Language comprehension can be challenging for those with autism spectrum disorder, but not all are alike.
Andrey Vyshedskiy, lecturer at Boston University, explores the differences.
Andrey Vyshedskiy, Ph.D. is a neuroscientist from Boston University. He has authored over 100 scientific publications that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature npj Mental Health Research, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Thorax, Chest, Journal of Neuroscience and other leading scientific journals. His research focuses on children development, the neurological basis of imagination, and evolution of language. In the past, he has also conducted research in neurophysiology, cardiopulmonary acoustics, and optical vibrometry. Dr. Vyshedskiy has been teaching Human Physiology and Cognitive Neuroscience at Boston University for over two decades. He has also periodically taught Tufts Medical School students. Dr. Vyshedskiy has founded multiple successful companies and directed the development of several FDA-approved medical devices. Based on his research, ImagiRation has designed a therapy application for children with autism (MITA), that has been demonstrated to significantly improve their language abilities.
A Breakthrough Discovery of Three Language Comprehension Mechanisms
The prevailing belief is that language comprehension development follows a linear trajectory, with children acquiring grammatical rules one at a time. Over 20 years ago, I studied the neurobiology of language comprehension and predicted the existence of three distinct language comprehension mechanisms. My research validates this prediction. We analyzed the language comprehension abilities of over 31,000 autistic individuals aged 4 to 22 years. The analysis identified three levels of language comprehension, corresponding to the three language mechanisms I predicted.
Individuals at the first level acquired only the most-basic ‘command’ mechanism, limiting their comprehension to simple commands. Those at the second level acquired the intermediate modifier mechanism, enabling them to understand additional elements such as color, size, and number modifiers. The third group acquired the most-advanced syntactic language comprehension mechanism, allowing them to understand spatial prepositions, verb tenses, flexible syntax, possessive pronouns, and complex narratives.
In other words, the study demonstrated that when the most-advanced syntactic mechanism is broken, the entire set of syntactic abilities is absent. Individuals with the broken syntactic mechanism, do not see the difference in meaning between sentences “A dog bit my friend” and “My friend bit a dog.” They do not understand who bit whom. They also struggle with sentences involving spatial prepositions, such as “put the cup under/behind/in front of the table,” and they do not understand fairytales or complex explanations.
The implications of this discovery are important for philosophy, paleoanthropology, linguistics, and clinical medicine. Syntactic language is unique to modern humans and likely emerged around 70,000 years ago. While Neanderthals, who lived from 400,000 years ago to 30,000 years ago, had modern speech, they did not acquire the syntactic mechanism. This lack may have significantly contributed to their extinction, as the syntactic mechanism offers substantial survival benefits.
Read More:
[NPJ] – Are there distinct levels of language comprehension in autistic individuals – cluster analysis
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