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On the acquisition of discourse among autistic children
tinguage Sciences,‘?olume to. Number I. pp. 193-224,1988. Printed in Great Britain
0388~1/88 %3.00+.00 0 1988Pergamcn Press plc
On the Acquisition of Discourse among Autistic Children
Fred C. C. Peng International Christian University
ABSTRACT
Autistic children have great difficulties acquiring the ability to talk, a symptom that is well known for their behaviour. The etiology of autism is diverse, ranging from organic to functional causes, but the sequala is the same: Autistic children do not talk, if they have already acquired a language, are inattentive, hyperactive, and emotionally fragile. Even so, they can still be taught to talk and acquire a language or regain the language they have already acquired prior to the onset of the disease but lost as part of the sequala. In this article, I shall describe the acquisition of discourse among autistic children selected from a school in Japan, called Musashino Higashi Gakuen, where children diagnosed as autistic are being trained to talk or even to acquire a language. I should emphasize that my objective here is not to discuss the merits of the training method, but to describe the progress Japanese autistic children have made in one significant aspect of language skills, viz., discourse. The method employed for this study was cross-sectional, using non-autistic children of the same age groups as controls for comparison. The subjects were all primary school children, ranging from grade 1 to grade 6 in age, the total being 35 for both autistic subjects and controls. The technique used to elicit data waslex~~menta1; each subject was asked to describe what he/she saw in a five-frame cartooh. The aim was to check (1) whether or not the child was able to link the five frames1 of the cartoon strip in a narrative fasion; (2) whether or not the subject has acquired the linguistic skills for expressing the varying forms of action and the objects that appear in the cartoon; and (3) whether or not the child was able to concentrate, viz., was attentive enough when performing the task and, if not, whether or not assistance was required to carry out the experiment. It may take a long time before anyone has an answer to how autistic children happen to be able to acquire a language. But I believe it is also important to learn how they improve their language once they have acquired the rudiments of it. This presentation is a step forward in that direction.
Autistic children are known as such, because they have great difficulty acquiring the ability to talk, let alone learning a language. Many autistic children never develop those abilities even by their teens. However, there is a
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Language Sciences, Volume
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I (1988)
school in Japan, called Musashino Higashi Gakuen, where children diagnosed as autistic are being trained to talk or even to acquire a language. The method employed, according to the founder of the school, Dr Kiyo Kitahara, is named The Daily Life Therapy: A Method of Educating Autistic Children. The first and foremost purpose of this method is to train autistic children, among other things, to acquire the Japanese language, if they are Japanese, or the English language, if they are Americans or are from countries where English is spoken. Through the good will of Dr Kitahara I was able to investigate her pupils, both autistic and normal, at her school in order to get data for this study. Let me, therefore, describe below the subjects investigated and how the data were collected. I should emphasize that my objective here is not to discuss the merits of the training method, but to describe the progress Japanese autistic children have made in one significant aspect of language skills, namely, discourse. The subjects were all primary school children. Their ages range from grade 1 to grade 6, there being in principle six subjects from each grade. However, due to certain technical problems, some subjects were later excluded and others, added. As a result, there were 35 children who were investigated, but they were not evenly distributed in age brackets. The breakdown of the number of normal vs autistic children in each age bracket is shown in Table 1. Table 1 Distribution of Normal vs Autistic Children according to Grade
Number of Children
Age
Normal Autistic
3 3
(G 2)
Normal Autistic
3 3
Grade 3 (G 3)
Normal Autistic
3 3
Grade 4 (G 4)
Normal Autistic
3 3
Grade 5 (G 5)
Normal Autistic
3 0
Grade 6 (G 6)
Normal Autistic
7
Grade 1 (G 1) Grade 2
1
Acquisition of Lkcourw
among Autistic Children
1%
Since this paper is not concerned with how the autistic children happened to acquire their language in the first place, but rather with the manner and extent to which the one aspect of language skills, viz., discourse ability, is developed by them, when compared with the control subjects who were the normal children, I shall assume that certain rudimental skills, such as constructing simple phrases or uttering a limited number of words, had already been acquired by the autistic children. Since the approach to the study is cross-sectional, I shall also assume that any claims on real-time results will be no more than inferences on my part. In order to measure how much autistic children have acquired of the ability of discourse over the span of 54 years, it is necessary to conduct an experiment change among all subjects. This experiment was a test borrowed from the SLTA (Standard Language Test for Aphasia) that is employed in Japan for aphasic patients; namely, the oral description of a five-frame cartoon strip that was shown to the subjects as a stimulus. It is recapitulated in Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Cartoon.
For the experiment, each subject was asked to describe what he/she saw in the cartoon. The aim was to check: (1) whether or not the child was able to link the five frames of the cartoon strip in a narrative fashion, that is, to see them as a connected whole, rather than unrelated individual frames; (2) whether or not the subject had acquired the linguistic skills for expressing the varying forms of action and the objects that appear in the cartoon; and (3) whether or not the child was able to concentrate, viz., was attentative enough when performing the task, and if not, whether or not assistance was required to carry out the experiment.
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Language Sciences, Volume 10, Number 1 (1988)
THE STIMULUS
As was mentioned is usually
above,
used to test aphasic
the stimulus patients
employed
many
for the present
of whom cannot
experiment
conduct
a decent
narration about the cartoon, not because they have not acquired the necessary cognitive ability and linguistic skills but because they “lost” what they had already acquired. My presentation, however, is not intended to compare the results with aphasic patients’ impaired speech; rather, it is intended, as is the case with aphasic patients, to compare the results with the normative result that is expected of “normal” adults. What is more, the results from the experiment on the autistic subjects will also be compared with the results obtained from the control subjects who were also tested. I should also add that since the conducted tests involved the tasks of (1) understanding the cartoon strip in terms of cognition and then (2) verbalizing what is seen (i.e. putting into words what comes through the eyes into the visual cortex), the behaviour is not a simple verbalization but rather a significant part of an interaction that requires a complicated mental processing of both decoding (from sensory information) and encoding (for motor output). But since what can be observed in the experiment is the encoded output, that is, whether the subject has decoded the sensory information (i.e. the visual stimuli) correctly or not depends entirely on what the subject puts into words and sentences, I shall further assume that what is missing or does not come out in the verbalization has not been decoded properly by the subject and, therefore, has not been understood either (1) cognitively or (2) linguistically. By the former it is meant that the subject has not been able to perceive the subtleties of the cartoon strip, such as the fact that the person in each frame of the cartoon strip is the same person throughout and, therefore, the five frames constitute a significant whole, whereas by the latter it is meant that the subject may have perceived the cartoon properly but simply cannot find or has not acquired the right words or sentence pattern or grammatical category to express what is seen, for instance, the verb of motion implying “blown away” or the word for “cane”. Either way, the output is bound to be defective. But a defect in the output may have resulted from a combination of both, for instance, the picking up of the hat with the cane implies that the hat has once fallen into the water, rather than being stopped from falling into the water, and thus the failure to see this connection may be due to the combination of cognitive gap and linguistic underdevelopment. The cartoon strip that was employed for the tests has two places which require this kind of connection, viz., between the third and the fourth frame and between the fourth and the last frame; it, therefore, demands a good deal of language behaviour and cognitive capacity on the part of each person taking the tests. If so, what should then be compared with the subject’s
Acquisition of Discourse among Autistic Children
197
results obtained from the tests? I propose the establishment of a target based on normal adults’ account of the cartoon strip.
THE APPROXIMATE TARGET Since adults cannot be expected to come out with a uniform expression of the cartoon strip - on the grounds that one may express the same thing differently - the target expression of the cartoon can only be an approximation. It is this approximation that will be compared with two samples from the results of the control subjects, so that a baseline may be established for the comparison with the results from the autistic subjects. The target expression and the two examples are listed below as the norms of their respective ages. Samples 4-x%! (Y:) 4:0 (male) Kore aruite ittedeshou. Ld1:1;r~Tl~,TTl_
2 5,
Soushite yokoe ittene, okontonjattade
okonnai
+iLTftW-l~7Tta.
#jr,&,r,-c>
i’Jicnm,GeP7t:T,
Frame 2
Frame 3
Frame 4
This is walking.
Then turning sideway, falling and flying away
to omottara okocchatta.
Soushite un
soushitene, tottano.
tr .g~7 f: i i’&i 7 5 rp7 t: o
TiL-c
5 i L-ccl.
Never thought (it) would fall but did!
iA
t -7t:uo,,
Frame 5 Then, eh, then (he) took it.
7 2.!h! C&k) 7:0 (female) Ojisanga aruiteru. To kazega tondekite, boushiga tonde hiroouto 8 I: $ hti’JSL>T6. &Jarl~f(*r~T 3 T. #I FtJ~rRrGTfctnt3 i t -6 6 t.
Frame 2 An old man is walking.
Frame 3 And the wind came blowing.
okkotte
sutekkide boushiwo hirou.
i’k7C7?
~tY+TfilJ%t::i.
Frame 5 (It) fell into the sea and (he) attempts to pick (it) up.
suruto, umini
Frame 4 The hat flew away and (he) attempts to pick (it) up.
tilj IC
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Language Sciences, Volume 10, Number 1 (1988)
Target
Discourse
Boushiwo kabutte tuewo motta otokonohitoga
tatteimasu.
