Imitating television

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A question for teen/adult Aspies out there:

Did you ever imitate TV characters' speech?

My son (4) talks exactly like Dora the Explorer. Whenever he is doing something, he would talk to himself in a question/answer mode just like Dora does. He also uses a whole lot of other phrases from other characters, e.g. "Alright, alRIGHT" like Donald Duck.
We live in South Africa, and our home language is Afrikaans, but of course the television is mainly in English, and therefore he also speaks A LOT of English, even though we only speak Afrikaans to him.

The therapist explained that the television captures his attention more than we do, and therefore he tends to pick up the speech on the television much rather than from us.

Does it sound like something you did?

Yes I did this when I was a child and a teenager. I can't speak for the reasons why your son does it as they may be different from the reasons I did it, but my reasons were a couple of things. One was I just liked mimicking voices or sounds I heard, I still do sometimes. Another reason was deeper -- I began to want to learn to be like the characters because I thought they were "normal" role models. (Facepalm, I know, I know.... ) I cringe when I think about some of the people in fictional TV shows and movies that I was trying to copy the behavior of. I was just striving to have what I saw as their best (and neurotypical) attributes and traits because I instinctively knew I didn't have them.

I did it as a kid too. For the reasons BirdInFlight listed.

I continue to do it as an adult sometimes, for another reason. Although I am high-verbal, it takes me awhile sometimes, especially in highly confrontational or emotional situations, to string together the words. It's easier to spit out a prefabricated reply that is relevant and applicable (a skill it took me all of my adolescence to hone).

To borrow a phrase, "I don't have any of my own words. I just borrow everyone else's."

Credit to whichever M*A*S*H screenwriter put those words into Radar O'Reilly's mouth.

That's interesting. This never was something I did much as a kid. The only TV I ever really see is the news, Jeopardy, and some old western shows my dad watches, so I don't get much exposure to it anyway. I do notice a lot of NT guys my age imitating television people all the time, though, and I usually don't get the reference until someone else comments on it.

I had a pretty serious Steve Irwin phase when I was like 8yrs old. And before that, it was Disney's Robin Hood which I'm sure was a bit less enigmatic being that I wasn't speaking with an Australian accent for no apparent reason.

Now I mostly just do bad Reagan impressions. Shut up, Nancy, I can whatever I want.

I always tell my daughter that she is the girl with a thousand voices. Depending on the situation, she sometimes even speaks with Asian Indian accent. It's all from the videos she watches on-line. Her Japanese accent is pretty good, too.

When my son was younger, he learned 80% of his vocabulary from DieselDucy's elevator videos. One of the earliest sentences of my son was: "The toilet is a Gerber," which I was able to trace to one of DieselDucy's elevator video clips of a hotel visit.

Sure, these kids are visual. Also, video clips are repeatable, so they are even better than TV programs. That repetition matches well with the autistic brain.

From elevators, my son learned to talk, to write, to draw pictures, to type on computers, to build complex electronic circuits, to do math problems. And now, to initiate conversation with strangers. Elevator video clips have basically taught my son every skill that he'll ever need in his life.

I still take my son to elevator rides virtually every weekend.

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I was looking at a video clip by Steve Jobs. It's the second video clip on this page:
https://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2011/06 ... ic-insult/

Basically, a developer openly criticized Steve Jobs for his lack of support on OpenDoc (a defunct technology today). What Steve Jobs replied is something that I think people need to pay attention to. He said:
"...people like this gentleman, are right, in some areas..."
"...the hardest thing is, how does that fit in, to a cohesive, larger vision..."
Looking back at it, of course Steve Jobs was right.

My point is, sure, you have an interesting observation on your son's imitating speech from TV. You are right, but that's the easy part. Now the hardest thing is, how does that fit into a cohesive, larger vision?

That's what makes me feel frustrated about the entire autism research field. People can see the trees, but not the forest. So, parents and educators keep making the same mistakes, and dispatch millions after millions of children down the same failed paths.

After all these years, I'd tell parents/educators that, please stop dealing with socialization and sensor issues. Deep thinking skills, intellectual development, that's what these children need.

My son used not to allow me to brush his teeth in the back. A few weeks ago, I told him: "you have to let Papa brush your teeth in the back, otherwise you will get cavities, and then you will have to go to visit the dentist's office." Miraculously, he then let me brush his teeth in the back.

