Asd Student Sarcasm

When I think of sarcasm, I automatically think of Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory and how he doesn’t know whether his friends were being sarcastic or not. He continually tried to understand the concept of sarcasm thus demonstrating just how important it is to fit into the social norm. Many people don’t always note when someone’s is being sarcastic; it may fall on deaf ears unless the comment is very pointed. Others such as my niece seem to be born to it. I can remember the smirk followed by the rolling of the eyes, sarcasm without words! Unfortunately for ASD individuals this language deficit may have repercussions. The authors of Teaching children with autism to detect and respond to sarcasm indicated the high prevalence of autistic children being bullied. These individuals say things and take things
at face value; they don’t understand others lies, facial expressions, and frequently become the brunt of jokes. This is compounded by lack of friends to buffer the effects. Sarcasm requires the individual to understand the statement made is opposite to the literal meaning. It becomes necessary therefore to try and teach these individuals what others are really saying and when others are being sarcastic. I enjoyed reading this article and found it enlightening, I had never given much thought to sarcasm and its relation and effects on autistic individuals. My nephew is still young as were most on the individuals I dealt with in the classroom. Sometimes I think when we see a sarcastic act in younger children we usually take it as just childish misbehavior not seeing the repercussions down the line. In our last assignment on communication we learned how important communication was and this is an extension of that, highlighting a deficit and its effects. I won’t go into the actual study procedure as others of you have done so already.
The study was well done and followed good documentation procedures and the results showed that “all three participants not only mastered the skill, but demonstrated generalization to novel people, settings and exemplars.” (Persicke, Tarbox, Ranick & St. Clair, 2013, p.197) However after working with several students in the class situation and helping some others in a group home environment, I have to pause and wonder about its importance in the much wider field of all autistic individuals with their very varied abilities. As others have mentioned the study sample was very small and I noted the selection process additionally required completion or near completion of the Skills curriculum. Would the study have shown the same results over a larger sampling and a less defined choice of individuals? The authors in their discussion area indicate as well the limitation, that other forms of deception were not used. This addition to the autism knowledge field was helpful and important for the few it impacts, personally though I’d like to have seen something that had a wider
scope.

The second article Teaching children with autism to detect and respond to deceptive statements, (Ranick, Presicke, Tarbox, & Kornack, 2013) indicates that, “a child with ASD already has a difficulty understanding when he is being lied to then has a few or no friends to “stand up” for him, so it will make him a more vulnerable target for bullies” (Ranick, et al., 2013, p. 504). I found this an excellent point, and it struck me as I thought of my placement in the Autism unit and how most of the children had no friends outside the Autism unit. They would have had no one to stand up for them if bullying occurred. It is better for children to be in a regular classroom where there is a better chance of a classmate being nearby. My nephew is in such a class and has a few friends in his class that he regularly plays with at recess. Children in the playground can easily take advantage of the situation by indicating the teacher said they could have the child’s treat or toy, the autistic child would give it to them. The authors indicated an autistic child has, “no history with responding to language in non-literal ways” (Ranick, et al., 2013, p. 504). Even more critical are safety issues such as in the situation where someone at a park or a schoolyard, may indicated to the ASD child that the child’s parents told them to pick them up or that they were allowed, “To come see my cute puppy.” Teaching a child about the difference between deceptive statements and truthful statements is critical, for their safety and wellbeing. Not only do they not understand deceptive but for some non-verbal, they would have no way of yelling out for help should a situation occur. Again this study was well done but I’m in agreement with others that I would have like to have seen a wider scope of participants. All the individuals were able to acquire skills through multiple exemplar training and generalization was observed. The results suggest “it may be useful to conceptualize the ability to detect deception as learned behavior.” (Ranick, et al., 2013, p. 507) The researches indicate this is at its infancy, I can see great merit in further studies.