Autistic kids and Pronouns

Autistic Deaf children avoid using pronouns, just like their hearing counterparts. A news study out of the University of Texas found deaf children with autism tended to refer to themselves with a name sign rather than a sign pronoun. The two linguistics professors who ran the study speculate that it says something about the way people with autism experience the self, rathe than the result of the arbitrary nature of English pronouns as was thought when studying only hearing autistic children. Read details of the study here.

Autism Therapy

American Sign Language is being used by speech therapists and child psychologists to help autistic children express their feelings. Autistic youngsters are encouraged to speak aloud as they sign to promote speech but the main focus is expressing their emotions which often come out in inappropriate ways, such as hitting other children. Sight is perhaps the strongest sense among children with autism while verbal skills are weak. Thus, signing allows them to have a validation and to feel understood.