The Cause of Speech Delay in the Western World
I got a brainstorm the other day, and it involved English, words and symbols. My theory as to why some children (mainly autistics) have speech delay is because the English language and all of the other languages spoken in this world based on the 26 letter alphabet, which is very hard to understand To talk, first you have to understand the language that you speak, and then convert the language into a recognisable word by saying the right tones etc, and then speak the word/s properly. According to the Oxford Dictionary, there are about 500,000 words in the English Language, which is way too many for it, and confirms that it is really inefficient.
Humans understand symbols and sounds way better than most languages, such as mathematical symbols and the written language of music (see my Jazzy Rollin' page for an example). The letters of our modern alphabet are swished around and mixed to form words in order to categorise and to "simplify" our communication. However, if all the languages were based on symbols such as Japanese or Mandarin Chinese, then it would be easier to read and then speak it. You could say that the words in English are 26 symbols, but the difficult ways in which they are combined makes it very hard to understand. This is my theory as to why there is alot of speech delay in the Western World. If we spoke in sounds and little phrases such as 'ka' and 'lamaja' instead of 'the' and 'your', humans would comprehend these words better.
I would wonder if children who are brought up to speak symbol-based languages such as Japanese and Chinese would have the same percentage of problems with speech delay. English is so inefficient because one word can have several different meanings. Autistics tend to take the most literal and logic meaning of a word, without realising what all the other meanings are. Now the word 'come' means to arrive at a place. Most of us also know that that word has it's relative 'dirty' meaning as well.
Back to my symbol theory. For example, this shape Δ in English is called a triangle (a three sided shape). In mathematics, this is called delta, and is a symbol used for equations (alright so I'm not at uni and I'm not up to date with my uni-level mathematics!). A tiny symbol like that should be given a tiny word like delta instead of calling it a triangle. My point is, is that most people would know how to write music or to do mathematical equations easier than understanding and speaking the English language. Here are a couple of links on the Japanese and Chinese languages:
Japanese Writing System
How to write numbers in Japanese
Disputed English Grammar
Why I Don't Have Autism!
"I wish they could put a "gifted" diagnosis on me instead of an autistic one" See an autistic dx as automatically both!"
Firstly, this quote in the last post has finally convinced me of one thing - that some people have the attitude of, 'All autistic people MUST be gifted, they MUST be elite, they REFUSE to try and blend in with NT's, and it is all about US vs. THEM (ie.. aspies vs.. neurotypicals)'.
For a start, the above statement is implying that in order for you to be gifted, you MUST have an autistic diagnosis. I could also put this in reverse by saying that in order to have an autistic diagnosis, you MUST be gifted. These statements are BOTH FALSE, incorrect, and BIAS towards having an autistic diagnosis. I will simply give a quick example of why Amy's statement is incorrect.
Tiger Woods has an intense concentration span and focus. Bill Gates is, well, Bill Gates. However, I will quote this paragraph from the following website first: http://www.childproofing.org/background.html
The economics of these data is transparent. The social costs of caring for a larger fraction of the population classified as mentally retarded far exceed those of environmental protection. Using this same analysis, society loses the creativity and intellectual leadership of 60% of potentially “gifted” individuals such as Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, or Tiger Woods.
Now, why is there some kind of myth out there that for you to have an intense focus and whatnot just like Tiger Woods, that you are AUTOMATICALLY autistic? This paragraph sums up my opinion that there are too many people in the autistic society who think that all gifted people and such just HAVE to be autistic. To have autism, there are a whole other bunch of symptoms that they have listed in the DSM-IV and the ICD-10 that you need as well to get a diagnosis of autism. My basic point is you do NOT need to be gifted to have autism, and vice versa!
I can use my OWN life and symptoms to disprove her quote. I do NOT have a monotone voice; I love being in high stimulus environments; my social skills are ok; I can hug people and show physical affection for people comfortably (I used to resist being touched due to my social anxiety at the time, plus the fact that our family is not generally a huggy, affectionate type); I do NOT focus on objects such as staring at a random object or spinning a wheel continuously; I can read some body language cues better than I really think I can; I LOVE change and do not react badly to it (for example, moving house or going on a holiday to a different city); I do not have ANY sort of routines at all (for example, cleaning my teeth at a particular time and/or place); I do not exhibit ANY sort of body movements such as rocking, hand flapping etc. and I NEVER have in my entire life!; however, I DO have the intense concentration & focus ability on a particular subject/topic/hobby that I am interested in. Therefore, I am NOT autistic because I do not display ANY other symptoms or behaviours!
However, I will have to explain why I have finally realised that I am NOT autistic.
Firstly, my oldest brother is autistic. He has been diagnosed with autism. I am NOT going to explain how he has it or what symptoms he has because I am not going to tell everyone about my family. He does have routines and doesn't like change much, and if you REALLy want to know about what particular symptoms he has, you are going to have to talk to my parents, and that would take alot of me & my parents getting to know you first.
