LANGUAGE DISORDER AND ITS TREATMENTS ON AUTISTIC CHILDREN PORTRAYED IN LINDSEY HILL’S AFTER THOMAS MOVIE (2006).

LANGUAGE DISORDER AND ITS TREATMENTS ON AUTISTIC
CHILDREN PORTRAYED IN LINDSEY HILL’S AFTER THOMAS
MOVIE (2006)

THESIS
Submitted as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Sarjana Degree
of English Department Faculty of Arts and Humanities
State Islamic University of Sunan Ampel Surabaya

By:
EVI SUSANTI
Reg. Number: A83212159

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF ARTS AND HUMANITIES
STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY OF SUNAN AMPEL SURABAYA
2016

LANGUAGE DISORDER AND ITS TREATMENTS ON AUTISTIC
CHILDREN PORTRAYED IN LINDSEY HILL’S AFTER THOMAS
MOVIE (2006)

THESIS
Submitted as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Sarjana Degree
of English Department Faculty of Arts and Humanities
State Islamic University of Sunan Ampel Surabaya

By:
EVI SUSANTI
Reg. Number: A83212159

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF ARTS AND HUMANITIES
STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY OF SUNAN AMPEL SURABAYA
2016

ABSTRACT
Susanti, Evi. 2016. Language Disorder and Its Treatments on Autistic Children
Portrayed in Lindsey Hill’s After Thomas Movie (2006). Thesis. English
Department, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, State Islamic University
of Sunan Ampel Surabaya.

Advisor

: Murni Fidiyanti, M.A.

Key words
Thomas

: language disorder, treatments, autism, autistic children, After

Language disorder is the difficulty to use and understand the language in
their daily communication. This disorder is usually experienced by people who
suffer autism. The study focuses on the character of Kyle, what language
disorders experienced are, what treatments given to help him, and how the result
of treatments given to him.
The method of this study was descriptive qualitative, because this study
described the phenomenon of language disorder and the treatments given in After
Thomas movie. The data was taken from the script and some scenes of the movie.
The writer used some theories from Carroll (1985) and American Psychiatric
Association (APA) (1994) and some other theories to finish this study.
Based on this study, the writer found that Kyle has limitation to produce

and comprehend the utterance in daily communication. The kinds of language
disorder that was experienced by Kyle were phonological disorder, syntactic
disorder, semantic disorder, and pragmatic disorder. The family helped him to
overcome the disabilities by teaching him verbal and nonverbal communication
using imitation, always talking, and manipulating ways. Because of these
treatments, Kyle could improve his language to communicate with others.
Hopefully, this study will be useful for the readers especially for parents who have
disable children in order to love and treat them patiently.

i

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INTISARI
Susanti, Evi. 2016. Language Disorder and Its Treatments on Autistic Children
Portrayed in Lindsey Hill’s After Thomas Movie (2006). Thesis. English
Department, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, State Islamic University
of Sunan Ampel Surabaya.
Advisor

: Murni Fidiyanti, M.A.

Kata kunci

: penyimpangan bahasa, cara, autisme, anak autis, After Thomas

Language disorder adalah penyimpangan dalam mengujarkan maupun
memahami suatu bahasa. Penelitian in fokus pada karakter Kyle, apa saja
penyimpangan bahasa yang dialami, cara apa saja yang diberikan untuk
membantunya, dan bagaimana hasil cara tersebut setelah diberikan kepadanya.
Metode penelitian yang digunakan adalah kualitatif deskriptif, karena
penelitian ini menjelaskan penyimpangan bahasa dan cara penyembuhannya di
film After Thomas. Data yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini diambil dari skrip
dan adegan film. Penulis menggunakan beberapa teori tentang jenis language
disorder dari Carroll (1985) dan American Psychiatric Association (APA) (1994)
dan beberapa teori lainnya untuk menyelesaikan penelitian ini.
Dengan penelitian ini, penulis menemukan bahwasanya Kyle mengalami
kesulitan dalam mengujarkan dan memahami ucapan. Beberapa jenis kesalahan
bahasa yang dialami Kyle yaitu phonological disorder, syntactic disorder,
semantic disorder, and pragmatic disorder. Keluarganya membantu dia untuk