To get to the point of understanding verbal communication, is by no means straightforward. But once you get to that point, sensory or rigidity issues can be overcome easily.

With intellectual development, verbalization and socialization come for free. And sensory issues disappear, all by themselves. You emphasize on sensory treatment and forced socialization, and you end up destroying the lives of these children.

I am now able to tell the story of American independence to my daughter (8 years old) and my son (6 years old). For my daughter, I can explain that it all started because "taxation without representation." For my son, I can ask him whether the Americans got upset or the British got upset, and how people celebrate the independence day with fireworks. I also explained to my daughter that Americans were basically autistic, they threw a tantrum, and a new nation was born. I explained to her that creativity and rules don't mix. I also explained to her that there were also some neurotypical people, and today we call them Canadians, who still follow the Queen. Ha ha. Sure, people would probably scream at my abridged version of the American Independence. But hey, creativity is everything. My daughter just taught herself to play electronic piano keyboard with both hands, and has composed her first piece of music, last week. Yeap, you have a weird, unconventional daddy on one side. But that's what has enabled my children to be creative. Yeah, no other daddy out there has made as many cartoonish video clips for their children. No other daddy in my neighborhood takes their children for elevator rides.

Happy 4th of July. A day when the autistic Americans threw a tantrum, and a new nation was born.

Just learned this film is coming out: "Life, Animated" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3917210/. Here is an interview to the family:

All this is great story. But all this, reminds me of the cases of Stephen Wiltshire, Nadia Chomyn (Google for them, please, I've written about them here as well) and so many others. All these people clearly had talent in visual arts area during their childhood. My question is: even though the parents were all able to see with their own eyes that their children were communicating in the visual direction, what have the parents done, at all, in the visual direction, to develop their children?

In none of the documentaries I have seen, have I seen their parents drawing pictures for their children, or making animation video clips for their children, to help these children develop properly.

Carly Fleischmann only started to type on computers when she was 11 years old. It makes you wonder what would have happened if she started to type at age 4.

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So, I keep shaking my head. When will parents learn to understand their children?

The problem with autism has never been on the side of the children. It's on the side of the parents.

Reading skills should have been developed starting from 9th month. By 18th month these children should already be reading books (full sentences). Parents postpone developing their children's visual and intellectual skills, all for the sake of following the neurotypical gold standard (talk first, read later). Worse, parents keep focusing on sensory issues, behavioral issues, verbalization and socialization, and forget to develop their children in the visual-manual direction to expand their children's deep thinking skills. Parents turn the lives of these children upside down, and then cry themselves. I scratch my head: why? Why do parents make themselves miserable, and keep their children underdeveloped? What's so hard in drawing pictures for your children every day, every night? What's so hard in making animated video clips for your children?

Jason, again, these absolutes are not applicable to all children or even all autistic children.

Parents of children who are not hyperlexic, should not be made to feel guilty for not doing something that is not designed for their kids' developmental path. I was hyperlexic, and my son is hyperlexic, so I am aware of the phenomena of which you speak. Kids who are hyperlexic take to reading right away. They draw letters, they play with letters. It is something you can see and develop when you see it. It is not better or worse than a development path that does not lend itself to early reading. it is different. It is no better to treat a non-hyperlexic child like a hyperlexic child than it would be to try to teach an autistic child according to NT patterns of development. It is just not going to work, no matter how much you bang your head against the wall, if it does not suit the child.

The same goes for your contention that videos and drawings work for everyone. They don't. I use them for certain things, when they apply, and when they are effective, well before you started posting here. Right tool for the right job, right? They were awesome for dealing with pronoun reversal for example --- for us. But depending on the child they may not be effective at all, and it is not right to continually state that there is something defective about any teaching strategy that does not correspond with one designed for a sample size of 2 (your 2 kids).

Autistic children people come in so many varieties, there is no one right way that works across the board.

I think all kids do this.

Yes, I did it, but then so did all four of my kids and they are NT, but I strongly suspect that my younger son may have mild AS like I do but he's not at all interested in finding out. My NT granddaughter does it as well. It really is something most kids do, so I wouldn't think it is anything to be concerned about unless that's all they say.

