Browsing by Subject "autismikirjon häiriöt"

Irony is a way of communicating a message in which words and their meaning is in conflict. People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have a tendency to interpret words literally which is a result of their problems in social interaction. It has been reported that people with ASD have difficulties to react to irony in a proper manner which leads to the assumption that they do not understand irony. In my Bachelors thesis I will review studies on irony comprehension of individuals with ASD. The aim of my review is to find from the literature if the assumption that individuals with ASD cannot detect irony is correct and what kind of explanations there are on the underlying issues of their difficulties in irony comprehension. Studies are quite contradictory on how well people with ASD can detect irony. Some suggest that individuals with ASD can detect irony as well as typically developed and others propose that people with ASD cannot detect irony even closely as well as typically developing. But studies are unanimous that people with ASD have great difficulties in the comprehension of irony compared to typically developing. There are many explanations why people with ASD might have difficulties with irony. One is that children with ASD lack the theory of mind, so they have problems in understanding that the speaker has his or her independent intentions that they might want to transmit to the listener when using irony. According to another explanation the disturbance in language development might influence irony perception. Sometimes tasks testing irony perception require the ability to produce difficult verbal outcomes which are difficult for people with ASD. They have also difficulties to perceive prosodic cues overall and irony has a wide variety of possible prosodic cues. In addition to the specific difficulties in, for example prosody and language, people with ASD also have hard time in integrating these multiple different cues automatically. However, there are compensatory mechanisms that help them to overcome these difficulties. They just do not automatically use them when processing language but if they are explicitly told to take in account that there might be irony individuals with ASD are doing better in irony tasks. For future research it would be important to study how well people with ASD detect irony in more natural situations. Furthermore, it should be studied how much they understand irony even when they recognize it because it has been shown that people with ASD do not enjoy irony as much as typically developing.

Musiikki on tärkeä tunteidenkäsittelyn ja kommunikoinnin kanava ja musiikkia voidaankin löytää lähes kaikista kulttuureista ympäri maailman. Yksi tärkeimpiä syitä musiikin kuuntelulle on pyrkimys säädellä omia tunnetiloja. Useimmiten ihmiset kuuntelevat mieluiten musiikkia, joka vastaa tunnesisällöltään heidän sen hetkistä tunnetilaansa, jolloin musiikki voi auttaa vahvistamaan tunnetilaa. Musiikki voi myös itsessään herättää tunteita ja musiikin herättämien tunteiden käsittelyä voidaan kuvata kaksivaiheisena prosessina. Ensimmäisessä vaiheessa tunneärsykkeitä käsitellään esitietoisella tasolla ja sitä voidaan tarkastella kehon fysiologisista vasteista. Toinen vaihe kuvaa puolestaan korkeamman tason tietoisia kognitiivisia prosesseja, joissa arvioidaan musiikin herättämiä tunnekokemuksia. Monet musiikin tunnekokemuksia tarkastelevat tutkimukset nojaavat kielellisiin kuvauksiin omista tunnekokemuksista, ja vaativatkin siten tunteiden kognitiivisen prosessoinnin kykyä. Koska musiikki herättää tunteita ja musiikkitunteiden käsittely on monipuolista, on kiinnostavaa selvittää, miten musiikin herättämiä tunteita käsitellään, jos tunteiden käsittelyssä ylipäänsä on haasteita. Tällaiset haasteet ovat tyypillisiä autismikirjossa, ja ne ilmenevätkin usein erityisesti tunteiden tunnistamisen vaikeutena. Viime aikoina on kuitenkin esitetty, että tunteidenkäsittelyn ongelmat eivät liitykään välttämättä suoraan autismikirjon häiriöihin itsessään, vaan selittyvät aleksitymian yleisyydellä autismikirjon häiriöissä. Aleksitymia (kirj. "olla ilman sanoja tunteille") on sub-kliininen oireyhtymä, jota kuvaa vaikeus arvioida omia tunnekokemuksia ja kuvata niitä sanallisesti. Aleksityminen henkilö voikin esimerkiksi kokea olonsa epämukavaksi, mutta ei osaa erotella onko kyse esimerkiksi surusta, kiukusta tai vaikkapa nälästä. Aleksitymian vaikutuksia on tutkittu esimerkiksi arvioitaessa tunnetiloja kasvojen ilmeistä tai äänensävyistä. Näissä tutkimuksissa erot autismikirjon häiriöihin kuuluvien ja neurotyypillisten verrokkien välillä ovat kadonneet, kun on otettu huomioon aleksitymian vaikutukset. Tässä tutkielmassa tarkastellaan, miten musiikin tunnesisältöjä prosessoidaan autismikirjossa ja mikä vaikutus aleksitymialla on erityisesti musiikin tunnesisältöjen kognitiiviseen ja kielelliseen prosessointiin.

Patricia Kuhl's hypothesis of native language neural commitment suggests that during the first year of life, linguistic exposure produces neural networks that are committed to the regularities in native language thus interfering with phonetic processing of another language. Infants begin to attend to the relevant aspects of their native language and thus native language learning is enhanced. In her social gating hypothesis Kuhl suggests that this process requires social interaction. These two hypotheses could shed light on early language disorders thus offering treatment possibilities. This review evaluates Kuhl's hypotheses in the light of brain research and developmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder and dyslexia. Evidence from brain research suggests that infants' ability to discriminate phonemes of their native language increases while their ability to discriminate phonemes of a foreign language decreases during their first year of life. Neural commitment could be explained by maturation of the nervous system, like mechanisms of synaptic pruning and synaptic reorganization, which depend on experience. Studies suggest, that native language neural commitment might require social interaction where adult and child attend to the same object thus helping the child to connect phonemes to their targets. However, adults also speak to infants in a way that highlights the relevant acoustic aspects of speech sounds. It's likely that native language learning is enhanced especially in situations where the adult and the child attend to the same object whilst the adult also stresses the relevant acoustic aspects of speech sounds. Children with autism spectrum disorder have problems in both social cognition and language development, but the evidence supporting an association between autism spectrum disorders and problems with social gating is still scarce. Evidence from brain research suggests that in dyslexia, aberrant processing of the speech signal is connected to problems in native language neural commitment. Understanding of early native language learning enables efficient and well-timed interventions for developmental disorders. Future studies should address on how to prevent language problems by promoting native language learning of infants at risk.