In autism, there is laughing/giggling and ‘laughing/giggling’. There can be numerous reasons to laugh, which are difficult to understand by ‘outsiders’: Of course, autistic individuals laugh when they are happy , or if they find something funny. However, they often laugh to release fear, tension and anxiety . What is very difficult for their parents to comprehend (and accept) is that they might laugh or giggle non-stop when someone is crying. This may be one of their defensiv

Not much is known about the language trajectories of non-verbal and minimally verbal children yet. However, the number of research studies are growing. Quite a few research studies have attempted to identify reliable predictors of good language outcomes. For example: Predictors of language development in non-verbal and minimally verbal children Saul and Norbury (2020) followed the expressive language progress of 27 minimally verbal children, aged three to five, for a year. At

Why can’t my child speak? It was estimated that about one third (Bryson 1996) to one half (Lord & Paul 1997) of autistic people never develop any functional speech: they are functionally mute. More recent research estimates of the proportion of children with ASD who have been classified as minimally verbal vary from 25% to 35%. What is it like not being able to talk? People who have never experienced this will go through life never knowing how soul crushing the condition of w

At the age of about four months the baby starts babbling and producing different sounds. Vocalisations Interestingly, during the first six month s infants with ASD show a similar to typically developing infants’ rate of vocalizations, the pattern of face-gazing accompanied by vocalizations (Young et al . 2009) and typical behaviour in social-vocal patterns (Chericoni et al . 2016). (At this age, the first signs could be looked for in other areas, such as, for example, motor

We assume that language is necessary verbal (i.e., comprising of words). That is why we say that children are verbal if they can talk (no matter that their verbal output is just a combination of echolalic phrases) and that they are non-verbal if they cannot produce verbal utterances. As the original experience of the world of autistic children is sensory-based, their original internal language (as a tool of formulation and expressing thoughts) consists of sensory-perceptual (

At about the same age all typically developing children, no matter what culture they are born into, manifest similar patterns of speech and language acquisition. In autism, however, there is no clear and rigid pattern during the first year, whereas in later years there appears a pattern typical for autistic children’s development (Saint-Georges et al. 2010). Crying as a ‘language’ Vocalization and babbling can be considered the earliest expression of language development (Che

According to some researchers (e.g., Ramachandran 1995), it is mirror neurons that allow us to "read" and understand another's intentions, and thus to develop a sophisticated "theory of other minds"; without these neurons, the child can no longer understand other people’s intentions, emotions and behaviours, and this is the case in autism. It is true that autistic people find it hard to perceive the mental states of others and it has been suggested that the central feature of

But do they? Giacomo Rizzollati and colleagues (1992) conducted experiments on monkeys, recording signals from parts of the frontal lobes which are concerned with motor commands. The researcher found that there are cells that fire not only when the monkey performs certain specific movements but also when the monkey watches another monkey performing the same action. ‘Monkey-see monkey-do neurons’ Rizzollati terms these neurons mirror neurons (‘monkey-see monkey-do neurons’). T

Can’t start – can’t stop Another problem autistic individuals experience is ‘inertia’ (Dekker 1999) – difficulty in starting, stopping, planning and changing activities. Initiation difficulties are often physical: despite knowing what to do (and how to do it), they just cannot start doing it. One of the possible causes can be an inability to control their bodies or other movement impairments . We don’t even have proper control of our bodies. Both staying still and moving whe