In this blog post, we’ll explain how autistic speech patterns create Autism Accents, why they happen, and the impact they can have.
People with autism face many unique challenges. One in particular is spoken communication. Autistic speech patterns are often atypical and may show up as variations in pitch, intonation, and prosody. Since this can cause problems in social and professional contexts, the neurodivergent community describes people who face these issues as having an “Autism Accent”.
Someone with an Autism Accent is on the autism spectrum and has a distinct way of speaking. Autistic speech patterns can affect intonation, pronunciation, atonality, grammatical problems, and cause irregular speaking rhythms. And this will create someone with a noticeably different speaking accent to their neurotypical peers.
In light of these differences, people with an Autism Accent may have disfluent speech patterns that seem cluttered, stuck, repetitive or monotonous. What causes someone to have an Autism Accent may link to neurological differences and social and environmental factors. And because of the challenges they face, someone with an Autism Accent may feel isolated, misunderstood or unaccepted in a neurotypical society.
To help them overcome social stigmas and find a sense of belonging, people with an Autism Accent may attempt to copy or mimic the speaking styles of others. Mirroring accents and speech patterns can help people with Autism Accents feel more accepted. And by matching the energy of the people around them, accent mirroring may help people with autism not feel so different to their neurotypical peers.
So what are the key aspects that characterise someone with an Autism Accent? They’re likely to show variations and interruptions in communication styles across two specific areas: Articulation and speech patterns.
It’s important to note that Autism Accents can vary to greater or lesser degrees. And each person with an Autism Accent will experience a different set of variations in their speaking abilities.
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Researchers aren’t clear on what causes someone to have an Autism Accent. But they can see how different factors play a role in it’s development. For the time being, we can highlight some core areas that may lead to the development of an Autism Accent:
1. Neurological
Individuals with ASD (autism spectrum disorder) often show atypical neurological patterns. Key areas where this shows up include coordination of fine motor skills, affecting control over facial expressions, articulacy, and mouth movements.
ASD can also make it more difficult to process and interpret auditory data. This can lead to a lack of accurate perception of speech sounds. Sensory sensitivities can also impact speech sound perceptions and influence the development of an Autism Accent.
2. Developmental
The social and environmental factors that children with ASD grow up with can influence the development of an Autism Accent. Limited social interactions via family, peers, or friends can slow down or distort language acquisition. Word repetition, also known as Echolalia, can also have a negative impact on the development of an accent.
Some people with ASD can also memorise word sounds, tone, and pitch from areas of popular culture such as songs, films, and TV shows. Any speech therapy or other therapeutic interventions can also play a role in shaping an accent over time.
Individuals with an Autism Accent may find it harder to organise their thoughts in an effective way, due to neurological differences. And, when conscious of their difficulties, this can result in some awkward social interactions, especially when initiating and maintaining conversations. Expressing emotions with fluency, picking up on appropriate social cues, recognising inferences, and noticing subtleties in conversation such as sarcasm, metaphors, and humour may all be much harder to do.
They may also struggle with nonverbal communication such as eye contact, facial expressions, and tone of voice. This is where a struggle with prosody can come in since similar words can have very different meanings when expressed with different intentions.
Despite these challenges, individuals with ASD may find they have strengths in attention to detail, persistence, and creativity.
Lack of awareness of what an Autism Accent is and how it manifests can lead to many misunderstandings and social stigmas. To adapt to low awareness rates, research suggests people with ASD will engage in adaptive strategies such as camouflaging or masking. But this creates a closed feedback loop where individuals with autism continue to hide or mask their difficulties and don’t expose others to their challenges. And when neurotypical individuals have no exposure to people with an Austim Accent they can easily judge them as unintelligent, incompetent, or being intellectually disabled.
Such low levels of awareness can lead to assumptions, stereotypes, and biases. Each of these effects can leave people with Autism Accents feeling socially isolated, excluded, and discriminated against.
Finding ways to raise awareness and create inclusive and accepting working environments can help to reduce these effects. Recommendations to help reduce the impact include cultivating more positive workplace environments and increasing representations of autistic people in the media.
Speech therapy can be a very powerful and supportive approach to shaping an Autism Accent in a positive way. Speech and language therapy can take many forms, depending on the severity of each case, but will be beneficial for people with autism.
Specific therapeutic treatments can include participation in social skills groups, learning compensatory strategies, and working with alternative communication styles. They may also engage in exercises around articulation, rhythm and intonation and awareness of phonemes and graphemes. Initial assessments can highlight any worries or concerns but aim to provide appropriate support to maximise someone’s potential to communicate with fluency.
Speech therapy is a positive and proactive approach to supporting better communication and can improve an individual’s wellbeing and general levels of mental health.
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