Helen Tager-Flusberg: Decoding the Language of Autism

Of the thousand or so individuals with autism Helen Tager-Flusberg has studied since the 1970s, one sharply stands out in her memory: a 13-year-old boy whose special education teachers had been helping him recognize different emotions.When the boy walked into Tager-Flusberg's small research room, she asked him, "How are you doing today?"He looked her straight in the eye, and with a poker face said, "I'm happy, mad, glad and sad!"Tager-Flusberg still remembers how much his response startled her."I couldn’t decide — did he understand these words? Did he actually experience all of this? Was it that he had just learned these words? Did he pick these words because of their rhyming? Was there, in fact, a little bit of irony in all of this?" Tager-Flusberg recalls. "I was clueless. But it opened my eyes that perhaps there's a lot more to some people, that you can't take them at face value."The language deficit in autism is complex and diverse: Many children have language delay, some speak in a monotone or repeat others’ words, and some don't speak at all. Tager-Flusberg, professor of psychology at Boston University and president of the International Society for Autism Research, has devoted her career to sorting it all out.Read more at...SFARI, November 2011.