Ok, this is my crunch point. I am a TWIN! Yes, I am a real life fraternal twin, and she is female. For some reason, NONE of us (twins) talked at all until around the age of 3 and 1/2 to 4 years old. When we both started to talk, we KEPT talking and haven't stopped ever since! My oldest brother said his first word at around the 3 year old age, but didn't talk again until at least 18 months later. He had speech therapy up until the age of 16 or so. Now, because my oldest brother (let's call him Bill for short) went to speech therapy and child guidance and things like that when he was younger, my parents decided to take both my twin and I to child guidance as well - based on the fact that we didn't talk until that late. Now, I went to the following places starting from this age:
Endeavour Foundation
Vincent Special Preschool
Went to normal preschool for 2 years (we both got kept down because we couldn't talk properly)
Child Guidance
Had Speech Therapy
Considering that BOTH my twin and I went to all of these places, at the time, NONE of the health professionals said that either my twin or I had ANY form of autism at all! My argument is, is that why did "Bill" get the diagnosis of autism at the age when he was receiving early treatment, and neither my twin OR I got ANY sort of diagnosis at all after completing similar treatments at a young age?!
Let's move on rapidly to high school. I mentioned before that I have an intense focus on things. Well, I just happened to love reading. In Grade 10, I received some Music award from high school, and I won a $30 book voucher. With this voucher, I bought the book called "The Odd Brain" (here is a website - http://www.harpercollins.com.au/drstephenjuan/books.htm). This book basically just describes several behavioural and mental conditions and disorders. NOW, I know that most of you out there might not believe this next argument but I know in myself that it is true. I love to learn so much, that if I become obsessed over a particular subject, I have the ability to believe in something SO DEEPLY that I start to believe whatever it is I am reading! This is when I started to truely develop have this rather NASTY and dangerous habit of 'self brainwashing'. I am a gullible person, and I still am one today. Anyway, I cannot count HOW many times I read this book from the end of 1998 until the end of 2002! This is an entire four year period where I read this book in sporadic bursts. I am not sure what the term for this is, but perhaps I could say this is like medical student syndrome. You could imagine a medical student reading about all sorts of disorders, that eventually, they will START to believe and con themselves that they do have A particular disorder, or that they have ALOT of them (as was in my case). I will get back to this book later.
I am going to rush right ahead to my 2nd year of Mechanical Engineering study that I was doing at the time. Combined with the fact that I was studying a really difficult course (for anyone!) fulltime, and I was working at good ol' KFC parttime (for at least 10 hours a week), I was obviously under alot of stress. Let me tell you now that BEFORE I was admitted to the psych ward first time, I was a perfectionist who used to worry about the past immensely, I dwelled on things that were negative instead of the positive, I tried to plan and predict the future, and I had a low self esteem as well. Let me remind you that I read that book several times between 1998 and this point in time I'm referring to now.
ON that awful day on August 12th 2002 when I had the infamous 'crank handle' question put forward to me in a class tute (refer to my site http://www.psychopanic.com/think.php#Learning), I got my very first MAJOR horrible panic attack. From this point on, I started to self diagnose myself. I knew originally that I did have panic disorder, but all those other disorders I read about in that book also started to come to fire. This panic attack I had was so horrible that I knew no other way to try and help myself except to research panic disorder on the internet. This wasn't the ONLY disorder I started to research. At this point, all that reading of that brain book started to come back to my thinking, and I started an AWFULLY dangerous cycle of 'self diagnosing brainwashing'. It is no wonder that I started to feel ALL sorts of physical symptoms after the attack. I thought the lump in my throat was due to reflux, I thought that the shaking I had could be related to alzheimers, and all other sorts of symptoms I had. I now know that all these physical symptoms are just mental pain. At least in the psych ward they gave me the correct diagnosis of somatisation disorder (http://www.cfsdoc.org/somat.htm). THis disorder is EXACTLY what I had - all my fear and panic symptoms started to turn into physical symptoms, and with all of these things that I felt, I blamed the mental pain symptoms for all sorts of other false conditions (you could also call me a major hypochondriac at this time as well).
Here is the main crux of my argument. With my very gullible mind, one day, even before I got this panic attack, I started to compare myself to my brother "Bill". I had figured that since he DOES have autism, and he went to the same types of child guidance places that I did, plus the fact that I also started to talk late, I quickly convinced myself that I TOO, MUST be AUTISTIC! Now, I am either a great actor, or the brainwashing gullibility syndrome that I have started to kick in. My parents saw in me that my behaviours started to change. Combined with the fact that I was having continuous panic attacks, I did start to become depressed. THis is WHEN I started to show "symptoms" of autism. My voice was becoming more monotone like, I did actually start staring at things (mainly because my mind was so empty at times, plus later on when I wanted to kill myself), and I was really withdrawn at this point of my life. I was admitted into the psych ward on October 24th 2002 for the first time. During this whole stage, I eventually got so depressed and stressed out that I did eventually develop psychosis and suicidal type depression as well.