mengatasi ketidakmampuanya dengan mengajarkan komunikasi verbal dan nonverbal dengan cara peniruan, selalu berbicara, dan manipulasi ucapan. Dengan
cara ini, Kyle mampu memperbaiki bahasanya untuk berkomunikasi dengan orang
lain. Penulis berharap penelitian ini bermanfaat bagi pembaca khususnya orang
tua yang mempunyai anak berkebutuhan khusus agar tetap menyayangi dan
merawat mereka dengan sabar.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Inside Cover Page ..................................................................................................i
Inside Title Page ................................................................................................... ii
Declaration Page .................................................................................................. iii
Dedication ............................................................................................................ iv
Thesis Advisor’s Approval.................................................................................... v
Page Thesis Examiner’s Approval Page ................................................................ vi
Acknowledgements .............................................................................................. vii
Motto .................................................................................................................... ix
Table of Contents. ................................................................................................. x

Abstract ...............................................................................................................xiii
Intisari ................................................................................................................. xiv

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1 Backround of Study ........................................................................................ 1
1.2 Statement of Problem ...................................................................................... 6
1.3 Objective of Study .......................................................................................... 7
1.4 Significance of Study ...................................................................................... 7
1.5 Scope and Limitation ...................................................................................... 8
1.6 Definition of Key Terms ................................................................................. 8

CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Theoretical Bases ........................................................................................... 10
2.1.1 Language Disorder ...................................................................................... 10
2.1.1.1 Types of Language Disorder..................................................................... 12
2.1.1.1.1 Expressive Language Disorder ............................................................. 12
2.1.1.1.2 Receptive Language Disorder ................................................................ 13
x

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2.1.1.1.3 Mixed Receptive-Expressive Language Disorder ................................... 14
2.1.2 Treatments .................................................................................................. 15
2.1.3 Autism ........................................................................................................ 18
2.1.3.1 Characteristics of Autism ......................................................................... 19
2.1.3.2 Language of Autism ................................................................................. 20
2.1.3.2.1 Phonology Disorder ............................................................................... 22
2.1.3.2.2 Syntax Disorder ..................................................................................... 22
2.1.3.2.3 Semantic Disorder ................................................................................. 23
2.1.3.2.4 Pragmatic Disorder ................................................................................ 23
2.1.4 Child Language Development ..................................................................... 24
2.2 Previous Study ............................................................................................... 25

CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHOD
3.1 Research Design ............................................................................................ 29
3.2 Data and Data Source ..................................................................................... 30
3.3 Research Instrument ....................................................................................... 31
3.4 Technique of Data Collection ......................................................................... 31
3.5 Technique of Data Analysis ........................................................................... 32

CHAPTER IV FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
4.1 Finding .......................................................................................................... 33
4.1.1 Language Disorder ...................................................................................... 33
4.1.1.1 Phonology Disorder.................................................................................. 33
4.1.1.2 Syntax Disorder........................................................................................ 36
4.1.1.3 Semantic Disorder .................................................................................... 38
4.1.1.4 Pragmatic Disorder ................................................................................... 39
4.1.2 Treatments Given to Kyle............................................................................ 45
xi

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4.1.3 The Result After Given The Treatments ...................................................... 52
4.2 Discussion...................................................................................................... 55

CHAPTER V CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
5.1 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 62
5.2 Suggestion ..................................................................................................... 64
REFERENCES. ................................................................................................. 65
APPENDIX

xii

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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents the background of the study, statement of the
problem, objective of the study, scope and limitation of the study, significance of
the study, and definition of key terms.

1.1 Background of the Study
Allah has created human being in this world in best and different from
other creatures. Although human being is created as the best creature of other
creatures, God still gives laxity to them in different way. It proves that God is the
perfect one. No one can be equal his perfection like what God says in the Holy
Qur`an (Ar-Ra`d, 8): Allah knows every female (womb) doth bear, by how much
the wombs fall short (of their time or number) or do exceed. Every single thing is
with him, in (due) proportion. Based on the verse above as explained in Tafsir

Ibnu Katsir, Allah as the lord of the world has the greatest power to set human
life. He knows every human excess and laxity in their life when they are still in
his mother’s womb. He has determined human’s fates whether they are created in
man or woman, how long standing their life are, and how their condition (good or
bad) would be. Here, the writer points that God is the only one who knows and
sets human fate in their life.

