Wired article on autism

Wired magazine published this article on autism. I read it and I think it was interesting. Amanda Baggs, one of the women featured in the article, wrote some comments on her blog after the article was published.

The article discussed measuring intelligence in persons diagnosed with autism, specifically with two different intelligence tests: the Wechsler Intelligence Scale and Raven’s progressive matrices. Dawson et al. have showed that children with autism scored on average 30 percentile points higher on the Wechsler Scale than on Raven’s matrices (The level and nature of autistic intelligence). What seems to be lacking (I could be wrong though) is a discussion on what intelligence is - what is being measured? It seems very logical to me that someone who has problems with language and communication (and that is one of the diagnostic criteria of autism) will perform better on a non-verbal test such as Raven’s, than on a, at least partially, verbal test such as Wechsler. It also seems logical to assume that a test designed to measure intelligence in neurotypical persons will not correctly measure intelligence in persons with different intelligence profiles.

But what is intelligence? Is intelligence to be able to tell someone what “killing to birds with one stone” means, or to identify which segment completes a pattern? Is it possible to disregard language ability, cultural influences, life experience etc and pin down some sort of abstract entity that is intelligence?

I haven’t got any answers. Anyone else?

European day of Speech and Language Therapy

Yesterday, March 6th, was the European day of Speech and Language Therapy. This day is supposed to bring more attention to the work of speech and language therapists, and the people who need their care. I was talking to some SLP colleagues the other day, and we agreed that still many people don’t know what we do. Common misconceptions:

• A “logoped” (SLP in Swedish) works with for example feet and knees. - Hmm, no, you’re thinking of an “ortoped” (orthopedic surgeon)
• SLP:s are “speech ladies” who teach children to pronounce /s/ or /r/. - Well, we’re not all female. And treating pronunciation difficulties is a very small part of what we do.
• An SLP is a teacher who specialises in speech and language. - No, teacher and SLP are two different professions.
  

CPLOL has a very good definition of an SLP on their web page:

The speech and language therapist / logopedist is concerned with communication and with language, and treats all disorders of speech, voice and spoken and written language, regardless of aetiology, in children, adolescents, adults and the elderly.
The speech and language therapist is the professional responsible for the prevention, assessment, treatment and scientific study of human communication and associated disorders. In this context, communication encompasses all those processes associated with the comprehension and production of spoken and written language, as well as appropriate forms of non-verbal communication.

CPLOL is short for Comité Permanent de Liason des Orthophonistes/Logopèdes de l’Union Européenne, or, in English, the Standing Liasion Committee of E.U. Speech and Language Therapists and Logopedists.

Unfortunately, I don’t think yesterday brought much attention to SLP:s in Sweden: when I googled “logopeddagen” (SLP day) I got 12 hits…

In MacBook heaven

Today I got my work computer - a MacBook. I’ve only had it for about 8 hours, but I think I’m in love… So this is a great start to my new life as a full time PhD student! I finished my old job on Thursday, and now all I have to worry about is submitting a thesis in four years - ha!

Oh, and about computers: my LG laptop takes about 5-10 minutes to start up. My MacBook is up and running in about a minute.

Moody computer

I’ve been having some problems with Firefox which I tried to resolve a couple of weeks ago. It might have helped a little - Firefox doesn’t seem to be unresponsive quite as often after the computer has been asleep. On the other hand, the computer doesn’t always go to sleep, for some reason. And when starting up, I swear it is the slowest computer on earth (exaggerating?? well, a little). I installed Startup Optimizer to get the computer to be a little quicker on start-up, but I can’t say the improvement is striking. Right now I’m thinking about reformatting the computer completely. (My computer is an LG T1 Express Dual, and I’ve had it for about a year. I’m using Vista Business.)

All the more reason to look forward to next Monday, when I get the MacBook from the university.

First lecture!

I attended my first lecture as a PhD student this Thursday! The subject of the course is Phonology and Morphology, and at least the Phonology part feels familiar. You know you are a language nerd when you feel at home when you look at the IPA chart…

Dialogue systems with autism

I went to see my supervisor on Friday, and we talked some about dialogue systems, which he does a lot of research on. He told me this interesting thing: when you sum up the mistakes a dialogue system makes, you end up with a list which more or less describes the communication problems that children with autism display. When you think about it, is quite logical, but I hadn’t thought about it before.

A thousand words - or a few?

“A picture says more than a thousand words”. I think most of us have said or heard this, but maybe without giving it much thought. The implicit meaning is the more words you convey, the better. Is that always true?

