Anemone's Research Emporium

Late Talking and Autism

Anemone Cerridwen
August 1, 2008

Not everyone starts speaking at the exact same age. Some talk early, some talk at the average age, and some talk late. Most people who talk late get caught up once they start talking. Those who don't start talking until after age 6-7 do have problems, and those who don't start talking until past puberty never do get caught up, but most late talkers start talking before age 6-7. While most kids who talk late are below average in intelligence, there is a subgroup of gifted kids who talk late but are advanced in other ways. Late talking in this group is often confused with autism, but there are differences. This discussion is about these non-autistic gifted late talkers, and how they are similar and dissimilar to autistic kids.

First of all, they're late talkers, and kids with Asperger Syndrome aren't, by definition (see the DSM), so they don't have Asperger Syndrome. Let's just get that one out of the way.

Second of all, they typically talk late but otherwise communicate normally on schedule. They follow conversations just fine and communicate normally using nonverbals, for example pointing to show what they want instead of using words. Autistic kids with language delays will probably also be delayed in following conversations and participating in them nonverbally, as well as being late in talking. In other words, some kids talk late, but others have more pervasive communication difficulties and experience delays across a wider set of skills. The first ones aren't autistic - the second ones may be.

Also, it should be pointed out that these gifted late talkers may be socially impaired while they're waiting to catch up language-wise, but once they start talking, they do get caught up socially and some of them are not just socially normal, but even above average in their social skills. Autistic kids never do get caught up, as a rule, and continue to experience language and/or communication deficits and social problems as adults. Autism is a lifelong deficit, late talking isn't. If there's a pervasive, life-long delay, it may be autism. If it's just late talking, it isn't.

These late talking kids are often gifted analytically. They excel at puzzles. Later they do well at math and chess. They may also do well at music. Many of them have engineers as relatives. Almost all of them are related to one or more engineers, scientists, musicians, accountants, or pilots. They often also have musicians among their close relatives. In general, parents tend to be well educated. The few kids in one study old enough to have taken the SAT all scored above the 90th percentile on the mathematics scale. Many of them are precocious when it comes to reading, numeracy, or computer use.

These kids also have unusually good memory for details. They tend to be strong willed, and may have strong interests in some areas, with little or no interest in others, even going so far as refusing to participate in testing because the tests do not interest them. They tend to display an unusual degree of concentration for subjects that do interest them.

These kids tend to be clumsy, and many are delayed with respect to toilet training.

Unlike many gifted kids, who may be myopic and/or allergic and/or left handed, these kids tended to be right handed and not particularly allergic. It is as if giftedness has a price, and some pay it in myopia or allergies or left handedness, but these kids pay it in late speaking.

Most of these late talking kids are male (as is also true of autistic people). The ratio appears to be somewhere around 4:1 male to female, which is typical for sex differences for this sort of thing. Girls with language delay are rarer, presumably because girls' brains are less lateralized for language than boys' brains are, but the girls who are gifted late talkers tend to show the same set of gifts and deficits that the boys do. However, other than this they are not particularly boyish.

It is interesting that this particular group of kids has strong analytical skills. These skills are usually located in the left hemisphere, near where speech is produced, as is the ability to distinguish pitch (unlike visual-spatial skills and language comprehension, which are generally found in the right hemisphere). It is as if, as the brain develops, development of analytical skills takes away from neighbouring speech development, and the child only catches up with respect to speech as the brain continues to grow, increasing overall capacity and allowing other areas to also develop.

Thomas Sowell gives Albert Einstein as an example of a late talker with high analytical skills. Einstein was a late talker, and was obviously gifted, particularly in analytical functions, and had all the problems gifted people face, including social isolation and not fitting in. However, he does not appear to have been autistic, as his social skills caught up and were well within the normal range as an adult. Of course, with his gifts, he had a relatively small peer group, leading to some isolation as an adult, but he does not appear to have had problems networking and making friends when the friends were there to network with, unlike autistic adults who continue to struggle even in environments rich with people similar to them.

Simon Baron-Cohen would refer to these late talkers as high in systemizing, and believes that this pattern is typical of autistic people. Many people also believe Einstein was autistic, because he spoke late and was weird. Research on late speaking people, which hopefully will continue and expand, should clarify the difference between late speaking in people with an analytical bent, and autism, which is far more pervasive and lasting than simple late talking, and which may occur in people who have no analytical abilities whatsoever. There will be people who are both analytical and autistic, as there are people who are both gifted in other ways and autistic, and the overall pattern of analytical gifts and late talking is similar enough to autism to suggest that autism in some cases may be an extreme version of late speaking in analytical types, but it is important to note that there are differences, also. Not everyone in one group also belongs in the other. Autism and late speaking are not the same thing.

In summary, learn to tell the difference between late talking and autism.

My own father was late speaking (age 3) and became an accountant. He and his father would also have made good engineers. He is not autistic. As far as I know no one on that side of the family is.

Sources:

Sowell, Thomas, 1997. Late-talking children. Basic Books, NY.

Sowell, Thomas, 2001. The Einstein syndrome: Bright children who talk late. Basic Books.