~~I(x~~;.7_;t11;1.~?f~~:I?)h~~,li7~L~~t.-6,
Frame 1
A man wearing a hat and carrying a cane is standing. Konohitowa samponi dekakemashita Z U.,A If ,yr:L:!:lllIs~i-t1 I_f:,
Frame 2
This man goes out strolling. 1 Suruto totsujo kazega fuitekite, (kareno) kabutteita boushiga, -6~t~~huJ~~*~l~~;1~~(r7. (iris,) ?,~;.7_ii~$:ip;Ijh‘, Then, suddenly the wind starts to blow and his hat > Frame 3 fukitobasaremashita Ii);&Jltf-t
S $1 ?k L I:,
gets blown away. Sorede karewa korogatteiku boushiwo okkakemashitaga, mizunonakani fdl7ifiWLCfi~7-c~~ : Pii(6-;-B7n~fj~ Lt:!l,. OilJcli/J
/ boushiwa \
He thus starts to chase the hat that is rolling on the ground, but the hat ochite shimaimashita % r, T L z 11 $ L 1: 0 falls into the water. Karewa jibunga motteiru tuewo sakasani tsukai, sonoboushiwo hikkakete i~I_ir’l’/r*~~!~7~?r~15tifr~~!~~~i~.-t_o,l$;;(~_S,+Pij? He then reverses his cane and hooks the hat onto it tsuriage mashita. f!J ll 1 I? % L t:,
thereby lifting the hat up.
Frame 4
I \
Frame 5
Acquisition of Discourse among Autistic Childrea
19
METHOD
In order to get the raw data, two students of the International Christian University were used to conduct the experiment; they asked the autistic and control subjects to describe the cartoon strip, whose descriptions were then tape-recorded. The recorded tapes were later transcribed to produce the data base which was subjected to an analysis that follows. (See Appendix for the Data Base.) Two sets of methodical criteria were thus subjectively established so as to facilitate analysis of the data base. They correspond to the two aspects of the stimulus mentioned earlier. Cognitive
Criteria
A. The cartoon strip must be regarded as constituting a connected whole; rather than unrelated individual parts. B. Each subject must recognize that the first frame depicts a static posture which is followed by a series of four basic events in which there are movements, i.e. after the initial state, the four frames are dynamically related in that the events take place in succession. (These posture and movements of the protagonist require the use of verbs in the descriptions.) C. The posture is taken by the protagonist with some objects. And the events happen to the protagonist and the objects the protagonist possesses. The autistic and control subjects must be able to see such relationships and cognize who is doing what as well as what is happening to whom and which object. D. Since the cartoon strip is an integrated story, no part of it should be omitted, so as to assure not only connection but integration as well. Linguistic Criteria
A. To express the contents of the cartoon strip as a connected whole requires certain linguistic devices of which the autistic and control subjects may or may not be capable. Such devices range from personal pronouns to verbal modifiers that serve as anaphoras. Primitive devices, such as conjunctions, e.g. soshite “and then”, may also be used but are not required. B. Not only should suitable verbs be chosen to describe the posture and the events, but the right endings, such as the inflectional or derivational suffixes, must also be required of the verbs chosen. C. The relationships between verbs (expressing the posture and the events)
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Language !?&mces, Volume 10, Number 1 (1988)
and nouns (expressing the objects and the context of the situation) must be grammatically related. D. As the cartoon strip constitutes a continuum from the initial state to the last event, the story moves swiftly from one frame to the next. Thus, there is no need for long sentences to express the contents. However, truncation of the initial posture or of any subsequent event by way of conjoining will not be allowed. Errors on particles will also be counted.
ANALYSIS Since the purpose of this article, as has been stated, is the measurement of cognitive ability and linguistic skills regarding autistic children’s acquisition of discourse over time - in addition to the fact that this is the first attempt in the literature - I decided to adopt a weighting system in which digital weights are computed in the cartoon strip for each frame whenever one or more of the criteria are violated. Thus, the perfect score will be “zero” in the case of an adult; that is, no weight will be computed if all the criteria are observed. The following lists indicate the weights in parentheses for each criterion. Cognitive Weights
A. Juncture of Frames 1-2 (l), Juncture of Frames 2-3 (l), Frames 34 (l), Juncture of Frames 4-5 (1). B. Frame 1 (l), Frame 2 (l), Frame 3 (l), Frame 4 (l), Frame C. Frame 1 (3), Frame 2 (l), Frame 3 (2), Frame 4 (3), Frame D. Frame 1 (I), Frame 2 (l), Frame 3 (l), Frame 4 (I), Frame
Juncture
of
5 (1). 5 (4). 5 (1).
The results are tabulated further below. Since the perfect score is set up at 0 point, the higher the score goes the poorer the level of acquisition is. Linguistic Weights
A. Transition of Frames 1-2 (l), Transition of Frames 2-3 (l), of Frames 3-4 (I), Transition of Frames 4-5 (1). B. Frame 1 (l), Frame 2 (I), Frame 3 (2), Frame 4 (3), Frame C. Frame 1 (3). Frame 2 (l), Frame 3 (2). Frame 4 (2), Frame D. Frame 1 (l), Frame 2 (l), Frame 3 (I), Frame 4 (l), Frame
Transition 5 (2). 5 (3). 5 (1).
SAMPLE ANALYSIS Suppose that the aforementioned method is employed in order to analyze the two samples from the control subjects. For the cognitive analysis, then, both subjects get the results on the four criteria as shown in Figure 2.
Acquisition of Discourse among Autistic Cbildreo
201
Cognitive Analysis loo
too 90
60 70 60 50 40 30
\
(A)
t
2
._ c m
s
loo
90 60-
:I 6\54 50-
40 30 -
:;_ o-
-A 20 - CD)
(Cl ’ FOW
I Sevetl
I FOW
I Swell
Figure 2.
Note that the four-year-old had 100% in Figure 2 (A) which means that he got 4 points which are the total weights given to that category. In other words, he treated each frame in the cartoon strip as unrelated individual parts, because in his narrative there is no connection from one frame to the next. In Figure 2 (B), however, the boy recognized only three events, viz., Frames 2, 3, and 5, in the entire cartoon strip, failing to observe even the standing posture in Frame 1 and the chasing event in Frame 4 of the protagonist. Thus, he got 2 points out of the total weights of 5, which amounts to 40%. When it comes to who is doing what and what is happening to whom and which object in Figure 2 (C), he was able to cognize the walking while failing to relate the events to the objects the protagonist possesses. Thus, he got 9 points out of the total weights of 13 which stands at a poor 69%. But in Figure 2 (D), he missed one frame altogether (i.e.
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Language Sciences, Volume 10, Number 1 (1988)
Frame 1) and therefore was penalized for 1 point, thereby receiving a fair 20% out of the total weights of 5. In comparison, then, the seven-year-old did considerably better. She scored a fair 25% in Figure 2 (A), because she made all the connections except Frames l-2. Likewise, her scores for Figure 2 (B) and (C) are respectively superior to those of the boy, all because she was able to not only cognize the events but also relate the events to the objects and the protagonist fairly well. But since she also missed frame 1, an interesting feature of cartoon description that runs fairly high among all control subjects, her score is the same as that of the boy. Linguistic Analysis
For the linguistic analysis, shown in Figure 3, however, there are wider differences between the four-year-old and the seven-year-old, which means that
IOOSO60 7060 50-
-
40-
h4,
30-
;:_
_03)
(A)
I
Ol
20
-
20 *
CD) I FOlW
Figure 3.
I
I S.Yell
Acquisition of Discourse among Autistic children
M3
linguistically, especially in Figure 3 (B) and (C), as will be shown below, the development is slower too in both children compared to their cognitive development. What is interesting between these two children in the sample analysis, as far as their linguistic development is concerned, is that they have not quite mastered the skills to express linguistically in full what they see cognitively. For instance, in Figure 3 (B) the four-year-old got 56% (out of the total weight of 9), because he did not seem to have the right verbs to express the events which he apparently saw. Granted that he did not recognize Frame 1, hence there was no expression for the standing posture of the protagonist in his narration, he was able to express only the event of walking (in Frame 2), the event of flying (in Frame 3) the event of falling (in Frame 4), and the event of picking up (in Frame 5); obviously he saw that the hat was blown away but could not express the event of blowing (in Frame 3), nor was he able to express the event of chasing which implies that the object being chased is also moving (i.e. rolling), though evidently he recognized the event of falling which was the end point of the two preceding events (in Frame 4). In contrast, however, the seven-year-old fared better at 44%, although she, too had difficulties expressing the events she apparently saw with the right verbs. The main difference here is that while the four-year-old missed the expression of the event of chasing the seven-year-old did use the expression of hiroouto suruto “trying to pick (thing) up” in an attempt to describe the two connected events of chasing and rolling. In Figure 3 (C) where the linguistic expressions become quite complex and require more sophisticated skills, the real difference in acquistion as demonstrated by their age difference peaks vividly. This is because in Figure 3 (C) the linguistic compexity lies not only in discourse but also in sentence constructions where verbs and nouns intertwine within (such as at the sentence level) and without (i.e. while the four-year-old used exclusively only subjectless sentences, such as soushite yoka ittene (where soushite is a conjunction), the seven-year-old was able to manipulate not just the subject-predicate relations (as in Ojisan ga aruiteru) but the complement-predicate relations (as in sutekki de boushi o hirou where sutekki de is the complement consisting of the agent and the case particle); hence, she showed that she possessed the ability (or skills) to connect the sentence or clauses in Frames 3, 4 and 5. But note that instead of making complete sentences in each frame, she used the te form of the verbs tobu “to fly” and ochiru “to fall down” to connect the events in the frames. As a result, the sentence divisions do not coincide with the frame divisions; that is, part of her linguistic construction for Frame 3 is extended to Frame 4 in the same way that part of her linguistic construction for Frame 4 is extended to Frame 5. In contrast, however, the four-year-old did not have the divisional problem, due
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Language Sciences,Volume 10, Number 1 (l!MS)
partly
to his excessive
vocabulary
and linguistic
(C); as a result, connection
use of subjectless devices
his discourse
sentences
but mostly
to accommodate
appeared
“choppy”
to the lack of
the complexities giving
in Figure
the impression
3
of no
from one frame to the next.
