In our society, human beings are driven to accomplish goals
and succeed at any task, whether it is related to the work force, the family,
or self-improvement. It is reasonable to assume that the primary motivation for
all humans that engage in tremendous efforts to attain these goals is to
experience a sense of self-fulfilment, of reaching happiness. As people, our
affective states change as a response to the gains and losses we experience
during the course of our life, and our interpretation of these gains and losses
will vary depending on an individual’s personality and genetic makeup. For
children with special needs, there is often a disruption in their ability to
perceive a task as a success or failure, and this misinterpretation can often
lead to expressions of frustration, stress, or inability to interact
appropriately with other social beings. This can explain why you may have
observed a child with special needs respond with anger or fear, frustration or
anxiety when in a novel situation. Their ability to interpret the situation or
event as positive or negative will determine their future actions. To cope, it
is important that individuals involved within the life of a child with special
needs recognize that these children are aware of the social cues and the
communications occurring in any given environment, but that a disruption can
occur in their interpretation of the event. Like any behaviour, a response is
the result of the interpretation of a sensory input, whether it be the context
of a social conversation or the observed interactions between children playing
at a playground.
A
recognized difficulty for children with autism is verbal or non-verbal
disturbed communication. This is primarily known for non-verbal cues, such as a
deficient or atypical perception of nonverbal communication from the eyes or
the face. A distinct example would be a child with autism demonstrating
difficulty in making or maintaining eye contact with someone they are engaged
with, or focusing on atypical features of the face such as the nose or
forehead. For verbal communication, there is often demonstrations of babbling
or abnormal verbalizations in tone, pitch, and rhythm.
A primary example of
atypical verbal communication is echolalia, where the child with autism will
echo back what another social being has said, without necessarily interpreting
or understanding the social meaning of that echoed speech. This emphasizes the
difficulties children with special needs may experience when attempting to
connect socially with their peers, as they often have notable deficits in
pragmatics, the social use of language. Their social interactions are often
characterized by irrelevant details in conversation, demonstrating
inappropriate shifts in topic especially to topics of their own interest, or a
complete disregard for the normal interchange in conversation, where one person
speaks and then another can respond to the topic presented by the first
speaker. Although these disruptions in communication are well-known and can
characterize several children within the spectrum, variability in comprehension
and expression exists. Some children are more effective at telling stories,
communicating better with prompts, or when reading or writing rather than
speaking. In summary, children with special needs will often demonstrate some
atypical responses to social cues, whether verbal or non-verbal, but they are
aware on a brain-based level of the social context of every environment they are exposed to. Their expression of this brain-based process does not match, therefore is often misinterpreted.
Written in connection with BBAIM
www.healthisfreedom.net or www.healthisfreedom.net/id20.html
