The Difficulties Faced by Autistic Adults in Overcoming Childhood Language Barriers
Research team at John Hopkins has added to growing evidence of human brain effectively learning to compensate language challenges. The study involved autistic participants who had transitioned into their adulthood.
Studies that analyze electrical activities in young autistic children have shown the difficulties faced by children while sorting out simple words that might be unrelated. Instances such as these, make it hard for young children to process spoken or written language, unlike their typical peers.
Researchers earlier believed these instances of language struggle persisted throughout an individual’s life. That said, Autism test for adults helps one to understand how well adults have transitioned, past their childhood.
Results
The results indicate some autistic adults might be able to process unrelated words smoothly with right learning strategies. Emily Coderre explains, “Often people have misassumptions that autistic people always have underlying problems with the meaning of language.” However, Autism test for adults helps one in overcoming their unfounded fears.
Coderre, post-doctorate at the neurological department of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, explains “Results suggest autistic adults use different brain mechanism to process their language skills resulting in unique brain patterns.”
20 adult participants with a prior autism diagnosis and ‘medium to normal’ verbal abilities were included in the study. While some of the participants were diagnosed much earlier in their lives, others did not have a formal diagnosis until adulthood.
Parallel Comparative Study
Another batch of 20 participants, aged between 18 and 69, without ASD condition to serve as a parallel comparative study. Each participant had to complete online computer assessment and to ensure accuracy, each task included atleast one tangible noun.
Contrary to earlier studies involving young autistic children, adults with autism also had similar spikes in their electrical activities on the EEG while looking at the unrelated and related words. The responses in adults with autism test varied from 400 to 800 milliseconds.
Participants with milder forms of autism condition were able to surpass the results as they could have developed compensatory learning. To validate the differing response results, the team plans in repeating the experiment by involving autistic children with moderate symptoms.
“By understanding compensatory strategy techniques, special education teachers can use this information to better their language programs, which can also help those with severe language deficits to develop better alternative strategies to overcome their condition” explains Coderre.
The author’s comment, “We sincerely hope our studies send hopeful messages to parents or people diagnosed with autism condition.”
Have you attempted autism test for adults? What does your experience say? Feel free to pour your thoughts by commenting in the comment section below.
Isa Jones
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Hi, my name is Isa Jones and I am a journalist with Autism Times.
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