Late talker

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Late talker is a term used for exceptionally bright people who experience a delay in the development of speech.[1] Commonalities include usually being boys, delayed speech development, highly educated parents, musically gifted families, puzzle-solving abilities, and lagging social development.[2] Many high-achieving late talkers were notoriously strong willed and noncompliant as children.[3] Late talkers can often be misdiagnosed early on as having severe ("low-functioning") autism spectrum disorder (a category known simply as "autism", prior to the DSM-5), and careful professional evaluation is necessary for differential diagnosis, according to Darold Treffert and other experts.[4][5] One major difference between late talkers and low-functioning autistic children is that for late talkers, communication skills automatically reach a normal level and the child requires no further special treatment with regards to speech.[6][7] Outlook for late talkers with or without intervention is generally favorable.[8] However, late language emergence can also be an early or secondary sign of high-functioning autism spectrum disorder / Asperger syndrome, or other developmental disorders, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, intellectual disability, learning disability, social communication disorder, or specific language impairment.[3][9]

Einstein syndrome, a term coined by the economist Thomas Sowell, is also sometimes used to describe late talkers. The term is named after Albert Einstein (often said to have been a late talker, though with questionable evidence[10]), whom Sowell used as the primary example of a late talker in his work.[11] Sowell also included Edward Teller,[11] Srinivasa Ramanujan,[11] the mathematician Julia Robinson,[12] Richard Feynman,[11][12] and the pianists Clara Schumann and Arthur Rubinstein to be in the late talkers group.[11] As a toddler, the scientist John Clive Ward showed similar behavioral traits to those described by Sowell,[13] according to a brief sketch of his biography.

Sowell claimed late talkers are often inaccurately categorized as having an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and that a small subset of late talkers are highly intelligent children with common characteristics concentrated in music, memory, math or the sciences.[2] However, as reported by Simon Baron-Cohen, such characteristics are often found in high-functioning autism / Asperger syndrome.[14]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ James, Ioan (15 November 2008). "Autism in mathematicians". The Mathematical Intelligencer. 25 (4): 62–65. doi:10.1007/BF02984863. 
  2. ^ a b Sowell, Thomas (2001). The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late. Basic Books. pp. 89–150. ISBN 0-465-08140-1. 
  3. ^ a b "Five Minutes with Stephen Camarata". The MIT Press. The MIT Press. Retrieved 3 March 2016. 
  4. ^ Treffert, Darold. "Outgrowing Autism? A Closer Look at Children Who Read Early or Speak Late". Scientific American. Retrieved 3 March 2016. 
  5. ^ Treffert, Darold. "Oops! When "Autism" Isn't Autistic Disorder: Hyperlexia and Einstein Syndrome". Scientific American. Retrieved 3 March 2016. 
  6. ^ Camarata, Stephen M. (2014). Late-talking children : a symptom or a stage?. ISBN 9780262027793. 
  7. ^ Treffert, DA (March 2014). "Savant syndrome: realities, myths and misconceptions". Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. 44 (3): 564–71. doi:10.1007/s10803-013-1906-8. PMID 23918440. 
  8. ^ Rapin, Isabelle (2002). "Book Review: Diagnostic Dilemmas in Developmental Disabilities: Fuzzy Margins at the Edges of Normality. An Essay Prompted by Thomas Sowell's New Book: The Einstein Syndrome". Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. 32 (1): 49–57. doi:10.1023/A:1017956224167. 
  9. ^ "Late Language Emergence: Overview". American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Retrieved 2017-10-14. 
  10. ^ "The Legend of the Dull-Witted Child Who Grew Up to Be a Genius", The Albert Einstein Archives, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
  11. ^ a b c d e Thomas Sowell, Ten Years Later. Capitalism Magazine, 24th 05 2003.
  12. ^ a b Thomas Sowell (2008), Late-Talking Children, Basic Books, ISBN 9780786723652 . 192 pages.
  13. ^ Close, Frank (2011). "Ch. 6, The Identity of John Ward". The Infinity Puzzle: Quantum Field Theory and the Hunt for an Orderly Universe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199593507. 
  14. ^ Baron-Cohen S (2002). "Is Asperger syndrome necessarily viewed as a disability?". Focus Autism Other Dev Disabl. 17 (3): 186–91. doi:10.1177/10883576020170030801.  A preliminary, freely readable draft, with slightly different wording in the quoted text, is in: Baron-Cohen S (2002). "Is Asperger's syndrome necessarily a disability?" (PDF). Cambridge: Autism Research Centre. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 December 2008. Retrieved 2 December 2008. 
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