http://readerswithautism.com/2010/07/textual-clues-to-emotion-will-help-with-inflection/
By Richard Finegan
Just a couple of observations about two high school students I have worked with recently:
One writes in short, concrete sentences, almost always in the present tense, even when he’s journaling about what he did yesterday. Is verb tense, particularly when writing, a common problem for kids on the spectrum?
Both of these students (and one is much nearer the Asperger’s end of the spectrum than the other) are capable of reading aloud with inflection if they KNOW what the emotion of the speaker is supposed to be. If there are textual clues that the speaker is angry or happy, they know how that sounds. I find this interesting since one of my students speaks in a monotone generally and reads routinely in a very soft tone.
Yet if the text says something like:
John was angry. “Give me my backpack!” he demanded–both will add appropriate, louder, inflection when reading John’s words.
To get a student with autism to read with inflection, especially the younger ones, perhaps we need to TELL them what the emotion of the speaker is. They usually won’t infer this from the situation, even though most of us will. But they know how an angry person sounds if they know he’s angry. Or a happy person. Or a sad person.
The more they recognize the different tones of voice, the easier it will be to infer emotions in daily communication. Perhaps.
Related posts:
- Inference Cuing: What is the most likely reason for that?
- Hearing the story in your head: The role of expressive reading
- Autism and hyperlexia, part 1: Anaphoric cuing?
- Inferences: “He’s wearing a jacket so it must be his birthday”
- Out, out, damned plot! Keeping track of “Who…did what?”