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2

Therefore, not all people face their lucky fate in life, because Allah gives
us weakness in every person. For example is what happens to those who have
mental disorder. They get difficulty on social interaction of human. The deficit
refers

to

the

weakness

which

is

categorized

as

language

disorder.

Language disorder refers to language disfluency which causes the damage
of understanding and expression of language. As the result, they have disorder on
language production and comprehension.
Language disorder are disorders which involve the processing linguistic
information. Problem that may be experienced can involve phonology, syntax,
semantics, or pragmatics (Carroll (1985), cited in Rofi, 2011: 13). People with
language disorder may have problems in their daily conversation. Field (2004: 93)
argues the problems of language disorder may be receptive (impaired language
comprehension), expressive (language production), or combination of both. This
case is usually experienced by the children who has a mental disorder, such as
autism.
Autism in children may have impairments in both receptive and
expressive. Because of these impairments, autistic children get failure to make
social communication in their daily life. They also tend to have lack of eye
contact and rarely play game with other people, yet they get difficulty to build
social relationship (Dawson, 1989: 9). That is why they are usually ignored and
neglected, and often misunderstood by the community. People sometimes define
the term “autism” improperly because they have lack information about it. Some

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3

people sometimes consider that autistic children are similar to idiot children who
are different from normal children.
Actually, the word autism is already common in our ears. American
psychiatrist Leo Kanner firstly introduces about autism that is known as autism
spectrum disorder (ASD). He found eleven children (8 boys and 3 girls) who had
the same characteristics of impairment, for instance they cannot communicate
with others and do not care with their environment, so that they are like live in
their own world. Based on his research, Kanner gives the common characteristics
of autism, those are: the lateness of speech acquisition and the inability to use
communicative speech, echolalia/ repeating the words, pronoun reversal, and
impaired relationship with other people, repetitive and stereotyped play activities,
and normal physical appearance (Kanner, 1943: 249-250).
The same core of deficits on Autistic children is also described by
American Psychiatric Association (1994, cited in Filipek, 1999: 443). They
explain autism as a neurodevelopment disorder which is characterized by the
diagnosed autism criteria by a variety of symptoms that can occur in different
combinations and range from mild to severe. The symptoms are from each of
these categories: the first is impairment in social interaction, the second is
impairment in communication, and the last is repetitive interests and behaviors
such as failure to use facial expression, gestures and lack of eye contact and lack
of ability to initiate a conversation with others. They also may not respond when
someone calls their name or play with other children before age of three. Normal
children at the age of 2 -3 begins to learn speaking, but autistic children do not

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4

indicate language development as early as others, and some never indicate the
language development. So, it needs to detect earlier when they are at this stage,
because children will pass rapid development.
Lenneberg (1967) (cited in Kandel, 842) describes the stage of
development in the acquisition of language. Children at the age of 3, they are able
to use full sentences and make few errors and close to adult speech at the age of 4.
Many investigators have claimed that the child has mastered the essential of
language by the age of 4 or 5 years (e.g., McNeill, 1970; Slobin, 1971, cited in
Foss, 1978: 241). Normally, children are able to speak fluently around five years.
They will be able to say something, understand words, distinguish their meaning
and discover the rules for recombining sounds into words then make it into a
sentence and do a turn taking with the partner in conversation. But, children with
autism may not follow the typical patterns of language phase. Although the
children are at the age of 6, but their language stage might look like at the age of
3. Therefore, it becomes the problem when some children take longer time to pass
those stages, especially when they have reached six years, in which they should
have been able to talk, combine words into a sentence, understand and use the
language in their daily communication.
Although the language of children who suffer autism is delayed, but
phonologically, their articulation is clear enough in spite of making errors in
mentioning something. Although some children with autism speak relatively
fluently which is often accompanied by word meaning errors, but they are unable
to use in conversation. The intonation also tends to flat and wrong in making

