Review Of Research Example

Review Of Research Example Review Of Research â€" Assignment Example > Critical ReviewIn his talk, ‘Onset and development of Language in Children with autism spectrum disorder’, Steven Stagg looks at the differences between High-Functioning Autism and Asperger Syndrome in relation to onset and development of language in children. The writer looks at the onset and development of language in children with autism spectrum disorder. He starts by explaining what autism in relation to language development. Autism is characterised by impairment in social interaction, abnormalities in communication and restricted or repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests and activities. Since autism is not a single disorder but a spectrum of closely related disorders, it is useful to make a distinction of the spectrum of disorders from low functioning to high functioning based on IQ. This helps in distinguishing from autism disorder, Asperger Sydrome (AS) versus High-Functioning Autism (HFA) and pervasive developmental disorder. The differentiation is mainly observe d in social tasks and executive functioning tasks. Children suffering from AS have a better understanding of belief terms in language, that is think, know and guess, and they have less social impairments than those suffering from HFA. In a play ground setting, children with AS are more likely to approach other people in the play ground setting. When given executive functioning tasks, children with AS are better at switching from global to local than those with HFA and they are more flexible generational tasks. The key element separating HFA and SA is language onset. To measure this, it is important to look at the kind of IQ level both in the children that have a typical language onset and those that have a delayed language onset. The question to ask in looking at these differences is why some children have delayed language onset yet they develop similar IQ levels to the children who do not experience delay. The writer attributes the differences in language developments to the crit eria used to differentiate the two groups. Studies have shown that getting the right input in early development is needed for typical brain functioning. Attention to social objects is important in language development. Khul (2003) asserts that social contact is important in language learning. Joint attention is a major precursor to language development (Carpenter et al. , 1998). A study by Tadic et al (2010) revealed that partially sighted infants follow a similar developmental trajectory to children with ASD. Attention to social objects is an important factor in language onset and development. To differentiate between children with HFA and AS, it is important to observe patterns of social attention. Studies observing the reaction time between face to face and back to back responses show that the stronger the preference towards interacting faces, the earlier the onset of the first words. Attention preference to salient social stimuli affects other areas of social processing. One f actor that underlies the attentional preference is arousal. arousal level is associated language level and patterns of eye contact. The writer points out that social attention, when observed through language onset, differentiates HFA and AS children. Since autism is a not a single disorder but a spectrum of closely-related disorders, the method of differentiation through language onset is an excellent method. To determine whether there is a problem in language development between autistic children and other children, then it is important to look at the basic underlying factors in language development. This is a strong feature in the research. A limitation of using the IQ is that children with the AS may develop an IQ just like those that do not have the disorder. Therefore it would be difficult to determine if a child had autism by just considering the IQ. However a looking at other factors that are important to language development is important to explaining that autism is not sol ely responsible for delayed language development.