CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
This chapter presents background of the study,
problems of the study, objectives of the
study, significance of the study, scope and limitation of the study, and definition of the key terms.
1.1 Background of the Study ―And
do not covet that by which Allah has made some of you excel others.
Men shall have a benefit of what
they earn and women shall have a benefit of what they earn; and ask Allah of His Grace;
verily Allah knows all things”.
(Q.S. An-Nisa’: 32) Based on the
verse above, Allah has His own planning in choosing the good one in our life. He gives us different
mercy in order we respect each other‘s
mercy. There is a great secret on the different mercy. For instance what happens to those who have brain damage named
autism. Autism will cause language
disorder which can be recovered.
Autism itself has well-known
since 60 years ago as disorder in growing children. In Indonesia, this syndrome was
well-known in the latest three years.
Based on Indonesian Autistic
institute, there are 7000 children affected autism in every a year. Carrol (1985: 391) noted that
there are approximately four males for
every one female of autistic child. It means that the disorder is more common in males; for every female with autism,
one to four males are affected. In
addition, the State‘s Department of Developmental Services of USA reported that the number of children with
―full spectrum‖, or profound, autism have increased by 237 percent, to
10,306 in 1998 from 2,778, and it continued
to rise to 18,460 cases of July 2002. These numbers are surprising (Blakeslee, 2002).
Nowadays, the word autism is not
strange anymore. It was first used by the
American psychiatrist Leo Kanner in the 1940s to describe children who appeared to be excessively withdrawn and
self-preoccupied. It comes from the Greek
word meaning ―self‖, to describe the fact that the children
seemed to lack interest in other
people. It can also be defined as a neurodevelopmental disorder that manifests itself in markedly
abnormal social interaction, communication
ability, patterns of interest, and patterns of behavior (Britannica Encyclopedia-Digital, 2003).
Carrol (cited in Rutter, 1971)
gave a definition of autism based on four characteristics, they are; (1) lack of
responsiveness to humans, including avoidance
of eye contact; (2) obsession with sameness in the environmental characterized by ritualized behavior the
child‘s surroundings or daily routines; (3)
language disabilities, including abnormally slow development and imitative speech; and (4) onset before 30
months.
Autism is most commonly diagnosed
when children are very young. In fact, a
child must demonstrate traits of the disorder before he or she is three years old in order for the diagnosis to make.
In some cases, children demonstrate
autistic behaviors from the time they are infants; parents sometimes report that they have always
observed that their child is a little ―different‖. In other individuals, early development seems to proceed
normally for a period of time, but then
becomes more noticeably different. As children grow older, they sometimes improve in some
areas- becoming more competent in social
interactions, for instance. Language skills also tend to improve somewhat, and communication can be
enhanced (www.autisminfo.com, accessed
at 14 April 2007).
Autism is diagnosed by a variety
of symptoms that can occur in different combinations
and range from mild to severe. However, diagnosis requires that all cases have symptoms from each of these
three categories: 1) abnormal social
interaction, 2) abnormal communication, 3) restricted and repetitive interests and behaviors (Jacobs, 2005: 941).
Abnormal social interaction in
persons with autism is reflected in such behaviors as failure to seek comfort from a
parent and lack of eye contact.
Children with autism may not
respond when their name is called or play with other children. They do not understand the
social behaviors necessary to make friends
or to work with teachers. This lack of social contact isolates people with the disorder from many experiences by
which most people come to understand the
world.
Most children with autism do not
develop language as early as others, and some never develop language. Problem with
communication extend to gestures and
facial expression, as well as language. Affected children with fluent speech may talk endlessly about a
single subject or use words in a way that
is abnormally precise and literal. Others exhibit a speech pattern called echolalia, when individuals with autism repeat
words and phrases that are spoken to
them, either immediately (immediate echolalia) or after a delay of some length (delayed echolalia). Echolalia is
commonly demonstrated by people with
autism- some estimates range up to 75% of those individuals with autism who have verbal language
(www.autisminfo.com, accessed at 14 April 2007).
Another characteristic feature of
language in autism is pronoun reversal.
The concept of pronoun reversal
refers to the tendency of people with autism to confuse first and second person pronouns in
speech. For example, an individual might
use ―you‖ to refer to him or herself, and use ―I‘
to refer to his or her listener.
Just like echolalia, there have been some controversies over what pronoun reversal signifies and just how
significant it is. It has been suggested
to be a sign that children with autism fail to identify themselves as separate from the person with whom they are
speaking (Encarta EncyclopediaDigital, 2002).
The autistic children have
problem in language, social interactions, and communication (Carrol, 1985: 390). It stands
to reason that the autistic children
will suffer major problems in daily conversation, since it is the area of language competence which is most closely
related to social function. The language
of autistic children can be extremely embarrassing, upsetting, confusing, and frustrating. Their language
develops slowly, if at all. Some autistic
children remain totally silent, while others merely repeat words they hear or communicate by gesture. At best, the
attention span of autistic children is
very short. They have little or no interest in making friends. They smile rarely, if ever, and will avoid making eye contact.
Accordingly, those difficulties need
some regards to apply great sensitivity in guiding the young person with speech pathology (Britannica
Encyclopedia-Digital, 2003).
Basically, the words of autistic
children are clear. They have advance in memorizing, imitating thing, what they heard
and saw and rarely respectful for answering
questions, thought the concept of their utterance meaning is inappropriate with the social context of
language event. Autistic children have some
problems in acquiring a good speech process for their social interaction.
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar