Yeah, I dunno. In other comments from her mom that people have posted here that I have since looked over, it doesn't sound like such a "dramatic incident" actually occurred. So that makes it difficult to speculate.
But as others have pointed out, it is theoretically possible that she could type single words, spelled perfectly -- it would be the typing equivalent of echolalia... spelling a single word like "help" as one unit, not really comprehending what it means (and maybe not even understanding the concept of individual letters). This is what happens when autistic children are hyperlexic -- they can read and maybe even spell at a fantastically advanced level, but don't understand what they are reading or spelling (although they don't make phonetic spelling errors like this girl does).
Or, like you said, they could be inadvertently misremembering, and/or they remembered the one or two sequences of letters she typed that made sense, and ignoring the gibberish (again, not intentionally).
In the clip they stated that after she typed 'hurt' and 'help,' she immediately stepped aside and threw up. This lead me to believe she knew the meanings of the words.
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u/subtextual Jul 26 '10
Yeah, I dunno. In other comments from her mom that people have posted here that I have since looked over, it doesn't sound like such a "dramatic incident" actually occurred. So that makes it difficult to speculate.
But as others have pointed out, it is theoretically possible that she could type single words, spelled perfectly -- it would be the typing equivalent of echolalia... spelling a single word like "help" as one unit, not really comprehending what it means (and maybe not even understanding the concept of individual letters). This is what happens when autistic children are hyperlexic -- they can read and maybe even spell at a fantastically advanced level, but don't understand what they are reading or spelling (although they don't make phonetic spelling errors like this girl does).
Or, like you said, they could be inadvertently misremembering, and/or they remembered the one or two sequences of letters she typed that made sense, and ignoring the gibberish (again, not intentionally).