Word Finding

Describe the word finding skills of children with autism? Describe the methods & findings of a research article on auditory processing. How will this impact ability to initiate a social exchange during a play based activity? What is 1 treatment strategy given the findings.

Word Finding Difficulty in Autism

I covered a research article on auditory processing in my last blog. In this blog, I would share my thoughts on “word finding” in autism.

Verbal communication is one of the cornerstone issues in Autism. Many children with Autism are struggling each moment as we speak to find the word, to portray the meaning they want to.

Its not as if children with autism do not want to communicate, its just that they lack the skills, and need environmental exposure, adult guidance, and reassurance in the form of gaining result/response to their “word” use.

Literature indicates that children with autism have difficulty with auditory verbal processing, and the preferred learning medium is visual. (If the “word” can be represented through a symbol, there is a better chance of expressing it. Particular difficulty arises for ASD children when attempting to express words that describe “internal feelings”, such as “I Wish”, “miss you”, or prepositions such as “After, before, yet, until”.

Such difficulty with word finding can have enormous impact on the ability to initiate a social exchange such as during a play based activity. A child may not for instance be able to convey her disinterest in the activity, or using a specific sequence of activities such as “first do this, and then do that”.

One of my middle school students with Autism had terrible time explaining to me that it’s not that he did not want OT; it’s just that he wanted me to come back “after lunch”. He is mostly non-verbal, uses “springboard”, but even with the AAC its not always easy to “find the word” one wishes to use.

We non-ASD folks, have almost unlimited vocabulary and a vast mental library to pick the best suiting word from, in contrast to our ASD children that struggle every moment to get the right word!

Two practical strategies in such circumstances would be co treatment sessions with Speech and language pathologists (drawing on the expertise), and having the availability of “visual forms” of communication devices. Using PECS system for basic level communication and the more advanced alternative communication devices such as the Dynavox, or other voice output devices (to be discussed in details in later postings). In any case, keeping “total communication approach” is the key, making sure we put play, socialization and language all fostered at the same time. There are no words to describe the feeling you get when you have helped a child find the right word!

Reference:

Lecture Notes, class material (Amy Lynch, Anne Van Zelst), 2011.

Book reading, Miller-Kuhaneck, 2^nd edition, 2004, chapters 12, 8, and 3.