RESULTS Given the above sample analysis of the data from two normal children (tested in a separate experiment), I believe the general idea is clear as to how the method is supposed to work. In this section, then, I shall now present the results of the actual analysis of the data base collected from the autistic and control subjects. Since there are 35 subjects altogether of whom only 13 are autistic, the results will be averaged out in each grade for comparison.
90 -
30-
p&p
30 ;_
(Cl
0""" Cil G2
G3
G4
G5
Figure 4.
G6
GI
G2
Cognitive
Analysis.
G3
G4
G5
G6
Acquisition of Discourse amoug Autistic Children
2Q5
90 90 70
1
7;
(A)
25
EL---
IOO90-
ii?zzGl
Figure 5.
Linguistic
C2
G3
G4
C5
G6
Analysis.
Notice that in both cognitive and linguistic analyses of the data base from the control group, the patterns of acquisition in terms of cross-sections came out quite unexpectedly random, although some sort of a trend can be detected. This is presumably because the sample was too small (three to four subjects per age bracket) to offer any statistic significance due to large standard deviations. However, and fortunately, since my purpose is not the acquisition of discourse among normal children but that of autistic subjects, the trends, in spite of the ostensible randomness, that have been obtained from the control subjects are quite useful and significant in that they will now be compared with the results of the autistic subjects which are presented below. LSC
10/1-N
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Language Sciences,Volume 10, Number 1 (1988)
.I00
lOO_ loo
,oo__
100
. _-___r_.
9080
60-
7060-
53
53
53 _.
5040-
_.
*.,40
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_
(A)
G2
G3
G4
G5
Figure 6.
G6
(B)
III GI G2
Cognitive
I G4
G3
II G5
G6
Analysis.
1007
90-m
-65
60-
85 79 N.*---____.77
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c*
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cc
' G3
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Figure 6.
LI GI
' G6
Linguistic
I G2
IIGl Cognitive
I G4
I G5
I G6
Analysis.
_
Figure 7.
I G3
03)
I
G2
Analysis.
I
G3
I
G4
I
G5
1
G6
Acquisition of Discourse among Autistic Children
207
6053
53
5040-
47
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040 .*
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G3
G4
G5
G6
Figure 7.
Cl
III G2
G3
G4
G5
G6
Linguistic Analysis.
Before I discuss the results from the autistic subjects, I should caution the reader that the 100% scores in both the cognitive and linguistic analysis do not imply that the autistic children did not say anything nor mean that they were unable to say anything; rather, they did say something but what they said were not what were asked for. It is probably this aspect of discourse (and language acquisition) among children that is of interest here.
DISCUSSION First, I should mention that the ages of the autistic and control subjects range from 7 to 12 (viz., Gl to G6) but that since I had only a small sample in each age bracket, the standard deviation (if calculated) can be expected to be very wide. However, since this is the first attempt in the study of the child language, I feel rather at ease to compare the two groups, even if the deviations within each group may show a wide margin. To this must be added the fact that in the autistic group G5 is missing (hence, the dotted lines in Figures 6 and 7), thereby making the comparison of this age bracket between the two groups impossible. Nonetheless, the comparison is meaningful in that I am only interested in the total difference in development between the two, rather than that of the individual age brackets. Second, it is of importance to point out that ideally one would expect a straight (negative) correlation of age and cognitive or of age and linguistic development in both groups, that is, the older the subjects the lower the scores in either criterion, as may be expected from Figures 2 and 3 where the four-year old and the seven-year old were compared. However, the results in Figures 4 and 5 show otherwise; in fact, in the C and D categories of both cognitive and
208
Laapage
Sciences, Volome 10, Numbert(1988)
linguistic analysis, the correlation is reversed in the control group. The reason, I presume, is due to the size of samples taken, on the one hand, and possibly to the method employed, on the other. But in the absence of any technique or method that can be considered better suited, I am inclined to believe that it is the former (i.e. individual variations among the controls) that caused the reversed trend. Given the above mentioned warnings, let me now focus on the substance of the results presented above. First and foremost, it is of significance to note that children at the age of 12 (G6) were still unable to see that the cartoon frames are related in terms of the flow of content from one frame to another. Granted that the tasks imposed on the children demanded that they use their cognitive ability and linguistic ski% to report what they saw, it has become apparently clear that it would take these children (i.e. control subjects and their peers and contemporaries) a few more years before they will realize spontaneously that a story when depicted in cartoon strips (or by way of other medium) must be told in a connected fashion and viewed as such. It is the lack of these abilities that the control subjects had a relatively poor showing in the (A) category of both cognition and linguistic skills. Typical examples are: hito ga tatte imasu (Frame 1) “a man is standing”; aruite imasu (Frame 2) “(a man) is walking”; boushi ga kaze de tonde shimai mashita (Frame 3) “a hat because of wind has been flown away”; mizu ni ochite shimai mashita (Frame 4) “(it) fell into the water” houshi o tsue de tori mashita (Frame 5) “(someone) used a cane to pick up (the) hat” (see 1.1.D in the Appendix). Compared to the controls, however, the autistic children were far worse for this initial category (A) in both cognitive and linquistic ability, as they all reached the score of 1009’0, which is to say that all autistic children tested couid not see any connection nor could they express the connections among the cartoon strips. This is not tantamount to saying that they were mute. Most of them did talk, some showing the phenomenon of echolalia or perseveration. Typical examples are: ni, San, yon, go, roku, shichi, ha&i, kyuu, ju, two, three, four, five, six, seven, either, nine, ten” . . .; bousho “a hat”, san nen sei dew “(I am) a third grader” (imitating another child nearby); ichi nen sei desu “(I am) a first grader”; okada taku “(I am) taku okada”; i&i, ni, san, yen, go. .“one, two, three, four, five . . .” (see 4.1.D in the Appendix). As may be shown by the examples in the Appendix, most autistic children in the lower grades were inattentive and seemed to have uttered what they had been taught in class, such as counting, their own names, or grades; if they did say anything relevant at all, as in 11.2.A, they paid attention to only one feature in the cartoon, e.g. hat, or atherwise used body gestures (such as imitating the postures in the cartoon) and uttered phrases like kou yatte “doing like this” to accompany the kinesics
Acquisition of Discourseamong Autistic Children
2O!J
employed (e.g. 23.4.C). In so doing, then, there was a tendency to substitute demonstratives, such as kotchi “this way” (cf. 22.4.C) and kore “this” (cf. 21.4.C) for the target nouns, like cane or the protagonist. Even at G6, the only autistic child tested at this age, 36.6.B, skipped Frame 1 and Frame 4, thereby truncating the whole discourse to merely three frames; even so, this autistic child showed the same tendency of paying attention to one feature (i.e. hat and later on cane) while ignoring practically everything else. The difference between the cognitive ability and linguistic skills in the case of (A), as far as the control subjects are concerned, is minimum in that very little discrepancy is displayed, except for G4 where the subjects in this age bracket (10) seemed to have demonstrated better linguistic skills, and that the patterns look rather similar. However, attention should be drawn to the fact that a marked discrepancy may be observed between cognition and linguistic skills in (B) among the control subjects. This is also true of the autistic subjects, except that they showed a more developmental tendency (i.e. the older the age the better the scores; see Figures 4 and 5). Note that the main objective in (B) of cognitive analysis is to measure whether the subjects were able to notice the events which happened consecutively in the cartoon strip and that the main objective in (B) of linguistic analysis is to measure the use of verbs that depicted those events. While there is no question that the control subjects were more or less capable of cognizing the events, they had some difficulties expressing those events with the right verbs. Typical examples are hitori no otoko no hito ga “a man” koko ni sutekki o motte tatte “holding a cane here while standing” (Frame 1); dandan aruite ittara “when walking gradually (towards some place)” (Frame 2); kaze ga fuite kite “the wind began to blow” boushi ga tonjatta no de “the hat was flown away” (Frame 3); korokoro korogatte “rolling down” de, mizu no naka e okkotchatta tokoro o “as it fell into the water” (Frame 4); kono, sono, sutekki de hikkakete totta “then using this, that cane to hook on it and picked it up” (Frame 5) (see 9.2 in the Appendix). Unlike (B) in both groups, (C) shows a relatively consistent development between the cognitive ability and the linguistic skills of each group. Note in particular that the (C) category requires the cognition of objects in the cartoon strip as well as the presence of the protagonist, on the one hand, and the use of nouns and pronouns or demonstrative pronouns to represent them in the narration, on the other. The control subjects in Figures 4 and 5 did quite well on the whole but the developmental graphs show zigzag patterns, especially at G5 (age 11) where the subjects seemed to have done worse than their juniors, notwithstanding that the G5 subjects’ scores were consistently poor throughout the entire testings. The reason, again, may be attributed to the three individuals selected in the sample who happened to have a greater than the average
210
Language Sciences, Volume 10, Number 1 (1988)
individual
variation
in cognition
and linguistic
skills. Typical
examples
from this
