Warbler
May 4, 2007 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Back in the long ago days when “autism” was becoming a new word, still strange, in our vocabulary, Jim read somewhere that some autistic children sing before they can speak—can sing whole sentences, even. Since he was a baby, Charlie has always been inclined towards music, whether my piano playing or the renditions of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on a toy computer. Charlie is a singer and does indeed sing in tune—long phrases, though his words are not always distinct, the consonants slurred. He hums, he warbles.
And warbling is something “Youngsters with the most serious symptoms of autism had a stronger preference for” than “higher functioning children with autism” did: This is just part of the findings reported on at International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR) by Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences and an expert on language acquisition in babies. Kuhl found that children with autism have more difficulty recognizing ordinary words and, further, familiar words versus words that are novel. As noted in a Eurekalert press release today:
he brains of typically developing infants responded with a unique pattern of activation for each of these types of words. The responses for known and unknown words were markedly different. With the backward words, the children’s brains reacted as if they were hearing something totally different from the other types of words and gave a different signal, according to Kuhl, who is a professor of speech and hearing sciences. In addition, brain activity was focused in the temporal lobes of both hemispheres of the brain for each word type.
The children with autism, however, showed no difference in their responses between known and unknown words, meaning they couldn’t differentiate between them. However, their brains did react to the backwards words, and the pattern of activity was somewhat similar to that of the typically developing children. Overall brain activity in the children with autism was more diffuse and not focused in the temporal lobes, indicating more of their brains were tied up trying to understand the words.
This is very interesting to me in regard to what aspects of language Charlie seems to focus on; he certainly seems to have to concentrate much more when he is listening to speech. Kuhl’s finding about warbling is related to her earlier research on “motherese”:
Earlier work by Kuhl showed dramatic differences in how children 32 to 52 months of age responded to a computer-generated warbling sound and “motherese,” or baby talk, a speech form that is rich in phonemes. When given a choice by letting them turn their heads in one direction versus the other, normally developing children consistently preferred to listen to motherese, a near universal form of baby talk that is directed at infants and young children. Children with autism preferred the warble sound and chose it consistently.
Youngsters with the most serious symptoms of autism had a stronger preference for the warble than did higher functioning children with autism.
I still speak a lot of “motherese” to Charlie, and a good deal of this is the content of my back and forth exchanges (”conversations”) with Charlie. I speak motherese (I am a mom, after all); Charlie warbles back. I do ask him to shape the sounds he has said into distinct words but sometimes those washes of sound seem to say enough. Not that we are going to the birds (though you can at this bird blog carnival), but perhaps taking a page or two—a tweet or two—from them will make for some good music, and greater understanding.
Can you describe warbling?
For most of my life, I’ve done something I call ‘trilling’ which is, as best I can describe it, a combination of humming and gargling.
It’s not quite humming, occasionally guttural from the throat, with short melodies.
I’d love to know where Jim read this….one of my most vivid memories is that Ely sang before she ever spoke (not that she can speak well now, at almost-6 years old.) And she sang, in what is now considered nearly perfect pitch, to Norah Jones’ “Don’t Know Why” from Norah’s first album. This was at about eighteen months of age. Of course, it thrilled me, but it shook me to my roots, as well, that she could sing but could not communicate her needs. Now, while she hums (but doesn’t verbalize) to some classical music, she DOES sing along to songs by Five For Fighting (though, thankfully, not “What Kind of World”….ewww). She prefers songs that do not promote her “cause”. I like her taste.