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5

stress in speech. The syntactic ability is also delayed because they often echolalia
(Indah and Abdurrahman, 2008: 127). Besides, young autistic children, even if
verbal, have comprehension deficits (APA (1994), cited in Filipek, 1999: 444).
Autistic children have some problems in acquiring a good speech process and
comprehending the speech for their social interaction. In fact, they need to treat
earlier.
The writer concerned with the phenomena above and wants to apply and
improve the knowledge of linguistic for analyzing the language disorder
especially to explore how language comprehension and production are impaired
and what kinds of treatments are given to help them, because it is important to
overcome their disabilities as early detection of the symptom of autism. Thus, it
becomes one of ways to increase the knowledge of parents to help their autistic
children. Besides, it may build parents love and patience how to face their disable
children in daily life. Autism phenomenon which is already described above is not
only happened in the real fact but also reflected in the movie. Here, the writer uses
After Thomas Movie as the subject of the research to represent the autistic
children phenomenon.
The writer chooses After Thomas movie as the subject of study because of
some reasons; the first, this movie represents autistic phenomenon which story is
taken from true story. It tells about the boy who suffers autism, Kyle, speaks like a
parrot, because he sometimes repeats what his family says and uses it in many
contexts. He seldom speaks and gets the difficulty to understand what people say,
so that he gets difficulty to communicate. Although he sometimes speaks some

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6

utterances, he just says in short sentence. He also could not convey his speech
Cleary. Hence, his parents struggle to make their child able to communicate and
interact with others. One day, they finally find some treatments to help their child
in order to be able to communicate with other. They use a dog which they call
Thomas, because the name of Thomas is Kyle`s favorite movie actor. By the
presence of the dog, his family treats him by imitation and always talking to him.
Kyle finally gets improvement in his daily interaction. The second, this movie
also shows language disorder which is used by Kyle as the autistic character. And
the third, After Thomas movie (2006) is one of UK movies where there are many
children suffer autism portrayed there. Besides, this movie won one award in
Shanghai International TV Festival 2007 and one nominated as Best Directing for
a Television Film.
Furthermore, the writer is interested in analyzing language disorder in her
study entitled Language Disorder and Its Treatments on Autistic Children
Portrayed in Lindsey Hill’s After Thomas Movie. In this study, the writer analyzes
language disorder of autistic boy portrayed in After Thomas movie.

1.2 Statement of Problem
Based on the background of study above, this study is conducted to find
out the answer of some problem in relation with discussion above, as follows:
1. What are language disorders experienced by an autistic child in After
Thomas movie?
2. What are the treatments given to an autistic child in After Thomas movie?

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7

3. What is the result of an autistic child’s language after given the best
treatment in After Thomas movie?

1.3 Objective of Study
Based on the statement of the problems above, it brings some purpose of
study which can be formulated as below:
1. To describe how language disorders experienced by an autistic child in
After Thomas movie.
2. To describe some treatments given to an autistic child in After Thomas
movie.
3. To describe the result of an autistic child’s language after given the best
treatment in After Thomas movie.

1.4 Significance of Study
Through this study, the writer hopes this study is expected to give both
theoretical and practical contributions. Theoretically, the result of this study can
give contribution to enrich knowledge and understanding to other writers in
psycholinguistics fields, especially language disorder and some treatments to
overcome the disabilities.
Particularly, the writer wants to know more about language disorder
especially in autism and its treatment. Besides, it also can give beneficial
information and additional reference to other writers who want to make further
studies on language disorder, especially that is related to and its treatment on
autism. Furthermore, the writer’s finding can also give more information to

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8

Disable School how to help the sufferer develop their daily communication. Not
only that, it can also help the parents whose children suffers autism to care them,
because one of successful factors on disable children’s language ability is
dependent on the environment help especially parental role to motivate and
attention to children.

1.5 Scope and Limitation
In order to make this study manageable, it is necessary to scope and limit
the discussion. In this research, the scope of this research is focused on the
psycholinguistics analysis, especially language disorder and its treatment by
autistic children. This study is centered on the types of language disorder and
some treatment given to him which is displayed by one of the main character in
After Thomas movie.
1.6 Definition of Key Terms
The writer attempts to clearly several terms which is used as the topic in
this research, such as:
Language disorder is a language disability to understand what people says by not
responding to them, or to produce some utterances and use it to communicate or
both the understanding and spoken especially who suffer autism.
Treatment is some ways given to sufferer to make them able to produce and
comprehend some speech so that they still can communicate with others.
Autism is a mental illness where a person is not able to interact with society and
get difficulty to produce and comprehend some utterances.