age bracket (G5) are as follows: Aruitete “while walking” (Frame 2); boushi o tobashite “(he) blew away the hat” (Frame 3); tori ni ikoo to shite “attempting to pick it up” (Frame 4); sore de boushi o totta “and pick it up with that” (Frame 5) (24.5). (See the rest of G5 in the Appendix.) Observe that this subject employed all the way subjectless sentences. While under normal circumstances, such as face-to-face conversations, subjectless sentences are common because of the context of situation, in the context of a testing; especially when the objective is to measure the connections in a story, the omission of the subject in any sentence becomes a violation of the narrative discourse. In the case of the above fifth grader, she not only omitted every subject required but also used the wrong relations (not ungrammatical, however) for Frame 3 between the noun houshi “hat” and the verb tobashite (in the gerundic form) because of the wrong case marker passive
o and the wrong ending of the verb (which should have been in the form), not to mention that the verb should have been a compound verb in the passive (fukitoba sareru). (See the Target Discourse presented further
above.) Compared to the control subjects, the autistic subjects in (C) did poorly for both cognition and linguistic skills. Since there is no G5 in the autistic group, as was pointed out at the beginning, a direct comparison of this age bracket is impossible. However, on the whole, it can be noted that the autistic subjects were worse than the controls in both cognitive ability and linguistic skills but that the autistic subjects showed no better improvement cross-sectionally for the linguistic skills. Let me cite below the only example of G6: totsuzen “suddenly”, aruite ita “(someone) is walking” (Frame 2); boushi ga tobasareta “the hat got blown away” (Frame 3); sutekki de boushi o torimashita “(someone) picked Up the hat with the cane ” (Frame 5); nurete shimai mashita “got wet” (the subject was imitating somebody else in the vicinity who was also taking the test). Observe that this sixth grader showed the same tendency of omitting the subject of each sentence, although he got the relations of the noun (boushi “hat”) and the verb (tobasareta “got blown away”) right by using the correct case marker ga. It is, of course, difficult to generalize that autistic children at G6 would handle such relations better than normal children at G5, because the other control subjects (a boy and another girl) at G5 also showed the tendency of omitting the subject of a sentence, even though the boy did correctly use the noun-verb relationships in Frame 2. In general, however, autistic children’s attention was easily distracted; the more so as they were younger, albeit G4 of Figure 7 did considerably worse for (C) than G3 or younger. This is because one of the fourth graders (21.4.C and 24.4.C) needed help and were cued and coaxed (especially 24.4.C) before he would say anything; even when he said something
Acquisition of Discourse among Autlstic CbiIdren
211
in response to the experimenter’s cues (such as, “Well, a hat, and then?“) what came out of him consisted merely of single words, like boushi “a hat” or otoshite “fell down” and mizu “water”, which were accompanied by his pointing to supplement what he said. (For the remaining details, see the Appendix.) The last category (D) for both cognition and linguistic skills showed a very consistent developmental pattern in each group. However, 1 should point out that the developmental pattern of the control group is drastically different from that of the autistic group, not only cross-sectionally but also as a whole. What is of great interest here is that while the control group at Gl did not skip any frame from the cartoon strip, as the age increased the skipping of one or two (especially Frame 1) became more conspicuous peaking at G5 (c$ Figures 4 and 5); there is no such tendency in the autistic group (cf: Figures 6 and 7), however. What is the explanation for this seeming discrepency? For one thing, the autistic subjects all skipped at least one frame of the cartoon strip, the worst being no response as in 12.2 who from the very beginning did nothing but blowing air into the microphone, giggling, and looking elsewhere without paying any attention to what was being asked of him; on the average they skipped two or more frames. For instance, 4.1 .D said plenty but only boushi “a hat” was in response to the experimenter’s request, the rest being simply counting one, two, three, . . and mentioning his own name and class. So, that is why the autistic children did not have the same pattern. But that does not answer the question fully. I am inclined to speculate two things: (1) either the experimenters did not make themselves clear to the control subjects or (2) the normal children at Gl (age 7) tended to be more obedient and, therefore, they paid more attention to what they saw, whereas the normal children at higher ages, especially G5 (age 11 which is close to puberty) tended to become less obedient and, therefore, they were more likely to do what they were supposed to do, not because they did not have the linguistic skills to express the cognitive observations but because they did not want to say what they saw; in fact, two of the three fifth graders who got the worst scores in (D) said the least among the control subjects (c$ 25.5. and 26.5.). This latter speculation is supported by the fact that on the whole the lower graders said much more than upper graders, although grammatically speaking at the discourse level, the first and second graders’ discourse was less well organized; the sixth graders of the control group were by far the best, even though they, too, skipped Frame 1 except 33.6.
CONCLUSION I have attempted in this article to measure the development of discourse among children, in general, and among autistic children in particular, by
212
Language Sciences,Volume 10, Number l(l988)
dividing the acquisition of discourse into two parts: cognitive ability and linguistic skills. While there is no clearcut demarcation between these two aspects of language behaviour, because as the behaviour becomes more complex, say, from one-unit utterance to discourse communication, the distinction gets more and more difficult. But the distinction, no matter how inaccurate it may seem, is worthwhile or even necessary, especially when (motor) aphasias are taken into consideration whereby such an aphasic may comprehend 100% what he/she sees (e.g. pictures) by pointing but cannot name them. I am, of course, not suggesting that autistic children are like aphasics in their language behaviour; rather, what I have just said boils down to the fact that language acquisition requires both cognitive ability and linguistic skills and that the latter alone does not constitute a language one wishes or is supposed to acquire. Otherwise, simple mimicries of what other people said or of what has been taught mechanically for the purpose of “generating” well-formed utterances, such as some of the autistic first graders’ utterances included in the Appendix, would count as the acquisition of a language. Needless to say, children must mimic the utterances they hear around them, especially from their elders, to a considerable extent, but unless they can also integrate what they have learned as linguistic skills through trial-and-error with what they have cognized in their environments and learn to associate these two aspects children cannot be said to have acquired a language. In light of the aforementioned, I would like to put forth the following findings in order to conclude my presentation: (1) It is wrong for many TG-minded linguistics, even if they are not TG-ers themselves, to claim that children can acquire a language within a short period of time; some even have said that by the age of four, children have already acquired their language; so perfect was their acquisition that the environment or the utterances they had heard served only as a trigger. What my study shows, however, is that children may well be able to say each sentence correctly or even appropriately under limited circumstances, they have to continue to acquire not only the linguistic skills to put sentences together into discourse units under varying circumstances but also the association of those skills with the maturation of their cognitive ability accompanied by the development of their nervous systems. This process of language acquisition will take a long time, probably well beyond puberty. (2) Autistic children, once their inhibition to talk is overcome (and this is what the Daily Life Therapy is claimed to do to them) can acquire a language as quickly as their normal peers. This is not tantamount to saying that there is some kind of innate mechanism in the human brain geared specifically for language; rather, it means that there is no organic disorder - unless proven
Acquisitionof DiscourseamongAutisticChildre~~ 213
otherwise medically - in an autistic child and, therefore, once whatever impediment there is in the autistic child is disinhibited, the same process for language acquisition takes effect, except that autistic children are clearly at a disadvantage of being late learners. In a separate study, where well advanced autistic children were examined, they were as fluent and inquisitive as their normal peers. What makes them still “autistic” is that their attention becomes easily distracted and they are emotionally curious but “fragile.” (3) Autistic children in my study above were not only inattentive to what was being said but also inattentive to what the experimenter wanted them to do. On the other hand, they were attentative to what they were interested in; they paid attention to only one or two features in the cartoon, say, boushi “a hat” or mizu “water”, while ignoring the rest in the cartoon strip. Thus, they are easily distracted not because they are inattentive but because they want to be attentive to what they are interested in and, therefore, they seem to be inattententive to what you want them to pay attention to. I think the Daily Life Therapy focuses on this seemingly paradoxical characteristic of autistic children and guides them through their daily lives to first discover what they are interested in and then direct them to pay more attention to those activities - including linguistic skills - gradually, so that they can discover on their own that there are things that are equally interesting besides, if not more so than, what they are interested in. It may take a long time before anyone has an answer to how autistic children happen to be able to acquire a language. But I believe it is also important to learn how they improve their language once they have acquired the rudiments of it. This presentation is a step forward in that direction.
