ear to the horn if there is a voice I want to hear on the recording,

On electronic systems I usually have the bass boosted as I don't hear the low notes well, highs are distorted sounding to me,

Used to get in trouble for being able to hear a dog whistle, kept being told to stop lieing,
I probably can still hear them, my mother now finds it amazing i could hear the phone charger, and similar electronic things, old tv's with flyback transformers, and the mosquito tone?. But must be in a quiet setting and different from the constant whistle I hear that is not sound. Tinnitus?.

Easier to say hard of hearing or half deaf, people often consider hearing impaired as totally deaf, and I am not sure if apd is considered a hearing impairment anyway.

Don't always hear cars,

Radio off windows up emergency sirens are hard to hear, windows open at highway speed wind noise over powers everything. Emergency vehicle sirens other then fire trucks, probably due to better sound proofing on newer vehicles, and the apparent requirement of quieter sirens in the past 20 or so years. Seems fire trucks are exempt.

in music lover mode, I find I cannot mentally filter out surface noise on my collection of several thousand "flat friends." I have to use CEDAR to do that for me.

Auditory processing disorder is not classified as a hearing impairment. It has to do with the brain, rather than the ears.

I've always had problems hearing in noisy environments. I thought for a long time that I had hearing impairment, but ears testing was OK.
Then I couldn't explain why I can't understand someone when he's reading a text (rhythm is different than usual speech, and it's like my brain can't decode anything from it).
When I'm very tired and/or busy thinking, I can't understand people talking.
So I really wonder how much of language I actually understand, and especially how much I've actually understood in my childhood.
I make lots of puns when people are talking, mostly double meanings from what they say, and as well different ways of extracting words from speech flow. It's not an intentional word play, it's the different solutions my brain finds to decode speech.

Funny thing, I can reproduce accents pretty good.
And I speak 3 languages.

^^^
multilingual=well above average intelligence, you are gifted just for having the multilingual capacity alone.

i responded to my name as a very young child which indicated that i wasnt deaf, but i couldnt talk until i was at least 8 years old, and even then i talked on the same level as a 2 and a half year old. so before that people used to try to get me to speak by asking me easy questions and i would just look at them with an unresponsive expression. then when i got to about 6 and a half i used to shake my head or nod my head when responding, which adults found it easier to know when i needed the toilet because they would ask every few hours. but they didnt know whether i had mental retardation or autism, so i never got a true diagnosis, although a lot of adults in school assumed i was autistic. it was the 70s and 80s back then so learning disabilities didnt really get took that seriously, although it was obvious with me that i had something wrong of course. my mum sometimes got frustrated sometimes because i just would not talk.