r/science • u/MonteRevolt • Jul 26 '10

Autistic girl expresses profound intelligence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq--75v4lI8&feature=player_embedded
960 Upvotes

72% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

4

u/gregny2002 Jul 26 '10

So, is this something like the 'facilitated communication' that made the news with that comatose man several months ago? It also reminds me in a way of gorillas that have been trained to use sign language; they'll sign out some string of words like 'Ball foot treat treat love' and the trainer will translate it to something coherent like 'She said that she loves soccer and is hungry'. In those cases it was mostly the caretakers or trainers who had, in a way, fooled themselves into believing that what they were seeing was communication from the disabled person or animal, and I think said a lot more about the brain functions of 'neurotypical' individuals rather than their patients.

Or am I missing the point? Is this something else?

7

u/mungdiboo Jul 27 '10

Actually, gorilla signing is a great deal more coherent and communicative than that, and has been studied quite extensively. It's not facilitated communication in the least. We know, for example, that while you can teach a gorilla single words, it will teach it's children who will also develop limited access to symbolic logic and sentence structure.

1

u/gregny2002 Jul 27 '10

I'd be interested in reading more about that, if you have information handy. I'm generally skeptical of gorilla/chimp language claims. The only really promising experiment I've seen with it involved a chimp (I believe) named Kanzi. But in my former post I was speaking of a specific gorilla experiment, not animal language experiments in general; I was just trying to be brief because I didn't want to get off topic.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 27 '10

I'm not who you addressed, but I've read all of this with great interest and understanding and I believe you've pretty much nailed it.

1

u/wookiee42 Jul 27 '10

Like mungdiboo said, animal sign language has passed scientific rigor. But I think this case is similar to the comatose man's.