REFERENCES
Kitahara, Kiyo 1983 Daily Life Therapy: A Method of Educating Autistic Tokyo: Musashino Higashi Gakuen School
APPENDIX
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1
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214
Language Scieaces,Volume10, Number 1 (1988)
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Language Sciences, Volume 10, Number l(l988)
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On the Acquisition of Discourse among Autistic Children
Fred C. C. Peng International Christian University
ABSTRACT
Autistic children have great difficulties acquiring the ability to talk, a symptom that is well known for their behaviour. The etiology of autism is diverse, ranging from organic to functional causes, but the sequala is the same: Autistic children do not talk, if they have already acquired a language, are inattentive, hyperactive, and emotionally fragile. Even so, they can still be taught to talk and acquire a language or regain the language they have already acquired prior to the onset of the disease but lost as part of the sequala. In this article, I shall describe the acquisition of discourse among autistic children selected from a school in Japan, called Musashino Higashi Gakuen, where children diagnosed as autistic are being trained to talk or even to acquire a language. I should emphasize that my objective here is not to discuss the merits of the training method, but to describe the progress Japanese autistic children have made in one significant aspect of language skills, viz., discourse. The method employed for this study was cross-sectional, using non-autistic children of the same age groups as controls for comparison. The subjects were all primary school children, ranging from grade 1 to grade 6 in age, the total being 35 for both autistic subjects and controls. The technique used to elicit data waslex~~menta1; each subject was asked to describe what he/she saw in a five-frame cartooh. The aim was to check (1) whether or not the child was able to link the five frames1 of the cartoon strip in a narrative fasion; (2) whether or not the subject has acquired the linguistic skills for expressing the varying forms of action and the objects that appear in the cartoon; and (3) whether or not the child was able to concentrate, viz., was attentive enough when performing the task and, if not, whether or not assistance was required to carry out the experiment. It may take a long time before anyone has an answer to how autistic children happen to be able to acquire a language. But I believe it is also important to learn how they improve their language once they have acquired the rudiments of it. This presentation is a step forward in that direction.
Autistic children are known as such, because they have great difficulty acquiring the ability to talk, let alone learning a language. Many autistic children never develop those abilities even by their teens. However, there is a
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Language Sciences, Volume
IO, Number
I (1988)
school in Japan, called Musashino Higashi Gakuen, where children diagnosed as autistic are being trained to talk or even to acquire a language. The method employed, according to the founder of the school, Dr Kiyo Kitahara, is named The Daily Life Therapy: A Method of Educating Autistic Children. The first and foremost purpose of this method is to train autistic children, among other things, to acquire the Japanese language, if they are Japanese, or the English language, if they are Americans or are from countries where English is spoken. Through the good will of Dr Kitahara I was able to investigate her pupils, both autistic and normal, at her school in order to get data for this study. Let me, therefore, describe below the subjects investigated and how the data were collected. I should emphasize that my objective here is not to discuss the merits of the training method, but to describe the progress Japanese autistic children have made in one significant aspect of language skills, namely, discourse. The subjects were all primary school children. Their ages range from grade 1 to grade 6, there being in principle six subjects from each grade. However, due to certain technical problems, some subjects were later excluded and others, added. As a result, there were 35 children who were investigated, but they were not evenly distributed in age brackets. The breakdown of the number of normal vs autistic children in each age bracket is shown in Table 1. Table 1 Distribution of Normal vs Autistic Children according to Grade
Number of Children
Age
Normal Autistic
3 3
(G 2)
Normal Autistic
3 3
Grade 3 (G 3)
Normal Autistic
3 3
Grade 4 (G 4)
Normal Autistic
3 3
Grade 5 (G 5)
Normal Autistic
3 0
Grade 6 (G 6)
Normal Autistic
7
Grade 1 (G 1) Grade 2
1
Acquisition of Lkcourw
among Autistic Children
1%
Since this paper is not concerned with how the autistic children happened to acquire their language in the first place, but rather with the manner and extent to which the one aspect of language skills, viz., discourse ability, is developed by them, when compared with the control subjects who were the normal children, I shall assume that certain rudimental skills, such as constructing simple phrases or uttering a limited number of words, had already been acquired by the autistic children. Since the approach to the study is cross-sectional, I shall also assume that any claims on real-time results will be no more than inferences on my part. In order to measure how much autistic children have acquired of the ability of discourse over the span of 54 years, it is necessary to conduct an experiment change among all subjects. This experiment was a test borrowed from the SLTA (Standard Language Test for Aphasia) that is employed in Japan for aphasic patients; namely, the oral description of a five-frame cartoon strip that was shown to the subjects as a stimulus. It is recapitulated in Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Cartoon.
For the experiment, each subject was asked to describe what he/she saw in the cartoon. The aim was to check: (1) whether or not the child was able to link the five frames of the cartoon strip in a narrative fashion, that is, to see them as a connected whole, rather than unrelated individual frames; (2) whether or not the subject had acquired the linguistic skills for expressing the varying forms of action and the objects that appear in the cartoon; and (3) whether or not the child was able to concentrate, viz., was attentative enough when performing the task, and if not, whether or not assistance was required to carry out the experiment.
1%
Language Sciences, Volume 10, Number 1 (1988)
THE STIMULUS
As was mentioned is usually
above,
used to test aphasic
the stimulus patients
employed
many
for the present
of whom cannot
experiment
conduct
a decent
narration about the cartoon, not because they have not acquired the necessary cognitive ability and linguistic skills but because they “lost” what they had already acquired. My presentation, however, is not intended to compare the results with aphasic patients’ impaired speech; rather, it is intended, as is the case with aphasic patients, to compare the results with the normative result that is expected of “normal” adults. What is more, the results from the experiment on the autistic subjects will also be compared with the results obtained from the control subjects who were also tested. I should also add that since the conducted tests involved the tasks of (1) understanding the cartoon strip in terms of cognition and then (2) verbalizing what is seen (i.e. putting into words what comes through the eyes into the visual cortex), the behaviour is not a simple verbalization but rather a significant part of an interaction that requires a complicated mental processing of both decoding (from sensory information) and encoding (for motor output). But since what can be observed in the experiment is the encoded output, that is, whether the subject has decoded the sensory information (i.e. the visual stimuli) correctly or not depends entirely on what the subject puts into words and sentences, I shall further assume that what is missing or does not come out in the verbalization has not been decoded properly by the subject and, therefore, has not been understood either (1) cognitively or (2) linguistically. By the former it is meant that the subject has not been able to perceive the subtleties of the cartoon strip, such as the fact that the person in each frame of the cartoon strip is the same person throughout and, therefore, the five frames constitute a significant whole, whereas by the latter it is meant that the subject may have perceived the cartoon properly but simply cannot find or has not acquired the right words or sentence pattern or grammatical category to express what is seen, for instance, the verb of motion implying “blown away” or the word for “cane”. Either way, the output is bound to be defective. But a defect in the output may have resulted from a combination of both, for instance, the picking up of the hat with the cane implies that the hat has once fallen into the water, rather than being stopped from falling into the water, and thus the failure to see this connection may be due to the combination of cognitive gap and linguistic underdevelopment. The cartoon strip that was employed for the tests has two places which require this kind of connection, viz., between the third and the fourth frame and between the fourth and the last frame; it, therefore, demands a good deal of language behaviour and cognitive capacity on the part of each person taking the tests. If so, what should then be compared with the subject’s
Acquisition of Discourse among Autistic Children
197
results obtained from the tests? I propose the establishment of a target based on normal adults’ account of the cartoon strip.
THE APPROXIMATE TARGET Since adults cannot be expected to come out with a uniform expression of the cartoon strip - on the grounds that one may express the same thing differently - the target expression of the cartoon can only be an approximation. It is this approximation that will be compared with two samples from the results of the control subjects, so that a baseline may be established for the comparison with the results from the autistic subjects. The target expression and the two examples are listed below as the norms of their respective ages. Samples 4-x%! (Y:) 4:0 (male) Kore aruite ittedeshou. Ld1:1;r~Tl~,TTl_
2 5,
Soushite yokoe ittene, okontonjattade
okonnai
+iLTftW-l~7Tta.
#jr,&,r,-c>
i’Jicnm,GeP7t:T,
Frame 2
Frame 3
Frame 4
This is walking.
Then turning sideway, falling and flying away
to omottara okocchatta.
Soushite un
soushitene, tottano.
tr .g~7 f: i i’&i 7 5 rp7 t: o
TiL-c
5 i L-ccl.
Never thought (it) would fall but did!
iA
t -7t:uo,,
Frame 5 Then, eh, then (he) took it.
7 2.!h! C&k) 7:0 (female) Ojisanga aruiteru. To kazega tondekite, boushiga tonde hiroouto 8 I: $ hti’JSL>T6. &Jarl~f(*r~T 3 T. #I FtJ~rRrGTfctnt3 i t -6 6 t.
Frame 2 An old man is walking.
Frame 3 And the wind came blowing.
okkotte
sutekkide boushiwo hirou.
i’k7C7?
~tY+TfilJ%t::i.
Frame 5 (It) fell into the sea and (he) attempts to pick (it) up.
suruto, umini
Frame 4 The hat flew away and (he) attempts to pick (it) up.
tilj IC
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Language Sciences, Volume 10, Number 1 (1988)
Target
Discourse
Boushiwo kabutte tuewo motta otokonohitoga
tatteimasu.
~~I(x~~;.7_;t11;1.~?f~~:I?)h~~,li7~L~~t.-6,
Frame 1
A man wearing a hat and carrying a cane is standing. Konohitowa samponi dekakemashita Z U.,A If ,yr:L:!:lllIs~i-t1 I_f:,
Frame 2
This man goes out strolling. 1 Suruto totsujo kazega fuitekite, (kareno) kabutteita boushiga, -6~t~~huJ~~*~l~~;1~~(r7. (iris,) ?,~;.7_ii~$:ip;Ijh‘, Then, suddenly the wind starts to blow and his hat > Frame 3 fukitobasaremashita Ii);&Jltf-t
S $1 ?k L I:,
gets blown away. Sorede karewa korogatteiku boushiwo okkakemashitaga, mizunonakani fdl7ifiWLCfi~7-c~~ : Pii(6-;-B7n~fj~ Lt:!l,. OilJcli/J
/ boushiwa \
He thus starts to chase the hat that is rolling on the ground, but the hat ochite shimaimashita % r, T L z 11 $ L 1: 0 falls into the water. Karewa jibunga motteiru tuewo sakasani tsukai, sonoboushiwo hikkakete i~I_ir’l’/r*~~!~7~?r~15tifr~~!~~~i~.-t_o,l$;;(~_S,+Pij? He then reverses his cane and hooks the hat onto it tsuriage mashita. f!J ll 1 I? % L t:,
thereby lifting the hat up.