There are three scales to the brain functions. Micro, Meso, and Macro. Autism is a meso-scale issue. It's what we physicists call a "renormalization" phenomenon: the autistic brain is a "renormalized" brain, and that's about it. No more, no less. What you describe of "so many varieties" on people (not just autistic) is a macro-scale phenomenon. I compare it to accretion of matter in the Universe to form stars and galaxies. So different people have interests. My son is interested in elevators, I wouldn't expect all autistic children to like elevators.

Genome studies repeatedly confirm that there are hundreds of loci that can trigger autism. I just chuckle to myself. If you know about renormalization, you would have heard about the keyword: "universality." To other people, they would be at a total loss why autism can come from so many different root genetic "mutations" (I hate this term, people and banana share 50% of DNAs, so are we mutated bananas, or are bananas mutated humans?) But to a physicist like myself, it's a case of "of course." When quantum fields (or classic fields in critical phenomena) undergo renormalization, the micro-scale details become irrelevant, and different varieties of microscopic phenomena coalesce into what are known are "universal" classes. Most microscopic interactions become irrelevant at renormalized meso-scale. The structure of interaction simplifies. ("Irrelevant" here is a precise technical term, I am not using it in the usual sense of daily English.) Ken Wilson won a Nobel Prize for understanding the precise nature of renormalization.

My point here, there are not too many ways for kids to interact and learn. You've got social, aural-oral (verbal), and visual-manual. And that's about it. (Tactile may be valid for visually impaired kids, I guess.) Given the renormalization nature of autism, a decrease in social and verbal skills necessarily means an enhanced ability in the visual-manual direction. What other communication channels do humans have? There are no more.

Raising an autistic child is very simple in this sense. You start from their strengths, and develop them from there. It's like how I kept teaching more, and more, and more skills to my son, from his passion about elevators. This is also known in quantum field theory. Even though I have said that only a few interactions survive at meso-scale, it does not mean that the "irrelevant" interactions won't exist at meso-scale. For instance, Higgs boson has no renormalized interaction for it to decay into two gluons, yet, this interaction can happen through the mediation of a heavy quark-loop. Sorry for the jargon, but in terms of autism this means that when you develop these children in their visual-manual direction, verbal skills and social skills will come, for free.

So, when you say "there is no one right way that will work across the board," I beg to differ. It depends on whether you are talking at the meso-scale or macro-scale. Sure, at macro-scale, I wouldn't expect *elevator* videos to work for all autistic children. But at meso-scale, I don't think there is alternative to the visual-manual approach. From the perspective of renormalization, there is just no other approach. Video worked better for my son, picture drawings worked better for my daughter. Sure, the techniques are different. But the overall visual-manual direction is the same for both of my children. And as someone that has worked on renormalization as a scientist, I simply don't see any other alternative to the development of autistic children. So sorry you have your view, I have mine.

I work and think and a different level than most people out there, sorry to say that, but that's just the plain truth. My way of thinking comes with a larger picture behind the scene (that's why I brought up the Steve Jobs video). My daughter is now learning advanced music theory (including pitch constellations which she called "mad face circles," four different types of minor scale: natural, harmonic, melodic and Hungarian, the seven modes of the diatonic scale, names for the chromatic notes, etc. It should be noted that I have never learned these things before in my life.) My son is learning about electromagnetism, the right-hand rule, and AC and DC motors. I am just wondering: what can schools or music teachers teach my children about all these things? If I have left my children to other parents, I can't imagine them developing as well as they have done. What can other parents do, at all, with my children? It gives me the shivers. I do all these bizarre/esoteric things with my children, and guess what? They are always happy, creative, and are becoming very well-rounded. Isn't it strange that I virtually don't spend any effort in developing their social skills, yet they are becoming social? My daughter recently got together with a friend of hers from preschool. My son last week told me, out of the blue: "I miss my kindergarten teacher, and her name is Miss XYZ." So my wife took my kids to visit their kindergarten teacher two days ago. What does music theory and DC motors have anything to do with social skills? What does drawing picture for your children or making them read books early on have anything to do with social skills? Yeap, it'll take outsiders a lifetime to understand what I do with my children.

Yeap, go ahead and try anything you like to try with your own children. Meanwhile, my children will just keep blooming and pushing forward. This is for anyone out there: your children are your responsibility and yours only. Not my responsibility. You make the call. You be responsible for the decisions you make. No need to cry. I've never shed one single teardrop about my children being autistic. I have two happy children, happy children with big smiles. Now it's your turn.