Persons with communications impairments often need some sort of augmentative or alternative communication (AAC). Spoken language can be complemented or replaced by manual signs, speech synthesis, photos, pictures etc. Each person needs an individually adapted AAC system. Since photos and pictures carry a lot of information, they should be optimal as as augmentative or alternative communication. Let’s think about it.

I come up to you and show you this picture:

What am I trying to say to you? When you start guessing, you’re likely to guess at some of the basic communicative functions (even if you don’t think in the terms of “communicative functions”, you will probably guess at something that we often try to express). Communicative functions are different ways to use language, and some of the basic ways we use language are to

• get attention
• express what we want
• express what we don’t want
• to comment on something
• request information (ask)
• supply information (answer)
• express “social function”, such as “thank you”, “hello”, “goodbye” etc

This gives you a lot of options when trying to find out what I’m trying to tell you. For example:

Expressing what I want

• I want something to drink
• I want a glass
• I want to go to the place where they sell glass
• I would like a glass like this for my birthday

Expressing what I don’t want

• I don’t want to drink (note that the glass is empty!)
• I don’t want my drink in this glass
• I don’t want any more of these glasses

Commenting on something

• Look at this glass; I really like it
• I saw that you have the same glasses as I have at home
• The pattern on this glass reminds me of summer

Requesting information

• Is there any more milk?
• Where did you buy this glass?
• Where can I put this?
• When are we going to have lunch?

Supplying information

This is an anwer to a question, so this should be easier. For example:

A: “do you want tea or milk?” B: [shows picture of glass] = I want milk

Social function

• Thank you for the glasses you got me for my birthday

The possibilities are practically endless. If we’re lucky, you will guess at the right thing pretty quickly. If we’re not, we will never get to what I’m trying to tell you.

So, to sum things up: to convey a thousand words in an instant may not always be an advantage. Sometimes it better to communicate just a few words, but the right ones. That it is not to say that AAC or picture communication is a bad thing, just that it’s much more complicated than we sometimes realize.

To read more about AAC: ISAAC

Language and personality

I’m reading Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks, and came upon this quote:

We are a linguistic species — we turn to language to express whatever we are thinking, and it is usually there for us instantly. But for those with aphasia, the inability to communicate verbally may be almost unbearably frustrating and isolating (…).

I’ve met a few people with aphasia, and for those with mainly expressive aphasia this is normally the case; they are frustrated and saddened by their loss of language. But I still wonder about global aphasia; is it possible for a person with global aphasia, who cannot express or understand language, to still be the same person as he or she was before the onset of aphasia? So much of the personality seems to be interlinked with language, and it’s hard to imagine that the personality is somehow intact when the language is severely damaged.

As I was writing this, I realized that I’m not really sure how I would define personality, so I looked it up in Merriam-Webster.

Personality:

1 a: the quality or state of being a person

b: personal existence

2 a: the condition or fact of relating to a particular person; specifically : the condition of referring directly to or being aimed disparagingly or hostilely at an individual

b: an offensively personal remark <angrily resorted to personalities>

3 a: the complex of characteristics that distinguishes an individual or a nation or group; especially : the totality of an individual’s behavioral and emotional characteristics

b: a set of distinctive traits and characteristics <the energetic personality of the city>

4 a: distinction or excellence of personal and social traits; also : a person having such quality

b: a person of importance, prominence, renown, or notoriety <a TV personality>

Well, I guess I would need to study some psychology and neurology to understand more about this.

Good old Firefox

I did as suggested by Rille who commented on my previous post and deleted my Firefox profile, and now I’ve created a new one. Hopefully this will get Firefox to behave!

Flock was ok, but not really what I need. I guess I’m not that social, haha…

Web browser

I’m trying to decide which web browser to use. I’ve been using Firefox for a couple of years, but recently it has started behaving weirdly. When I restart my computer after it has been “asleep” I have to restart Firefox, which means that I have to close all tabs. I have tried to set it to open every session with the same pages/tabs open as when it last closed, but it doesn’t seem to be working. This really bugs me because I like Firefox and want to use it. So I tried Opera and didn’t quite like it, and right now I’m testing Safari. I think I could be comfortable with Safari in the long run. But then what about Zotero? Zotero only runs in Firefox, Netscape Navigator and Flock (which I hadn’t heard of until today). And then I need Internet Explorer to be able to pay bills etc via my bank.

Sigh… I think I will look into Flock and maybe Netscape Navigator.