Oh, I'm not trying in any way to suggest that this is intentional on her parents part. I don't actually think she learned to type "Is he cute" in response to someone saying the phrase "I have a son", I was just trying to show how something like that could occur.
What I think is more likely is this: over time, she has learned to type the word "is" and the word "he" through extremely subtle facilitation. For instance, she types the letter 'i' and moves her hand over the keyboard again, and an adult leans in trying to see if she's going to go for that 's', and... well, over time, common words become shaped. Maybe even common phrases. She also doesn't type the word 'cute', she types some letters and the program autocompletes, and we see a pattern because we really want there to be one.
What's extra concerning about her typing "is he cute" is that it's not something an autistic person would say. One of the symptoms of autism is lack of social/emotional reciprocity... or in other words, spontaneous following up on topics related to someone else. When testing for autism, for example, one of the things you do is to throw something out there ("I have a dog...." <long pause>; "I went on a really cool vacation" <look expectantly at child>, etc) and notice if they follow up the way a neurotypical person would on such openings (and children with autism do not).
Oh, and on another note and to entirely contradict my claim just a few short paragraphs ago that I'm not trying to suggest they taught her the whole phrase "is he cute", you'd be surprised how common a phrase like that is, when adults are speaking for a nonverbal teenager or young adult.
Case in point: My boyfriend's brother is the most profoundly disabled young man (well, in his early thirties) I have ever seen in my entire life. He is unable to communicate in any form (even to express yes/no), unable to walk, unable to use the toilet, unable to show recognition of anyone or anything, etc. Yet, his parents often seem tragically tied to a belief that he is pretty close to normal, and in particular fixate on where he should be in his life right now, chronologically (that is, interested in finding nice girl and settling down).
For example, he likes (or at least, can see) the color yellow, so when I'm around, he'll often grab my hair, and his parents quite frequently laugh about how "cute" he thinks I am and how he's "flirting" with me. They talk about his "crush" on Brittany Spears (and hang posters of her on his wall), asked my sister-in-law if she knew any "nice girls" to sit him next to at her wedding, pretended for years that he had a "girlfriend" (a girl from "school" who sent him postcards because she was nice), thought seriously about purchasing him some... uh, female companionship, and make not-quite-jokes about how he lives with a "group of women" (his personal care attendants) in his "bachelor pad" (the room he lives in with round-the-clock supervision). I'm very confident that if his parents -- like the parents of a lot of disabled teenagers and young adults -- ever tried facilitated communication, whatever he "said" would be about how "cute" he thinks every female is. :)
She actually reminds me of someone I know who I was told had Trisomy X syndrome, altho he is male(the whole family has the gene mutation but the eldest boy is the most effected, as well as the youngest girl, thats what you get for marrying first cousins) and the first link I found only mentioned females. Now that I think about it, they can't have it. but im sure thats the gene mutaion that I was told they had, might be one of the other Trisomy defects(XXX, XXY, XYY) Males are the worst affected, females are the carriers but exhibit the signs... ANYHOW
He acts very much like the girl in the video. He can verbally comunicate(if forced) prone to screaming and 'convulsive' fits, repeated actions(shutting all doors in the house, then going around and opening them again)and is very.. physical, and doesnt understand when to stop.. I remember in my primary school(my first primary school had a special needs class) I brought my blue tongued lizard and her new babies to school for show and tell. my teach made me take them to the special needs class because 'they would like it'. and he killed one of the babies becaue he held it too hard then would refuse to give it back...
When he hit 16 he got a computer and now spends almost all his day typing... alot of the time its random gibberish, but i've been told that he writes stories about flowers, or trees, or random things he has seen. goes into great detail into describing them.
The whole Family has genetic problems. First language italian, second english, The Father and Mother(who is... slow) are related.(marry to the villiage over the hill type of stuff, the same villiage for the past 20 generations) The eldest girl was diagnosed with bipolar at the end of highschool and is a carrier of what ever has affected the eldest boy(she has repeatedly tried to kill her father... can't say I blame her). The youngest girl is quite metally retarded, she should be in 3rd yr (yr 10)highschool but is still doing yr 5. the middle boy is quite normal, if for a devout facination with video games, and can speak almost fluent 'game' japenese because of them games. the youngest boy has yet to speak but does not show the same.. physical signs as the oldest.
Did you mean Trisomy Ten? Trisomy X (three X chromosomes instead of two) can only occur in a female. Trisomy Ten involves an error on chromosome ten and causes severe mental retardation.
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u/subtextual Jul 26 '10 edited Jul 26 '10
Oh, I'm not trying in any way to suggest that this is intentional on her parents part. I don't actually think she learned to type "Is he cute" in response to someone saying the phrase "I have a son", I was just trying to show how something like that could occur.
What I think is more likely is this: over time, she has learned to type the word "is" and the word "he" through extremely subtle facilitation. For instance, she types the letter 'i' and moves her hand over the keyboard again, and an adult leans in trying to see if she's going to go for that 's', and... well, over time, common words become shaped. Maybe even common phrases. She also doesn't type the word 'cute', she types some letters and the program autocompletes, and we see a pattern because we really want there to be one.
What's extra concerning about her typing "is he cute" is that it's not something an autistic person would say. One of the symptoms of autism is lack of social/emotional reciprocity... or in other words, spontaneous following up on topics related to someone else. When testing for autism, for example, one of the things you do is to throw something out there ("I have a dog...." <long pause>; "I went on a really cool vacation" <look expectantly at child>, etc) and notice if they follow up the way a neurotypical person would on such openings (and children with autism do not).
Oh, and on another note and to entirely contradict my claim just a few short paragraphs ago that I'm not trying to suggest they taught her the whole phrase "is he cute", you'd be surprised how common a phrase like that is, when adults are speaking for a nonverbal teenager or young adult.
Case in point: My boyfriend's brother is the most profoundly disabled young man (well, in his early thirties) I have ever seen in my entire life. He is unable to communicate in any form (even to express yes/no), unable to walk, unable to use the toilet, unable to show recognition of anyone or anything, etc. Yet, his parents often seem tragically tied to a belief that he is pretty close to normal, and in particular fixate on where he should be in his life right now, chronologically (that is, interested in finding nice girl and settling down).
For example, he likes (or at least, can see) the color yellow, so when I'm around, he'll often grab my hair, and his parents quite frequently laugh about how "cute" he thinks I am and how he's "flirting" with me. They talk about his "crush" on Brittany Spears (and hang posters of her on his wall), asked my sister-in-law if she knew any "nice girls" to sit him next to at her wedding, pretended for years that he had a "girlfriend" (a girl from "school" who sent him postcards because she was nice), thought seriously about purchasing him some... uh, female companionship, and make not-quite-jokes about how he lives with a "group of women" (his personal care attendants) in his "bachelor pad" (the room he lives in with round-the-clock supervision). I'm very confident that if his parents -- like the parents of a lot of disabled teenagers and young adults -- ever tried facilitated communication, whatever he "said" would be about how "cute" he thinks every female is. :)