Jason, no one is saying your kids are not doing well. I could brag about a ton of things my son is doing, also, and I do in the proper context. It is not always appropriate, and what your kids are doing may have zero to do with what someone is posting about.

If you reread what I wrote in context, what I was commenting on was your insistence that every autistic child has a hyperlexic profile, which is simply not true. My son is hyperlexic, and yours apparently are too. Not everyone's autistic children have that same set of strengths and weaknesses and it would be irresponsible and cruel to imply that parents of autistic children who don't read substantially early (or early at all, or even who are who late in this regard) are neglectful.

If a child is not hyperlexic, it doesn't matter how much you read with him, or make videos or pictures, it will not bear fruit until that child is developmentally ready. Laying the ground work for reading skills is a necessary but not a sufficient condition. The child has to be developmentally ready. Full stop.

As far as teaching modes, yes of course there are only so many senses that one can target, but there are a variety of ways to do so. Autistic children do tend to be visual but that does not mean all visual techniques work on all visual learners. Some kids respond better to photos, some to clip art. Mine prefers written words with accompanying colorful pictures that do not have to be analyzed for detail b/c despite being visual he also has some visual disabilities, relating to deciphering pictures, which is not uncommon. Yours respond respectively to pictures and videos. That is great. Mazel tov! You do you. We can do what we do, and everyone else can do what works for them.

Knowing how to read early on has nothing to do with being hyperlexic. My son is *not* hyperlexic by any stretch of imagination, yet I was able to teach him to read. Before he was 3 years of age, he was able to read sentences. The only regret I have is not having figured out how to start earlier. Typical autism manifestations show up between 18 months and 3 years old (that's when the final wirings in the brain are established). So, reading skills really ought to happen before 18 months. My daughter was/is hyperlexic: she taught herself to read. So I know perfectly well the difference between hyperlexic and non-hyperlexic. Reading skills pave a bridge that can solve/prevent many of the "autistic issues" down the timeline. I am just glad that my daughter came first, so we knew the importance of reading. My daughter's case was nature. My son's case was nurture.

I'll repeat things that I've already said so many times here. My son was not able to focus on any static pictures when he was 2.5 years old, let alone to read books or sentences. We tried to teach him to read, but it was fruitless. When he was 2.5 years old, I started to make stick-figure video clips for him. The I started to add speech bubbles to the video clips. In matter of weeks, he *learned* to look at static pictures, learned that stick figures have meanings, learned to read words. Before he was 3 years old, he was reading sentences and simple books (like Bob books).



Totally disagree there, sorry. Most animals don't speak, don't socialize. Yet they have eyes, ever since our ancestor days as fish living the oceans. Eyes, yes. All babies are born with visual skills. And in the case autism, due to the enhancement of contrasts, they are "developmentally ready" from day one, when they got out of their mother's wombs, to use their eyes. Perhaps you should read about Nadia Chomyn's story, and comparison of her drawings to cave paintings:
http://www.humphrey.org.uk/papers/1998caveart.pdf
To most people, the amazing cave paintings may imply a high degree of societal development. But according to the author's comparison with Nadia's drawings, it actually may imply a more primitive origin of these skills. As matter of fact, when Nadia acquired some verbal skills, she also lost the ability to draw faithfully.

When you postpone the development of visual-manual skills after 18 months old, that means you are dealing with all kinds of signal amplifications and clutters inside the brains of these children. By then you complain about these children not able to focus on things you want them to focus, and complain that they are not "developmentally ready." You keep postponing further their visual-manual skills, and you get the 99.9% of the parents crying about their children's autistic condition. You reap what you sow.

An analogy is infant swimming. You throw any newborn baby into a water tank, and guess what? All of them will be able to hold their breath and "swim". You wait a few years, and then you'll have to teach them how to hold their breath to swim. You may even need to wait further so they can understand your verbal instructions. In your wording, they are not "developmentally ready." But the truth is they were 100% ready. Parents just managed to delay their children's development, for something that the kids were ready for.

https://youtu.be/ccFq-DLeEy8


Autism is enhancement of contrasts. It's renormalization. It's reversion to the most primordial and strongest skills of our animal ancestors.