However, I will now tell you when I got a diagnosis of autism. AFter I got out of the psych ward in November 2002, I had five sessions with a psychologist. I didn't go back to her after that because I thought I got the help I needed. Around the late December/early January 2003 mark, I suddenly got more depressed due to other circumstances as well as all the psych ward/panic stuff. My sister was so worried about me, that she offered to help me. I accepted her help greatly! We did things like buy new clothes and stuff like that. We went to the doctors around this time, and the lady just said to me, 'you have Highly Functioning Autism (HFA)'. I found out that the psychologist had made this diagnosis (or sent her report to someone else, I'm not exactly sure). The health people must have observed my odd behaviour in the psych ward, and just slapped this extra diagnosis on me based on all the early treatment I got when I was younger. This seems rather logical to me how they got this diagnosis, because they had only observed me when I was in the psych ward.
During this time, I noticed that my brain speed sped up to unbelieveable speeds! I could think at an incredibly rapid pace, and my imagination was at its most total creative peak (refer to my James Morrison post on my blog at www.psychopanic.blogspot.com for details)! I had also started to lose my photographic-like memory, and I got to the point where I just started to stare at things absent mindedly because I was just horribly sick at this time of my life. I then got the privilege of getting admitted into the psych ward for a second time on April 26th 2003. At this state, I was seriously thinking about committing suidice, and I was just basically in a TOTALLY horrible state. Anyway, when I got out, they put me on an antipsychotic, which I admit has SAVED my life, and they gave me a new diagnosis: schizophreniform disorder (http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic3350.htm).
We will now skip forward to the middle of 2004. For some reason, I got re-evaluated by another psychologist, and then I got the new and improved diagnosis of atypical autism - also referred to as Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS). As of today (12th August 2005 - which happens to be the 3rd anniversary of my initial panic attack), I still have the diagnoses of schizophreniform disorder and atypical autism.
Now, if you have read this entire article, I can now DISPROVE that I do NOT have ANY autism at all! I will prove to all of the health professionals that if I get diagnosed, then my TWIN sister will have to get diagnosed too (I will NEVER let that happen because they can't simply start to assess somebody who is COMPLETELY healthy)! Because she DOESN'T have autism, then I do NOT have AUTISM EITHER! And that folks, is WHY I have been misdiagnosed.
I DO NOT HAVE AUTISM AT ALL! AND THAT IS THAT!
**There is an update in all of this. Today (22/09/05), I saw the shrink again, and I asked about my autism diagnosis. It turns out that when I was sick with my psychosis, I did, at the time display signs of highly functioning autism, so they didn't really have any choice except to think of that as a diagnosis. However, on my charts, with my HFA and atypical autism, the psychologists put a question mark on my records (?). So technically, they suspected my behaviour at that time was autistic-like, but it wasn't confirmed. The thing that I am disappointed about though, is the fact that BOTH of these professionals said that I DO HAVE autism! I wish they should have said that I showed signs of it, instead of them flat-out saying that I did have autism. It is amazing how a simple question mark can change things. The shrink today said that I don't have autism, and I shouldn't worry about it. I am very happy now, and I will live in peace about this stupid autism label that I don't have.
**My second update: For some reason, I do secretly think that I am a very highly functioning autistic person. However, I can function in real life almost perfectly, and most people wouldn't think that there is something different about me.
Anyway, my point is, I personally believe that if I was diagnosed properly for all the periods of my life, I would have ALL of the following mental disorders RIGHT now:
- Schizophrenia
- Psychosis (not acutely right now - but in 2002/2003)
- Bipolar disorder (due to my change of lifestyle because of the ward days)
- Borderline Personality Disorder
- Multiple Personality Disorder (Yes, all those "voices" and "conversations" in my head would be a PERFECT candidate for this lol)
- Anxiety Disorder (well ok ok, at times of high stress, and YES I've had this throughout my life)
- Panic disorder (2002-2003, and very rare panic attacks these days - controlled by stopping thoughts)
- OCD (Yes, with learning too much information, and me being a perfectionist)
- High functioning autism (I just think I have a curious mind, and I have a VERY, VERY big will to learn new things ALL the time - just at a way higher percentage than most people)
- Depression (Would have started around 1998 - to acutely in 2002-2003, with constant suicidal thoughts at its peak, now I cry and talk about everything that goes wrong with me, so I won't get that bad again)
All I can say, is that I have already rehearsed in my mind the day when I will burn BOTH the DSM-IV and DSM-V (if it's out yet), and the ICD-10 books infront of a press conference on the world stage! One day, I hope my autistic/schizophrenic/manic depressant/obsessive-compulsive/super anxious/super panicky/super sensitive brain's prediction will come true! Take that Mr and Mrs "supposed" mental health professionals of the WORLD! Muahahahahhaahhah!