On some passions of autistic children: compensating functional language with technology (a semiotic prospective)

Abstract

The present paper shall attempt to describe, analyze and elaborate some of the communicational deficits of the children with Autism Disorders Spectrum Syndrome (ASD), seen from the semiotic viewpoint. The focus shall be on the visual capacities, [such as described in: (Grandin, 2008)] of the children with Autism, as well as on their ability to compensate their brain dysfunctionalities through technology. In the mentioned context, semiotics should attempt at disclosing the meaning of their “own world”, to the extent of rendering it passionate. I shall intend by “passions” the repetitive requests, complaints, their emotionality etc., as intermediated by other tools (and/or media), that can be exemplified as one of the ways of “reducing” their sensory-motor deficits. In conclusion, the semiotics of passions, such as described by Greimas and Fontanille(1993) shall attempt deducing semantic units which are applicable for such children’s own “intended physiological context of behavior”. The results of “actions” performed by such individuals shall represent their own way of establishing a meta-communicative process. The deduced semantic units in terms of such children’s behavior are changeable, therefore an object to intersubjective processes of transformation.