An article from the Boston Globe recounted the tale of two parents and the moment they realized their son was autistic. Even with therapy, he was unable to speak and had not done so since the age of 2. When he turned 8 years old, his parents decided to try out an experimental program that coaxes speech through the use of movement, singing, and imitation. While his speech would not seem very impressive to us (all done being said as "all-duh"), such little instances of speech production gratified his parents immensely.
This therapy is based on theories that music can engage and strengthen the auditory and motor regions on the right side of the brain. "The combination of sound and movement can activate a network of brain regions that overlap with brain areas thought to be abnormal in children with autism. Researchers think the intensive, repetitive training on sound paired with motion will help strengthen those abnormal areas."
Enabling someone previously limited in their capacity to speak at all, to actually create words and phrase shows the development of research into both language and medicine. I am curious as to the implications of such research; will people with language deficiencies soon be able to interact and function in the world similarly to everyone else?
Is there a correlation between language ability and musical ability? Has this been tested yet?
ReplyDeleteI believe there is. I do not know any specific studies but I have heard and read about the effect of one's language on someone's pitch; supposedly a person has a greater chance of having perfect pitch depending on their native language.
ReplyDeleteI think this is one of the things that we have discussed at one point in class. I remember that we were talking about a certain language (I think it was Japanese) and how native speakers of that language can distinguish between different pitches more than other people. The reason is that in that language, the same word can actually have five different meanings, and the only way to distinguish among those meanings is the intonation/pitch of the speaker. Since these people are unconsciously trained to distinguish subtle differences in pronunciation as they are using the language, they can also recognize different pitches in music quite easily.
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