Verbal/reading abilities and understanding

Post Reply New Topic

Hi all!
I've been pondering a question for a while, I just read someone elses post and thought maybe it held the answers but I'm still not sure.
My 9yr old son J dx'd asperger's started to question what he was reading last year. He asks me from time to time what words that I have used and he himself has used means. eg "what does instant mean?" This is the most simplest example I could think of.
At first I thought perhaps he really doesn't know, I asked his autism team if they could shed some light on why he does this, they think he wants to know more. They believe it isn't enough for him just to know when to use a word correctly they think he needs to know everything there is know about it. I'm confused though.
He speaks well ( first word at 5 and a half months) his sentence structures appear great. When he takes one of the words that he has just used correctly out of a sentence and asks me what it means, I have turned it on him and asked him to tell me what he thinks it means and he does get it wrong sometimes, or he says but I dont know.
He does the same thing with TV shows, he appears to laugh at the right time, but then he will say the characters were doing this yeah?(he comes up with a completely different scenario to the one I got) Sometimes the mistakes are simple other times they are way off.
I don't know if this has anything to do with whats going on but it is to do with his reading... yesterday he had an asthma test done. This test involved J walking/running on a treadmill whilst hooked up to some monitors, every minute the technician told him she was going to show him a card with numbers and sentences on it saying how he felt his breathing was. He had to continue walking/running and read from the card how he felt.
She flashed the card to him (seconds only) and he'd said number3
she asked if he was sure it was 3, he said yes. she said how are you feeling and he responded word for word what number 3 said on the card. She would have held the card up longer but he'd already responded. The technician was blown away by how fast he'd read the card. He does this to with the opening of the simpsons. when Bart writes on the blackboard, he is telling us what is written before even I have finished reading.
Can anyone shed some light on what is going on?

I don't really think I can shed much light, but it is interesting. My son goes through phases of asking for definitions on words I thought he knew, as well. I wonder if it comes from observing that while words can have precise definitions, the people around us don't always choose language that carefully, plus words can have multiple meanings, and maybe our children are seeing words in contexts that don't seem quite right to them? My son is very precise about language, in general, and I would assume it's natural for someone like him to want to be sure of the "real" (and any accepted variant) definition of something.

I spoke with J's classroom teacher about all this today. asking her what her thoughts were on his comprehension. She said that she had just recently tested all the kids and he had been spot on.
She said he is reading above grade level. She looked intimidated when I told her that J's docs thought he was asking because just knowing when to use a word isn't enough.

aurea, funny that the teacher looked intimidated, because I think that in many ways the brilliance and precision of kids like ours IS intimidating to many people. I guess that is why our kids had to come with burdens, so that they would seem more balanced. My son can truly blow ME out of the water with some things he thinks, so I wouldn't be surprised if he does that often to others.

sorry i can't help you but hopefully thsi will help me. my son 4 does the same thing but i thought it was just becasue he was 4.

My 9yr old son does the same thing and I have vivid recollection of doing the same. I had briefly looked at a very large advertisement board in a Brisbane supermarket at the age of 5. When I arrived home some 20 minutes later, I rattled off a rather lengthy ad, that rhymed. I remember how amazed my father was and how he smiled.

We need an ordered world to make sense and "attach" spoken communication we may possess to the underlying reality of actions and objects(including people). You may be aware that many of us have spoken language but it is not "attached" - it floats meaningless. It can only be made meaningful and useful as real communication when it is attached through actual experience to daily tasks common between child and carers/teachers.

There is a very good article on communication in those on the spectrum entitled "Autism and Visual Impairment" - Making Sense by Fiona Boyce and Fiona Hammond from Proceedings of Autism and Visual Impairment Conference, March 1996.
http://www.ssc.education.ed.ac.uk/resou ... boyce.html

While the article is written in terms of visually impaired children, the issues of the referencing of language and the idea of the referenced Self are equally applicable to those on the spectrum who are sighted. The authors make the point that blind autistic children can only make sense of a world around them when it is ordered for them.

I beleive this is the reason many Aspergian children are found reading through dictionaries.... I don't know the why.... all I know is that i did it too...

I love looking up new words.... It gives the many different variations of the definitions, they get used in a sentence, you get the root words and the pronunciation....

next time he asks about a specific word, look it up in the dictionary, it gives a specific definition, and will broaden his knowledge base.

the quick reading thing is fast recall, kinda like photographic memory, only i'll bet he won't remember it an hour later, If it is the same thing I do, it is really helpful when doing last minute cramming for midterms in college.... do the regular studying, but for things like complicated formulas ten minutes before the test, review and voila!

Kit I will have to tell him that one when he is a little older. hahaha

I just wish it would work now the quick recall thing, maybe then he could find his shoes and socks.

I've heard of HFA / AS kids that are hyperlexic. Not quite sure what that means but I'm guessing they can read just about any word, but may not be able to comprehend or make sense of what they read. Also, when my 9 year old under went his latest neuropsych eval testing, the psychologist said he most likely has difficulty connecting the written word with the spoken word. For example, he may know what a boat is, but when he is reading it may take a minute for the written word boat to connect to the spoken word. Make sense?

Don't know anything about children nor do I recall much from my time at that age. Nonetheless, my thought on this is along the lines of what others have said.

Ability to read & comprehend vocabulary far ahead (by years, even decades) of my skill at understanding implications of words. Having an example or illustration (using familiar metaphor or symbolic diagram) of idea, point, or "gist" is helpful. Also have problems applying abstract analysis (cause & effect) to possible future potential concrete results/outcomes/consequences-so much seems to remain "just words" (that I cannot imagine beyond).

Understand words in isolation pretty well. However, what any given person means when they use that word in a particular situation/context, and environment (social & physical conditions) is hard to decipher. So I both do & don't know what the word "means".
I'll use a word, knowing what it means to me-but someone else may not get why I'm using that term, and interpret me imprecisely. Vice versa: someone will use specific word, intending to communicate in a certain way according to that person's "meaning-system" (internal catalog of definitions), but I'll perceive/translate it according to my individual/idiosyncratic filter.

Words are handy when used to indicate roughly the same things, but merely speaking same language ("English") isn't sufficient to ensure uniformity of definitions between people-sometimes we forget this. Small differences in choice of words (and how they're said or written) can seem like large gaps in trying to share reference points.
Agree with suggestion of having dictionary available (I used to read them, too)-with caveat of explaining that people don't always go "by the book", that shades & subtle variations come into play IRL (the world "outside the book").

I know I have an old dictionary in the house, but sounds like time for a new one.

Thanks peoples.