language development or asperger

[Keith Nelson]

Hello Parisa .    Just a few quick observations.
	1.  IF a child becomes bilingual by rich 
social interactions in each language with highly 
fluent and highly responsive adults and older 
children, then we can expect excellent social and 
cognitive skills to develop along with the two 
languages.
	2.  The small amount of English learned 
mostly from TV seems to indicate only baby steps 
in English acquisition, not significant 
bilingualism.
	3.  Knowing no more than you review in 
your email, it seems that considerable progress 
in Farsi is clear for the children.   To help 
encourage improved social skills and social 
responsiveness as well as further language 
advances, it might be wise to explore with the 
parents and other relatives some ways of insuring 
that each week the children do have an increased 
number of enjoyable and engaging play times with 
fluent adults and with older children who  also 
will be using language levels above that of the 
children you have described.  Then you can see if 
the weaknesses in some social skills and social 
responsiveness are reduced.

	Best regards,

	Keith Nelson




At 11:05 PM +0330 12/15/10, parisa Daftarifard wrote:
>To whom it may concern,
>Greetings,
>
>I am Phd Student in TEFL in Iran and recently I 
>came across a confusing case concerning 
>bilingualism and autism or Asperger Syndrom. I 
>wonder if you have ever noticed this feature 
>before.
>
>I came across Three bilinguals who have learned 
>English from TV mostly when they were young 
>(less than 6 months to one and half years old). 
>The programs they watched were baby TV channel, 
>BBC Prime and Smile of child. Their mother 
>tongue is Farsi in which they were interacted 
>and spoken to. They had less interaction through 
>English (almost no). At the age of three years 
>old, they showed some features that might be 
>misdiagnosed with Asperger syndrome. The 
>features they show are
>
>1.  language resistance in the way that if I 
>call them they may pay attention or may not 
>(from 20 times, they may look back only 3 times) 
>and if I talk with them or converse with them 
>they would not answer my questions (most of the 
>times saying 8 in 10) but say their own words.
>
>2.  They dont enter play with others although 
>they have symbolic play on their own in the way 
>that they repeat or restate those statements 
>they heard before or were told before with their 
>toys like cars dolls and even helicopter!
>
>3.  They have repetitive verbal behavior (NOT 
>body behavior, they never shake their hand or do 
>something repeatedly) that is they repeat the 
>words they know or sentences they know 
>repeatedly not the whole day but for a 
>considerable time.
>
>4.  They have started their language in one word 
>and soonly in two words in Farsi (first 
>language) when they were 2 and half years old 
>although when they were younger they said some 
>words too like (Aabba means Water).   Now they 
>are three years old, one of them speak in farsi 
>fluently and one boy says three word sentences 
>like (berim khone papa means we go gradpa's 
>home).
>
>5.  the younger boy (three years old and three 
>months) misuse the pronouns first person and 
>second person in farsi. He is using three word 
>sentences and sometimes two word sentences.
>
>"about their English state, they are not allowed 
>to listen to or be in contact with English 
>anymore so that their first language develops 
>completely although the younger boy pays a lot 
>of attention when he hears English from TV or a 
>person and in one case he was attending an 
>English class in his kindergarten and there he 
>learned about the statement (show me your nose), 
>at home he talked with himself that "show me 
>your helicopter, /gatar/ = train"
>
>The reasons I and some specialists doubt they are aspergers or autistic are
>
>6.  They have eye contact
>7.  They use language indexically both to show 
>the object they want and to share their interest 
>with their parents or teachers.
>8. They play symbolically and repeat what they 
>have heard in society in their play
>9.  They use imagination when they play for 
>example, they use car seat as a horse or a belt 
>as a snake.
>10. Recently the younger boy I have seen that 
>tell one scene of a short story (just the one 
>his mother told him) from the picture. 
>
>
>I wonder if you have ever noticed these features 
>in bilinguals. Unfortunately, psychologists here 
>are not linguists or SLA specialist and labeled 
>these children as being Asperger.
>
>
>I appreciate your help and notice in advance.
>Best,
>Parisa
>
>--
>Parisa Daftarifard
>Phd Student of TEFL
>Islamic Azad University of Science and Research
>
>--
>You received this message because you are 
>subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" 
>group.
>To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com.
>To unsubscribe from this group, send email to 
>info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
>For more options, visit this group at 
>http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en.


-- 



Keith Nelson
Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
414 Moore Building
University Park, PA   16802


keithnelsonart at psu.edu

814 863 1747



And what is mind
and how is it recognized ?
It is clearly drawn
in Sumi  ink, the
sound of breezes drifting through pine.

--Ikkyu Sojun
Japanese Zen Master    1394-1481

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group.
To post to this group, send email to info-childes at googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en.