Category Archives: language processing

From 2012, my Speech, “Imagine Having Autism”

Here is an eleven year old post that I wrote when I was fourteen years old.

From My Speech, "Imagine Having Autism"

*A happy  footnote is that I now know of three of my former classmates from elementary school who are now fluently typing to communicate. I hope there are even more.

Autism and the Gumball Theory of Communication

This essay is interesting because it tries to explain what it is like to not have the ability to get your thoughts out at will. The assumption is nearly always that having a hard time expressing your thoughts means that your thoughts are jumbled. It is a silly theory, in my opinion. All you need to do is see how a person travelling in a foreign country seems to lose their ability to make jokes or express complex ideas in another language if they are not completely fluent, but it is clear they express ideas, joke, and think OK in their own language. Autism is different, of course, because the language in which I struggle to express my thoughts verbally is my native language. But that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking my thoughts clearly. Like the author says, my output really isn’t mine to control. What is your opinion about this article?