Frame 4
I \
Frame 5
Acquisition of Discourse among Autistic Childrea
19
METHOD
In order to get the raw data, two students of the International Christian University were used to conduct the experiment; they asked the autistic and control subjects to describe the cartoon strip, whose descriptions were then tape-recorded. The recorded tapes were later transcribed to produce the data base which was subjected to an analysis that follows. (See Appendix for the Data Base.) Two sets of methodical criteria were thus subjectively established so as to facilitate analysis of the data base. They correspond to the two aspects of the stimulus mentioned earlier. Cognitive
Criteria
A. The cartoon strip must be regarded as constituting a connected whole; rather than unrelated individual parts. B. Each subject must recognize that the first frame depicts a static posture which is followed by a series of four basic events in which there are movements, i.e. after the initial state, the four frames are dynamically related in that the events take place in succession. (These posture and movements of the protagonist require the use of verbs in the descriptions.) C. The posture is taken by the protagonist with some objects. And the events happen to the protagonist and the objects the protagonist possesses. The autistic and control subjects must be able to see such relationships and cognize who is doing what as well as what is happening to whom and which object. D. Since the cartoon strip is an integrated story, no part of it should be omitted, so as to assure not only connection but integration as well. Linguistic Criteria
A. To express the contents of the cartoon strip as a connected whole requires certain linguistic devices of which the autistic and control subjects may or may not be capable. Such devices range from personal pronouns to verbal modifiers that serve as anaphoras. Primitive devices, such as conjunctions, e.g. soshite “and then”, may also be used but are not required. B. Not only should suitable verbs be chosen to describe the posture and the events, but the right endings, such as the inflectional or derivational suffixes, must also be required of the verbs chosen. C. The relationships between verbs (expressing the posture and the events)
200
Language !?&mces, Volume 10, Number 1 (1988)
and nouns (expressing the objects and the context of the situation) must be grammatically related. D. As the cartoon strip constitutes a continuum from the initial state to the last event, the story moves swiftly from one frame to the next. Thus, there is no need for long sentences to express the contents. However, truncation of the initial posture or of any subsequent event by way of conjoining will not be allowed. Errors on particles will also be counted.
ANALYSIS Since the purpose of this article, as has been stated, is the measurement of cognitive ability and linguistic skills regarding autistic children’s acquisition of discourse over time - in addition to the fact that this is the first attempt in the literature - I decided to adopt a weighting system in which digital weights are computed in the cartoon strip for each frame whenever one or more of the criteria are violated. Thus, the perfect score will be “zero” in the case of an adult; that is, no weight will be computed if all the criteria are observed. The following lists indicate the weights in parentheses for each criterion. Cognitive Weights
A. Juncture of Frames 1-2 (l), Juncture of Frames 2-3 (l), Frames 34 (l), Juncture of Frames 4-5 (1). B. Frame 1 (l), Frame 2 (l), Frame 3 (l), Frame 4 (l), Frame C. Frame 1 (3), Frame 2 (l), Frame 3 (2), Frame 4 (3), Frame D. Frame 1 (I), Frame 2 (l), Frame 3 (l), Frame 4 (I), Frame
Juncture
of
5 (1). 5 (4). 5 (1).
The results are tabulated further below. Since the perfect score is set up at 0 point, the higher the score goes the poorer the level of acquisition is. Linguistic Weights
A. Transition of Frames 1-2 (l), Transition of Frames 2-3 (l), of Frames 3-4 (I), Transition of Frames 4-5 (1). B. Frame 1 (l), Frame 2 (I), Frame 3 (2), Frame 4 (3), Frame C. Frame 1 (3). Frame 2 (l), Frame 3 (2). Frame 4 (2), Frame D. Frame 1 (l), Frame 2 (l), Frame 3 (I), Frame 4 (l), Frame
Transition 5 (2). 5 (3). 5 (1).
SAMPLE ANALYSIS Suppose that the aforementioned method is employed in order to analyze the two samples from the control subjects. For the cognitive analysis, then, both subjects get the results on the four criteria as shown in Figure 2.
Acquisition of Discourse among Autistic Cbildreo
201
Cognitive Analysis loo
too 90
60 70 60 50 40 30
\
(A)
t
2
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s
loo
90 60-
:I 6\54 50-
40 30 -
:;_ o-
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I Sevetl
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Note that the four-year-old had 100% in Figure 2 (A) which means that he got 4 points which are the total weights given to that category. In other words, he treated each frame in the cartoon strip as unrelated individual parts, because in his narrative there is no connection from one frame to the next. In Figure 2 (B), however, the boy recognized only three events, viz., Frames 2, 3, and 5, in the entire cartoon strip, failing to observe even the standing posture in Frame 1 and the chasing event in Frame 4 of the protagonist. Thus, he got 2 points out of the total weights of 5, which amounts to 40%. When it comes to who is doing what and what is happening to whom and which object in Figure 2 (C), he was able to cognize the walking while failing to relate the events to the objects the protagonist possesses. Thus, he got 9 points out of the total weights of 13 which stands at a poor 69%. But in Figure 2 (D), he missed one frame altogether (i.e.
202
Language Sciences, Volume 10, Number 1 (1988)
Frame 1) and therefore was penalized for 1 point, thereby receiving a fair 20% out of the total weights of 5. In comparison, then, the seven-year-old did considerably better. She scored a fair 25% in Figure 2 (A), because she made all the connections except Frames l-2. Likewise, her scores for Figure 2 (B) and (C) are respectively superior to those of the boy, all because she was able to not only cognize the events but also relate the events to the objects and the protagonist fairly well. But since she also missed frame 1, an interesting feature of cartoon description that runs fairly high among all control subjects, her score is the same as that of the boy. Linguistic Analysis
For the linguistic analysis, shown in Figure 3, however, there are wider differences between the four-year-old and the seven-year-old, which means that
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Acquisition of Discourse among Autistic children
M3
linguistically, especially in Figure 3 (B) and (C), as will be shown below, the development is slower too in both children compared to their cognitive development. What is interesting between these two children in the sample analysis, as far as their linguistic development is concerned, is that they have not quite mastered the skills to express linguistically in full what they see cognitively. For instance, in Figure 3 (B) the four-year-old got 56% (out of the total weight of 9), because he did not seem to have the right verbs to express the events which he apparently saw. Granted that he did not recognize Frame 1, hence there was no expression for the standing posture of the protagonist in his narration, he was able to express only the event of walking (in Frame 2), the event of flying (in Frame 3) the event of falling (in Frame 4), and the event of picking up (in Frame 5); obviously he saw that the hat was blown away but could not express the event of blowing (in Frame 3), nor was he able to express the event of chasing which implies that the object being chased is also moving (i.e. rolling), though evidently he recognized the event of falling which was the end point of the two preceding events (in Frame 4). In contrast, however, the seven-year-old fared better at 44%, although she, too had difficulties expressing the events she apparently saw with the right verbs. The main difference here is that while the four-year-old missed the expression of the event of chasing the seven-year-old did use the expression of hiroouto suruto “trying to pick (thing) up” in an attempt to describe the two connected events of chasing and rolling. In Figure 3 (C) where the linguistic expressions become quite complex and require more sophisticated skills, the real difference in acquistion as demonstrated by their age difference peaks vividly. This is because in Figure 3 (C) the linguistic compexity lies not only in discourse but also in sentence constructions where verbs and nouns intertwine within (such as at the sentence level) and without (i.e. while the four-year-old used exclusively only subjectless sentences, such as soushite yoka ittene (where soushite is a conjunction), the seven-year-old was able to manipulate not just the subject-predicate relations (as in Ojisan ga aruiteru) but the complement-predicate relations (as in sutekki de boushi o hirou where sutekki de is the complement consisting of the agent and the case particle); hence, she showed that she possessed the ability (or skills) to connect the sentence or clauses in Frames 3, 4 and 5. But note that instead of making complete sentences in each frame, she used the te form of the verbs tobu “to fly” and ochiru “to fall down” to connect the events in the frames. As a result, the sentence divisions do not coincide with the frame divisions; that is, part of her linguistic construction for Frame 3 is extended to Frame 4 in the same way that part of her linguistic construction for Frame 4 is extended to Frame 5. In contrast, however, the four-year-old did not have the divisional problem, due
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Language Sciences,Volume 10, Number 1 (l!MS)
partly
to his excessive
vocabulary
and linguistic
(C); as a result, connection
use of subjectless devices
his discourse
sentences
but mostly
to accommodate
appeared
“choppy”
to the lack of
the complexities giving
in Figure
the impression
3
of no
from one frame to the next.
