Autism, Aphasia & Visual Agnosias – Telegraphic Language & Gestural Communication

October 15, 2014 by Paul Isaacs 2 Comments

Note – This is from a personal perspective of having aphasia and visual agnosias as a part of my autism profile.

APHASIA – LANGUAGE PROCESSING DISORDER

As a child I appeared “deaf” this was because of severe receptive and expressive language processing other words I have used in my blog are related – pure wordless, verbal auditory agnosia and meaning deafness. This is to do with the left hemisphere of the brain – even now words can tumble into “sounds” with no auditory or contextual origin I hear melody rise and fall but no meaning, nothing to grasp. The words are “dead” and not brought to life.

Visual Agnosias In The Context Of Autism

I struggle to gain visual context, things I see are fragmented, distorted, tursh and flat with no depth no origins, foreign intriguing and amazing as well as bewildering and confusing. I don’t live in a world with logical and literalism as a backup for my lack of visual understanding I must “feel” for understanding and contextualisation.

Simultagnosia – Visual Fragmentation – Object Blindness

Inability to recognize multiple elements in a visual presentation, one object or some elements of a scene can be appreciated but not the display as a whole.

Semantic Agnosia – Meaning Blindness

An agnosia that is a loss of the ability to visually recognise an object while maintaining the use of non-visual sensory systems such as feeling, tapping, smelling, rocking or flicking the object to recognise the object.

Prosopagnosia – Faceblindness
inability to recognize the faces of other people or one’s own features in a mirror, due to damage to the underside of both occipital lobes.

Visual-Verbal Agnosia

visual-verbal agnosia (also referred to as pure word blindness or alexia without agraphia).Individuals with this disorder show a marked reduction in their ability to read the printed word, through their writing and other language modalities remain essentially intact.

Hemispatial Neglect

Being “blind” to one side of my body and and visual field this includes motor coordination this also relates to visual spatial disorders and seeing things in 2D which can be related (at least in my case to visual object agnosia).

Homonymous hemianopsia

Processing “half” my visual field.
Telegraphic Language

This clipped form of language helps me if you want to get a point and also if you want to use emotive language etc.

Gestural Signing & Movement

In order to me to understand the words and where they are going (remember I am not literal and I am processing before typical interpretive language) externalise use your body, your hands and exaggerated gestures creating a play in front my eyes and also use melody in your voice (I am not tonal deaf either) to help my grasp the movements to give them meaning this also helps because I cannot internalise words because of the visual agnosias.

Kate Bush – Wuthering Heights

Kate Bush – Bush Babooshka

Think of how Kate tells the story in this video with melody and movement using her hands and body to tell the story.

ARTICLE ON APHASIA AND GESTURE

Differences in the communicative use of gesticulation and pantomime in a case of aphasia PDF (conclusion below)

Conclusion

This study has shown that both gesticulation and pantomime can be used communicatively in a person with aphasia.
Importantly however, this may differ per communicative setting. Furthermore, even though a gesture mode might be impaired it can still be useful. In clinical practice each of these gesture modes should be assessed separately in different types of communicative settings.

In these assessments the emphasis should be on comprehensibility rather than on the correct use of a representation technique

“Pseudo” Social Emotional Agnosia

The reason why I miss tone (melody), sarcasm, idioms in language isn’t because I am literal and have a semantic pragmatic issue with language it is because words (all of them in some cases) tumble into sounds or I pick up on key words. The reason why I don’t “see” body language and facial expression is because of visual agnosias and visual fragmentation and that is an important difference to mention.

Objects Of Reference

Objects can create realties in front of me I remember movements, patterns, themes and feels what you are saying – objects can create contextual realities for me as you move them and use them as examples it grounds me with what you are saying and more importantly meaning.

Autism profile not an Asperger’s Profile

I think this is a very important element to point out I see people with AS and their profiles as unique I am intrigued and amazed with how they use language, strong logical reasoning and literalism to decipher the social world and other elements of it.

Autism – The Wider Frameworks of Presentations

Although I don’t fit the “typical presentation” of classic autism that is what my presentation and what my processing and profile innards are (people would have to live with me for a week to experience my processing world).

I was diagnosed with high functioning autism in 2010 with my parents giving a diagnostic history by a clinical psychiatrist this was because of –

• speech delay
• language delay
• motor delays
• information processing
• language processing
• echophenomena
• alexithymia
• sensory integration

and scotopic sensitivity syndrome in 2012 by an Irlen specialist with a additional recognition of severe autism (on my diagnostic report) because of –

• level of visual perceptual agnosias
• simultagnosia
• semantic agnosia
• prosopagnosia
• level of learning difficulties
• sensory integration

Profile Differences – The Importance Of Them

I don’t fit the presentation of Asperger’s Syndrome and these differences are very important in terms of mythbusting what Autism “looks like”. It as diverse set of pre-existing conditions that are stacked that then create the unique profiles and presentations.

Learning Styles & Meaningful Integration

• I love melody and movement and music, sound bites, “sounds” of words etc – I one of the reasons why I like certain TV shows and movies isn’t to do with being a visual processor or thinker
• When I move I think when I think I move
• The bigger the gestures (with language) the more context I get
• I have melodies, jingles and sound bites in my head a lot of the time – Musical Ear Syndrome
• I don’t learn by pictures they don’t compute and words must be “brought alive”

Remember every profile is unique and different that includes personalities, co-conditions and what “pieces” make up the persons autism profile. 🙂

Paul Isaacs 2014