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As for universality (the meso-scale stuff I mentioned), I just thought of a better analogy to help people understand. I've talked about autism and renormalization quite a few times. Here is just one of my postings from sometime ago: https://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=301344

On the webpage of this link:
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/743/suggested-reading-for-renormalization-not-only-in-qft
most comments are from people parroting and not understanding renormalization, but there is a comment from this guy Matt Reece (a Harvard professor) that says it correctly:
Renormalization is absolutely not just a technical trick, it's a key part of understanding effective field theory and why we can compute anything without knowing the final microscopic theory of all physics.
That's right, the microscopic origin of autism is irrelevant. I feel so sad that millions (if not billions) of dollars are being wasted on genomic studies of autism. Genomic studies won't help with your children's autism. Autism is not a micro-scale issue. It's a meso-scale issue. The genome loci are responsible for the development of wirings of the brains of these children when their brains are still forming, sure. But after their brains are wired, those gene loci have already accomplished their mission, so nothing you do at DNA level matters anymore.

OK, coming back to universality, I guess the best analogy for people that have taken a statistics course is the "Central Limit Theorem."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illustration_of_the_central_limit_theorem

This theorem states that no matter the shape of the original distribution, upon summing or averaging on the original distribution a few times, it will converge to the "normal" or Gaussian ("Bell Curve") distribution. How quickly does this happen? Very fast, actually. Typically by adding up three copies of the original distribution, the result is already fairly Gaussian to human eyes.

That is what I mean by universality at the meso-scale level inside human brains, for autism. The microscopic origin of autism is irrelevant: you can have 500 different gene loci capable of causing autism, yet at meso-scale, the relevant interactions are exactly the same, no matter which of the 500 loci was the trigger. (Sure, at macro-scale, different children have different interests/stims or sensory issues. But that is at a different scale inside our brains.)

Original distribution:


Distribution of the sum of three copies:


And here is a good YouTube video on the Central Limit Theorem:
https://youtu.be/lsCc_pS3O28


Isn't it like magic? No matter what your original distributions are, they'll all converge to one single final distribution, with an elegant shape and and an elegant mathematical formula. No wonder that final distribution is called the "normal" distribution.

And no wonder in quantum field theory or statistical mechanics, a similar process is called "re-normal-ization." In this sense, autism is "normal", after all. Ha.

Without understanding renormalization, I bet all those genomics researchers are scratching their heads on how to explain autism having so many root causes. After you understand renormalization and the meso-scale nature of autism, it's pure beauty and elegance. Furthermore, you now know how to raise these children successfully. Elementary, my dear Watson!

When I was a child, I based a lot of the way I communicated on what I saw on television and what I read in books. That's because autism is a disorder that makes it difficult for people with the condition to learn from interpersonal relationships. TV and books (and movies and video games and the internet) provide a kind of "filter": a separation between the person with autism and the rest of the world that makes people with autism feel comfortable and safe. The problem for me is that I ended up with a skewed view of the world and mimicked overly dramatic or otherwise theatrical ways of expressing myself. This led to a lot of teasing and discomfort from other people.

I would recommend introducing your child to documentaries, especially documentaries about real people and their relationships. In the United States, we have an excellent documentary series on PBS called "Independent Lens" which is available for free on the PBS app and website. There are also a lot of quality documentaries available via Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon.

I still do, and frankly it kind of annoys me. Lately I've picked up a lot of my speech "habits" from Rick on Rick & Morty, and Kris Asick of the webshow Ancient DOS Games. It's kind of a hard thing for me to control. =p

Always and I still do it to this day. I can do so many sound effects and voices it's ridiculous. I know someone by their voice way faster than their name.
When I am watching something animated I can name actors with surprising accuracy.

I remember I was at work one time and started making screeching tire sounds like someone was about to have a horrible accident and didn't realize that people in earshot if me we running to the window to see. I love accents so when I am watching tv and theres a heavy accent I will repeat what they say out loud. Sometimes several times to get it right.

My ears are very sensitive to sound and that is one of my definite triggers. I love music and started playing by ear at 3, I would play along with commercials my parents were always amazed. My friend asked why I listen to the same song over and over again and I told her it's because everytime I hear a song I can focus on whatever instrument I want. I really listen to music for the music. Can't tell you how many times I've heard a song for months and never have listened to the words. I usually dont know the words to songs but I can recreate the music with ease.

I love my special ASD powers.