Infants are supposed to start babbling, and from this develop fully-fledged language and vocabulary from the age of about 1 ½. My son did not. When this happens the usual cause is a hearing problem but I was able to test his hearing myself and that was not the case. I also noticed he failed to follow points, point to anything himself or look to see where other people were looking. In other words he was already showing some of the key features of classic autism, and received a diagnosis at age 2 ½. Later, he was also diagnosed with learning disability, but in those early years it was difficult to tell his cognitive ability because the standard, age-appropriate tests all required either verbal responses or pointing to the correct answer, none of which he was able to do.
At the age of 15 ½ he still only has about a dozen or so words (almost all nouns) which he uses, mostly to request things, although we believe he understands a lot more. His speech is largely unintelligible to those who do not know him (the words he uses tend to get cut short after the initial consonant and first vowel) and he is generally unresponsive to questions. He is responsive to sounds though. Like many autistic children he is very sensitive to loud environmental sounds, and habitually wears ear defenders, but he has a different reaction to vocal sounds. His first word (if it counts as a word) was “atchoo” produced, with great glee, in response to Daddy sneezing and he continues to regard a lot of human-made noises as very funny (this is not always appropriate, he does so when others are noticeably upset – not out of malice, but just because he includes crying within his category of funny noises).
He also hums a great deal although his reaction to live music, including music therapy sessions, is mixed. At one point he seemed particularly fixated on jazz, and at another on one particular instrument (although since that instrument was the violin, it’s difficult to know if it was the sound or the visuals of someone playing it – arms outstretched and fingers moving – which attracted him). Hums rather than sings because the words are not distinguishable and he doesn’t discriminate between instrumentals and songs with lyrics – anything he has recently heard is likely to be reproduced, whether it is the Rolling Stones (‘Paint It Black’ appears to be a particular favourite), Dexys Midnight Runners (‘Come On Eileen’ was used in a pantomime we attended one year), the theme tune for Blackadder or the Star Wars films, Hall of the Mountain King, or a Frank Sinatra number. So far as an untrained, fond parent can determine he hums in tune and has rather better control of his singing voice than his speaking voice. The question about whether he experiences inner music (and whether it contributes to his personal wellbeing) remains unanswered because it is a question he would not even understand if put to him. This is the problem of “behavioural silence” – the difficulty in telling, in the absence of spoken testimony, the nature of his inner life and cognitive capability. It’s not unique to him of course, sometimes someone might simply not volunteer information about their inner life because they assume everyone else’s is the same (as when you discover, after many years, that unbeknownst to you, an old friend experiences a perpetual music track), but the inability to speak creates particular difficulties. A research study of mine from a few years ago attempted to look at the self-reported auditory imagery of autistic adults but, useful though such studies are, I have come to doubt whether verbal autistic adults with normal IQ really share that much in common with my son. But I honestly do not know. Other than his very frequent humming, which can be interpreted as externalising inner music, I have one other clue that he experiences songs “in his head”. He really REALLY does not like it if you attempt to join in with his singing, and will not tolerate any mistakes. Although there are other ways he could be doing this, it seems as though he has a good mental image of what the song should be and it seems to me that it is likely the deviation from his own inner music that he finds upsetting.
Phil Beaman