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Difficulty With Certain Concepts... But Strength With Others Concept Of Same Verses Different Uncanny Ability To Remember Specific Facts About Specific Topics Although I did believe that color may indeed play a critical role in the acquisition of language, before we actually get into my section on “Language”, I want to first touch on a few “other things” that were also explained in the autistic child based on my theory of the autistic child’s inability to understand the whole without first understanding all the aspects of the “parts” that made up the whole… without first understanding all sensory input involved in the understanding of that “whole”. Like colors, these were areas that were either areas of difficulty or strength for Zachary, and as such, I wanted to address them here. The Concept Of Same Verses Different As I worked with Zachary on the concept of "which ones are the same" and "which ones are different", I noticed this concept also was a difficult one to understand... especially the "different" part. I worked with him quite a while on this concept of same verses different. But, it was only as I truly came to understand issues with partiality that I came to also understand why this particular concept was difficult for Zachary to grasp. The concept of "same verses different" necessitated that something "not belong" and as such, for an autistic child who was trying to "put things together" to figure out "how they do belong together", this posed a special challenge... for, by definition, one "part" simply did not belong. This easily explained why this was such an area of frustration for Zachary for so long. I found what helped him to get past this issue was to make him understand that "same" meant "equal" and that "different" meant "not equal". Since he loved equations, that helped to solidify the concept of "same verses different"... they were now taught as "equal to" or "not equal to"... and that simple change made all the difference in how well he understood the concept. :o) Uncanny Ability To Remember Specific Facts About Specific Topics There was another characteristic so common in the autistic… the fact that so many of them had an uncanny ability to remember countless facts related to a particular subject (i.e., the name of all Presidents, in the correct order, etc.). This too, was explained by my theory on the proper processing of partialities and the need to “break the code” to life. If you think about it, if an autistic child could break “any code” to life, it would stand to reason, that as he “broke that code” and was encouraged to do so by those around him, that his focus in this particular area or “code breaking” would take on a much greater emphasis in his life. Any code that was broken in any way and helped the child to understand even the smallest part to his world - as meaningless as that “small part” could be to those around him – to the autistic child, any “code breaking” to anything in life, surely had to be something he would want to engage in completely. This also helped explain why these children could remember so many countless facts when it came to specific topics. Given that “some code” had been broken, and the importance of “code breaking” to these children, it stood to reason that once any code was broken, it would be very much committed to memory… indeed, I believed that “burning of information” into one’s memory would be much greater than one would normally see in terms of memorizing something! Code breaking… truly the key to so much in life… and for the autistic child, the first way to “break the code” in so much, was via a building blocks approach to language! |
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