RESULTS Given the above sample analysis of the data from two normal children (tested in a separate experiment), I believe the general idea is clear as to how the method is supposed to work. In this section, then, I shall now present the results of the actual analysis of the data base collected from the autistic and control subjects. Since there are 35 subjects altogether of whom only 13 are autistic, the results will be averaged out in each grade for comparison.
90 -
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G3
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G6
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G2
Cognitive
Analysis.
G3
G4
G5
G6
Acquisition of Discourse amoug Autistic Children
2Q5
90 90 70
1
7;
(A)
25
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Figure 5.
Linguistic
C2
G3
G4
C5
G6
Analysis.
Notice that in both cognitive and linguistic analyses of the data base from the control group, the patterns of acquisition in terms of cross-sections came out quite unexpectedly random, although some sort of a trend can be detected. This is presumably because the sample was too small (three to four subjects per age bracket) to offer any statistic significance due to large standard deviations. However, and fortunately, since my purpose is not the acquisition of discourse among normal children but that of autistic subjects, the trends, in spite of the ostensible randomness, that have been obtained from the control subjects are quite useful and significant in that they will now be compared with the results of the autistic subjects which are presented below. LSC
10/1-N
2436
Language Sciences,Volume 10, Number 1 (1988)
.I00
lOO_ loo
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G6
(B)
III GI G2
Cognitive
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G6
Analysis.
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03)
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Analysis.
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Acquisition of Discourse among Autistic Children
207
6053
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Cl
III G2
G3
G4
G5
G6
Linguistic Analysis.
Before I discuss the results from the autistic subjects, I should caution the reader that the 100% scores in both the cognitive and linguistic analysis do not imply that the autistic children did not say anything nor mean that they were unable to say anything; rather, they did say something but what they said were not what were asked for. It is probably this aspect of discourse (and language acquisition) among children that is of interest here.
DISCUSSION First, I should mention that the ages of the autistic and control subjects range from 7 to 12 (viz., Gl to G6) but that since I had only a small sample in each age bracket, the standard deviation (if calculated) can be expected to be very wide. However, since this is the first attempt in the study of the child language, I feel rather at ease to compare the two groups, even if the deviations within each group may show a wide margin. To this must be added the fact that in the autistic group G5 is missing (hence, the dotted lines in Figures 6 and 7), thereby making the comparison of this age bracket between the two groups impossible. Nonetheless, the comparison is meaningful in that I am only interested in the total difference in development between the two, rather than that of the individual age brackets. Second, it is of importance to point out that ideally one would expect a straight (negative) correlation of age and cognitive or of age and linguistic development in both groups, that is, the older the subjects the lower the scores in either criterion, as may be expected from Figures 2 and 3 where the four-year old and the seven-year old were compared. However, the results in Figures 4 and 5 show otherwise; in fact, in the C and D categories of both cognitive and
208
Laapage
Sciences, Volome 10, Numbert(1988)
linguistic analysis, the correlation is reversed in the control group. The reason, I presume, is due to the size of samples taken, on the one hand, and possibly to the method employed, on the other. But in the absence of any technique or method that can be considered better suited, I am inclined to believe that it is the former (i.e. individual variations among the controls) that caused the reversed trend. Given the above mentioned warnings, let me now focus on the substance of the results presented above. First and foremost, it is of significance to note that children at the age of 12 (G6) were still unable to see that the cartoon frames are related in terms of the flow of content from one frame to another. Granted that the tasks imposed on the children demanded that they use their cognitive ability and linguistic ski% to report what they saw, it has become apparently clear that it would take these children (i.e. control subjects and their peers and contemporaries) a few more years before they will realize spontaneously that a story when depicted in cartoon strips (or by way of other medium) must be told in a connected fashion and viewed as such. It is the lack of these abilities that the control subjects had a relatively poor showing in the (A) category of both cognition and linguistic skills. Typical examples are: hito ga tatte imasu (Frame 1) “a man is standing”; aruite imasu (Frame 2) “(a man) is walking”; boushi ga kaze de tonde shimai mashita (Frame 3) “a hat because of wind has been flown away”; mizu ni ochite shimai mashita (Frame 4) “(it) fell into the water” houshi o tsue de tori mashita (Frame 5) “(someone) used a cane to pick up (the) hat” (see 1.1.D in the Appendix). Compared to the controls, however, the autistic children were far worse for this initial category (A) in both cognitive and linquistic ability, as they all reached the score of 1009’0, which is to say that all autistic children tested couid not see any connection nor could they express the connections among the cartoon strips. This is not tantamount to saying that they were mute. Most of them did talk, some showing the phenomenon of echolalia or perseveration. Typical examples are: ni, San, yon, go, roku, shichi, ha&i, kyuu, ju, two, three, four, five, six, seven, either, nine, ten” . . .; bousho “a hat”, san nen sei dew “(I am) a third grader” (imitating another child nearby); ichi nen sei desu “(I am) a first grader”; okada taku “(I am) taku okada”; i&i, ni, san, yen, go. .“one, two, three, four, five . . .” (see 4.1.D in the Appendix). As may be shown by the examples in the Appendix, most autistic children in the lower grades were inattentive and seemed to have uttered what they had been taught in class, such as counting, their own names, or grades; if they did say anything relevant at all, as in 11.2.A, they paid attention to only one feature in the cartoon, e.g. hat, or atherwise used body gestures (such as imitating the postures in the cartoon) and uttered phrases like kou yatte “doing like this” to accompany the kinesics
Acquisition of Discourseamong Autistic Children
2O!J
employed (e.g. 23.4.C). In so doing, then, there was a tendency to substitute demonstratives, such as kotchi “this way” (cf. 22.4.C) and kore “this” (cf. 21.4.C) for the target nouns, like cane or the protagonist. Even at G6, the only autistic child tested at this age, 36.6.B, skipped Frame 1 and Frame 4, thereby truncating the whole discourse to merely three frames; even so, this autistic child showed the same tendency of paying attention to one feature (i.e. hat and later on cane) while ignoring practically everything else. The difference between the cognitive ability and linguistic skills in the case of (A), as far as the control subjects are concerned, is minimum in that very little discrepancy is displayed, except for G4 where the subjects in this age bracket (10) seemed to have demonstrated better linguistic skills, and that the patterns look rather similar. However, attention should be drawn to the fact that a marked discrepancy may be observed between cognition and linguistic skills in (B) among the control subjects. This is also true of the autistic subjects, except that they showed a more developmental tendency (i.e. the older the age the better the scores; see Figures 4 and 5). Note that the main objective in (B) of cognitive analysis is to measure whether the subjects were able to notice the events which happened consecutively in the cartoon strip and that the main objective in (B) of linguistic analysis is to measure the use of verbs that depicted those events. While there is no question that the control subjects were more or less capable of cognizing the events, they had some difficulties expressing those events with the right verbs. Typical examples are hitori no otoko no hito ga “a man” koko ni sutekki o motte tatte “holding a cane here while standing” (Frame 1); dandan aruite ittara “when walking gradually (towards some place)” (Frame 2); kaze ga fuite kite “the wind began to blow” boushi ga tonjatta no de “the hat was flown away” (Frame 3); korokoro korogatte “rolling down” de, mizu no naka e okkotchatta tokoro o “as it fell into the water” (Frame 4); kono, sono, sutekki de hikkakete totta “then using this, that cane to hook on it and picked it up” (Frame 5) (see 9.2 in the Appendix). Unlike (B) in both groups, (C) shows a relatively consistent development between the cognitive ability and the linguistic skills of each group. Note in particular that the (C) category requires the cognition of objects in the cartoon strip as well as the presence of the protagonist, on the one hand, and the use of nouns and pronouns or demonstrative pronouns to represent them in the narration, on the other. The control subjects in Figures 4 and 5 did quite well on the whole but the developmental graphs show zigzag patterns, especially at G5 (age 11) where the subjects seemed to have done worse than their juniors, notwithstanding that the G5 subjects’ scores were consistently poor throughout the entire testings. The reason, again, may be attributed to the three individuals selected in the sample who happened to have a greater than the average
210
Language Sciences, Volume 10, Number 1 (1988)
individual
variation
in cognition
and linguistic
skills. Typical
examples
from this
age bracket (G5) are as follows: Aruitete “while walking” (Frame 2); boushi o tobashite “(he) blew away the hat” (Frame 3); tori ni ikoo to shite “attempting to pick it up” (Frame 4); sore de boushi o totta “and pick it up with that” (Frame 5) (24.5). (See the rest of G5 in the Appendix.) Observe that this subject employed all the way subjectless sentences. While under normal circumstances, such as face-to-face conversations, subjectless sentences are common because of the context of situation, in the context of a testing; especially when the objective is to measure the connections in a story, the omission of the subject in any sentence becomes a violation of the narrative discourse. In the case of the above fifth grader, she not only omitted every subject required but also used the wrong relations (not ungrammatical, however) for Frame 3 between the noun houshi “hat” and the verb tobashite (in the gerundic form) because of the wrong case marker passive
o and the wrong ending of the verb (which should have been in the form), not to mention that the verb should have been a compound verb in the passive (fukitoba sareru). (See the Target Discourse presented further
