Arthur Clarke, one of the great predictors of future discoveries, whose non-fiction essays contain analytical analysis of past, present and future of human achievements, seems to make an error concerning his analysis of human abilities: “ There are some senses that do not exist, that can probably never be provided by living structures… On this planet, to the best of our knowledge, no creature has ever developed organs that can detect radio waves or radioactivity. Though I wou

The way we perceive the world affects the way we store and use information. The conscious mind is not the only way of receiving information. Subconsciously, we are perceiving all the time – whether we are aware of it or not, subconscious processes are there. For example, at an early stage of visual processing there is a ‘low-level map-like representation’ which most are not consciously aware of (Rensink 2000). It is only at higher levels of processing, where attention plays a

Sometimes sensory hypersensitivities are misinterpreted as extrasensory perception (ESP) as ‘normal’ people not only fail to see, hear, smell or feel what some autistic individuals can, but also find it hard to imagine that these experiences are possible because ‘normal’ people are blind, deaf and dumb to the stimuli which are everyday experiences for some autistic individuals. However, there is nothing extrasensory about their ability to hypersense as some autistic people’

A painful truth Sensory stimuli can be experienced very differently by autistic individuals. Just because we may not feel something, it does not mean that they don’t. It’s something that is so simple to understand, yet not knowing anything about it makes you feel unable to help your own child. As he grew, I began to notice more and more my son’s very acute aversion to some things we would not think twice about. Seemingly mundane tasks such as getting his hair cut or his nails

There are other types of echolalia that are difficult to explain, for example, involuntary echolalia , when the person blurts out words...

Though echolalia can be non-communicative , in many cases it is used for communication. Parents of autistic children (with echolalia) can decode their child’s utterances. For example, for many years (up until he was in his late teens), Alyosha was echolalic and used set phrases to talk to us. Most of the time it worked because I knew his particular ways to let me know that he was hungry or wanted to watch TV, or to go for a walk. The problem is, however, that for others (neig

If it’s not for communication, what’s the point? As I didn’t know much at the time, I made a mistake thinking that as soon as my son started speaking, everything would be fine. However, though Alyosha did start talking at the age of seven, ‘talking’ is not the word to describe his verbal utterances. My boy echoed words and phrases that he had heard in the past, often irrelevant to the situation, or just ‘talked’ to himself. There seemed to be words which he especially liked,

Which is better for autistic individuals? Although sign language was first developed as a means of communication for the deaf, it has been also used to teach people with developmental disabilities communication skills. With autistic and other developmentally disabled children Makaton sign language is usually used. Sign language is introduced either as an augmentative system to facilitate the development of speech for those who understand verbal language but have problems wit

I am happy to announce that the 2nd Edition of Communication Issues in Autism & Asperger Syndrome has now been published. In this book, I provide a theoretical foundation for understanding communication and language impairments specific to autism. This includes: the effects of different perceptual and cognitive styles on the communication and language development of autistic children as well as nonverbal language - which can be visual, tactile, kinaesthetic, auditory, olfacto