The Dynamics of "Communication"
Published January 16, 2009 @ 04:00PM PT
The DSM criteria for Autistic Disorder includes "qualitative impairments in communication." But the word "communication" is typically taken for granted without definition. Communication has a mathematical definition, which can be visualized in the image above. A sender has a message which she transmits through a channel to a receiver. During transmission, noise may distort the original message. The receiver decodes the message and then he feeds back to the sender. While this is a formal model, it is considered an accurate, if simplified, representation of communication between people.
This is easily illustrated with a telephone conversation. Jane sends her message into the phone with her voice, the message is transmitted through the channel of the phone lines where it may get garbled by static, and then the message is decoded by John's ear and brain on the other end. John then responds to the message, which may influence the next action Jane takes. It's a feedback loop.
The message in communication is comprised of a language. Some examples of language are English which can be written or spoken, British sign language which is gestural, and bliss symbolics which is graphical. Both the sender and receiver need to encode and decode information in the same language. Imagine if Jane sends a message in English, but John only understands French.
The mode of communication relates to the channel the message is transmitted through. In the telephone example, that mode is speech. Of course there are many other modes including writing, gestures, images, non-speech utterances, complex behavior, and the manipulation of physical objects.
Communication also involves time. In the case of the telephone conversation, transmission and reception occurs synchronously, or "in real time." Meaning that the message passing between communication partners is synchronized send receive, send receive, send receive. If instead of the telephone our two communicators were using email, message passing would be asynchronous. John may respond to several additional messages from Jane before he decodes and responds to the first message Jane sent.
Communication is dynamic. It is an active relationship. Communication is not something an autistic person does or does not do. Communication is something that people do or do not do together. In order to have effective communication, all parties in the relationship are responsible for keeping the communication flowing.
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Comments (2)
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Author
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Dora is committed to improving quality of life for individuals on the autistic spectrum--including herself! She is Co-director of the Academic Autistic Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education and a member of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network's Board of Directors.
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Have you ever tried to communicate with a 18 month old with autism who doesn't respond to sound and will not look at you? And by not responding to sound I mean to no response to any sound up to and including not being startled by loud, sudden sounds. Most people cannot suppress the startle reflect.
You also don't sound like you have seen the frustration on your child's face as they attempt to communicate what they want but don't have the ability to use words, don't understand the concept of pointing, don't have a PEC, and don't know the sign for what they want.
All of this makes it a little hard to communicate. While it is true that communication is a two way street if one of the people has all of the channels blocked it isn't it is something that they can do.
So, there is a part missing from your process flow diagram - there is a stage between the channel and the encoding/decoding process. In the case of speech it would normally be the ears of the receiving person and the pathways into the brain that enable the sound to be encoded/decoded into a form that can be processed. And on the opposing side there is a transmitter that is responsible for sending the communication.
So if the receivers or the decoding process is broken, then understanding standard communication doesn't happen. And by the same token, if the transmitters don't work then communication is never sent.
Or to put it simply, some people with autism cannot communicate effectively.
The answer is to attempt to correct the issues with the process and the good news is that communication can be learned. My children, who are now four, are starting to understand speech and have a limited ability to talk and use sign language and PECS. It has been a long road to teach them enough to get this far (but very definitely worth it).
So your romantic notions of communication being "all parties in the relationship are responsible for keeping the communication flowing" simply do not hold water when considering very young children with autism and ignore the realities of the situation.
Posted by M J on 01/17/2009 @ 07:29AM PT
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In response to MJ: The fact that young autistic children can benefit from education and help in the area of communication does not mean that communication difficulties between autistic and nonautistic people all come down to the autistic party having "broken receivers and transmitters".
In order for teaching to occur, both parties often need to go through a process of learning to read the other's signals even if they aren't "standard". I've seen videos of autistic children being described as "non-communicative" who are in fact very clearly communicating all kinds of things, just not in ways that are generally considered communication. There's nothing romantic about that, it's just that I don't think this culture by default encourages people to *look* for certain actions and responses.
Of course this does not mean that all nonverbal/preverbal children are literally sitting there composing Shakespearian sonnets in their heads. I am not suggesting that. Rather, I just don't see how the observation that very young autistic children can be difficult to establish clear two-way communication with really contradicts anything Dora has written.
Not only that, but there is a temporal dimension to communication -- it involves the parties involved getting to know each other's signals, and the significance of certain things going on in the world, and the development of everyone involved over time. In other words, the fact that someone learns communication skills by age four (autistic or not) that they did not have at 18 months is absolutely in keeping with the assertion that communication is a two-way street.
Posted by Anne Corwin on 01/17/2009 @ 09:44AM PT
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