above.) Compared to the control subjects, the autistic subjects in (C) did poorly for both cognition and linguistic skills. Since there is no G5 in the autistic group, as was pointed out at the beginning, a direct comparison of this age bracket is impossible. However, on the whole, it can be noted that the autistic subjects were worse than the controls in both cognitive ability and linguistic skills but that the autistic subjects showed no better improvement cross-sectionally for the linguistic skills. Let me cite below the only example of G6: totsuzen “suddenly”, aruite ita “(someone) is walking” (Frame 2); boushi ga tobasareta “the hat got blown away” (Frame 3); sutekki de boushi o torimashita “(someone) picked Up the hat with the cane ” (Frame 5); nurete shimai mashita “got wet” (the subject was imitating somebody else in the vicinity who was also taking the test). Observe that this sixth grader showed the same tendency of omitting the subject of each sentence, although he got the relations of the noun (boushi “hat”) and the verb (tobasareta “got blown away”) right by using the correct case marker ga. It is, of course, difficult to generalize that autistic children at G6 would handle such relations better than normal children at G5, because the other control subjects (a boy and another girl) at G5 also showed the tendency of omitting the subject of a sentence, even though the boy did correctly use the noun-verb relationships in Frame 2. In general, however, autistic children’s attention was easily distracted; the more so as they were younger, albeit G4 of Figure 7 did considerably worse for (C) than G3 or younger. This is because one of the fourth graders (21.4.C and 24.4.C) needed help and were cued and coaxed (especially 24.4.C) before he would say anything; even when he said something
Acquisition of Discourse among Autlstic CbiIdren
211
in response to the experimenter’s cues (such as, “Well, a hat, and then?“) what came out of him consisted merely of single words, like boushi “a hat” or otoshite “fell down” and mizu “water”, which were accompanied by his pointing to supplement what he said. (For the remaining details, see the Appendix.) The last category (D) for both cognition and linguistic skills showed a very consistent developmental pattern in each group. However, 1 should point out that the developmental pattern of the control group is drastically different from that of the autistic group, not only cross-sectionally but also as a whole. What is of great interest here is that while the control group at Gl did not skip any frame from the cartoon strip, as the age increased the skipping of one or two (especially Frame 1) became more conspicuous peaking at G5 (c$ Figures 4 and 5); there is no such tendency in the autistic group (cf: Figures 6 and 7), however. What is the explanation for this seeming discrepency? For one thing, the autistic subjects all skipped at least one frame of the cartoon strip, the worst being no response as in 12.2 who from the very beginning did nothing but blowing air into the microphone, giggling, and looking elsewhere without paying any attention to what was being asked of him; on the average they skipped two or more frames. For instance, 4.1 .D said plenty but only boushi “a hat” was in response to the experimenter’s request, the rest being simply counting one, two, three, . . and mentioning his own name and class. So, that is why the autistic children did not have the same pattern. But that does not answer the question fully. I am inclined to speculate two things: (1) either the experimenters did not make themselves clear to the control subjects or (2) the normal children at Gl (age 7) tended to be more obedient and, therefore, they paid more attention to what they saw, whereas the normal children at higher ages, especially G5 (age 11 which is close to puberty) tended to become less obedient and, therefore, they were more likely to do what they were supposed to do, not because they did not have the linguistic skills to express the cognitive observations but because they did not want to say what they saw; in fact, two of the three fifth graders who got the worst scores in (D) said the least among the control subjects (c$ 25.5. and 26.5.). This latter speculation is supported by the fact that on the whole the lower graders said much more than upper graders, although grammatically speaking at the discourse level, the first and second graders’ discourse was less well organized; the sixth graders of the control group were by far the best, even though they, too, skipped Frame 1 except 33.6.
CONCLUSION I have attempted in this article to measure the development of discourse among children, in general, and among autistic children in particular, by
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Language Sciences,Volume 10, Number l(l988)
dividing the acquisition of discourse into two parts: cognitive ability and linguistic skills. While there is no clearcut demarcation between these two aspects of language behaviour, because as the behaviour becomes more complex, say, from one-unit utterance to discourse communication, the distinction gets more and more difficult. But the distinction, no matter how inaccurate it may seem, is worthwhile or even necessary, especially when (motor) aphasias are taken into consideration whereby such an aphasic may comprehend 100% what he/she sees (e.g. pictures) by pointing but cannot name them. I am, of course, not suggesting that autistic children are like aphasics in their language behaviour; rather, what I have just said boils down to the fact that language acquisition requires both cognitive ability and linguistic skills and that the latter alone does not constitute a language one wishes or is supposed to acquire. Otherwise, simple mimicries of what other people said or of what has been taught mechanically for the purpose of “generating” well-formed utterances, such as some of the autistic first graders’ utterances included in the Appendix, would count as the acquisition of a language. Needless to say, children must mimic the utterances they hear around them, especially from their elders, to a considerable extent, but unless they can also integrate what they have learned as linguistic skills through trial-and-error with what they have cognized in their environments and learn to associate these two aspects children cannot be said to have acquired a language. In light of the aforementioned, I would like to put forth the following findings in order to conclude my presentation: (1) It is wrong for many TG-minded linguistics, even if they are not TG-ers themselves, to claim that children can acquire a language within a short period of time; some even have said that by the age of four, children have already acquired their language; so perfect was their acquisition that the environment or the utterances they had heard served only as a trigger. What my study shows, however, is that children may well be able to say each sentence correctly or even appropriately under limited circumstances, they have to continue to acquire not only the linguistic skills to put sentences together into discourse units under varying circumstances but also the association of those skills with the maturation of their cognitive ability accompanied by the development of their nervous systems. This process of language acquisition will take a long time, probably well beyond puberty. (2) Autistic children, once their inhibition to talk is overcome (and this is what the Daily Life Therapy is claimed to do to them) can acquire a language as quickly as their normal peers. This is not tantamount to saying that there is some kind of innate mechanism in the human brain geared specifically for language; rather, it means that there is no organic disorder - unless proven
Acquisitionof DiscourseamongAutisticChildre~~ 213
otherwise medically - in an autistic child and, therefore, once whatever impediment there is in the autistic child is disinhibited, the same process for language acquisition takes effect, except that autistic children are clearly at a disadvantage of being late learners. In a separate study, where well advanced autistic children were examined, they were as fluent and inquisitive as their normal peers. What makes them still “autistic” is that their attention becomes easily distracted and they are emotionally curious but “fragile.” (3) Autistic children in my study above were not only inattentive to what was being said but also inattentive to what the experimenter wanted them to do. On the other hand, they were attentative to what they were interested in; they paid attention to only one or two features in the cartoon, say, boushi “a hat” or mizu “water”, while ignoring the rest in the cartoon strip. Thus, they are easily distracted not because they are inattentive but because they want to be attentive to what they are interested in and, therefore, they seem to be inattententive to what you want them to pay attention to. I think the Daily Life Therapy focuses on this seemingly paradoxical characteristic of autistic children and guides them through their daily lives to first discover what they are interested in and then direct them to pay more attention to those activities - including linguistic skills - gradually, so that they can discover on their own that there are things that are equally interesting besides, if not more so than, what they are interested in. It may take a long time before anyone has an answer to how autistic children happen to be able to acquire a language. But I believe it is also important to learn how they improve their language once they have acquired the rudiments of it. This presentation is a step forward in that direction.
REFERENCES
Kitahara, Kiyo 1983 Daily Life Therapy: A Method of Educating Autistic Tokyo: Musashino Higashi Gakuen School
APPENDIX
Year ..;::4,: 1)
Class 977
Name %ii?
1
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rti (mangawo sasu)
L% 01 : 1~f#CJ-c?j-d~?
(~7~%-~~-6)
Children,
214
Language Scieaces,Volume10, Number 1 (1988)
Boushiga tondeshimatta tokorodesu. di?-b> ni~rL3.-J~:.tr4_Ct, Hai. fj l’,
hitoga tatteimasu.
(kuwashiku setumeisuruyou
shiji)
c: 1) i : ,,$YJ’if5 k i E4;)
Aruiteimasu 4. c ’ T 1 ’ it t ,,
Ah~1%7T1~**r
Boushiga kazede tonde shimaimashita. 8; (7% lLT!\-F’nl~~ L %l’i L I’:,, Mizuni ochite shimaimashita. 1JcIC iffEJTL~l1‘3 Lk, 2)l
D
1
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Hitoga imashita. nha 182 Lko
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9:
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soshite kazega
fuitekimashita.
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i’,
s/l,,
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boushiga kazede Iii f-n,
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I!31 7
Acquisition of Discourse among Autistic Childre~~
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(korewa nandesukato yubisashite tazunetemita) (i4~fl bJ7Th~t Kc+ LT -.,iti-C+fr, ) Boushi. PliC”
sannenseidesu.
(Tonarino kodomono
3 v:+.7T*,>
(NW fiOkOI!‘iU1zL L-CL)%)
manewo shiteiru)
Ichinenseidesu.
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taku...
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215
216 7)
Language !3ciences,Volume 10, Number 1 (1988) MK
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boushiwo totta. d 1i 6 t 1 f: 0
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220
Language Sciences, Volume 10, Number l(l988)
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Nto . . . aru ojisanga aruiteite kazeni boushiga tobasarete Ii,t “’ 23.3 ~iL:.s&tJ~%..l’TL~T J$![1c @i;pn>&(i$;T Shimatte
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Hitogaa . . .boushito tsuewo motta otokono hitoga Ah,‘& li J’ttl~l!i7fc _ !J:o,Aflc Aruite imashita. !I;LITCI* Lf:,
Soshite tsuyoi kazega fuitekite f LT $3:L~.t$[nr 3.1~-C$TT
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224 35)6
Language Sciences, Volume 10, Number 1 (1988) B
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