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9

Autistic Children is children who are suffered autism that is difficult to interact
and communicate with other people with same interests.
After Thomas Movie is a movie by Lindsey Hill which tells about an autistic
children aged six-year-old namely Kyle who has difficulty in social interaction
and speech production and his parents give him some treatment to help him.

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CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter explains several important theories related to the research.
They are language disorder, expressive language disorder, receptive language
disorder, mixed receptive-expressive language disorder, treatments, autism,
characteristics of autism, language of autism, child language development, and
previous studies which is relevant to this study.
2.1

Theoretical Bases

2.1.1

Language Disorder
To communicate with other people, of course there is a process of sending

the idea and though verbally through words and sentence or nonverbally through
facial expression or body language. Those processes are going so well if they are
experienced by a normal person. Yet, it will be difficult for those who have deficit
of brain function whether to produce or respond the language. This deficit is
commonly known as language disorder. To get clear understanding what language
disorder is, there are some descriptions from some experts about language
disorder.
Language disorders, known as aphasias, are presumed to have as their
cause some form of damage to some specific site in the hemisphere where
language is located. The damage causes problems in spontaneous speech, as well
as in the understanding of speech and writing (Steinberg, 1993: 186). The child

10
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11

with receptive aphasia cannot understand written or spoken language, but the
child with expressive aphasia can understand, but cannot use meaningful
language. Karlin thought that many children showed a combination of both
(Illingworth, 1971: 231).
Language disorder in children shows large variation. Children speak their
first words between 9-18 months (Goorhuis-Brouwer & Schaerlaekens, 1994). By
the age of 2 most children have at least 50 words of vocabulary and produce 2-3
word combinations (Rescorla, 1989). Language can be delayed, impaired, or a
combination of the two. Delayed or disordered language development implies that
the development of language comprehension and language production run more
slowly as compared to children of the same age.
American

Speech-Language-Hearing

Association,

the

professional

organization for speech-language pathologists, (cited in Owens, 2003, 4) defines
language disorder as the impairment of comprehension and/or use of spoken,
written and/or other symbol systems. Then, ASHA states that the disorder may
involve (1) the form of language, which involve phonology (the sound system of a
language and roles of how the sounds are combined), morphology (structure of
words and how the words forms are constructed), and syntax (the order and
combination of words to form sentences), (2) the content of language (semantics),
and/or (3) the function of language in communication (pragmatics) in any
combination.
Resuming the previous explanation, it can be concluded that language
disorder is the impairment or the loss of language abilities to understand and use

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12

the language to communicate because of having some problems including form,
content, and function of language. Language disorder covers two types of basic
problems. Those are receptive language disorder and expressive language
disorder. In few cases, there is also mixed expressive-receptive language disorder
that occurs in our society. Therefore, to get deeper explanation about what types
of language disorder are, it will be explained as follows.

2.1.1.1 Types of Language Disorder
Language disorders are categorized as either receptive or expressive. A
person with receptive language disorder has difficulty understanding language. A
person with expressive language disorder has difficulty using language. Besides,
Field (2003: 93) argues the problems of language disorder may be receptive
(impaired language comprehension), expressive (language production), or
combination of both.

2.1.1.1.2 Expressive language disorder
The first type of language disorder is expressive language disorder. It
refers to the difficulties of using the language which is often a component in
developmental language delay.
According to American Psychiatric Association (1994: 55), expressive
language disorder is characterized by linguistic features include a limited amount
of speech, week of vocabulary skill, word finding difficulties, vocabulary errors,

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13

shortened sentences, grammatical errors, limited varieties of sentence types (e.g.,
imperative, questions), difficulty expressing ideas and slow rate of language
development.
In short, by the previous explanation, it can be concluded that people with
expressive language disorder has difficulty in expressing language to others, since
they are unable to produce like what normal people can do and do not talk much.

2.1.1.1.2 Receptive Language Disorder
The second type of language disorder is receptive language disorder. In the
contrary with expressive language disorder, receptive language disorder affects
the difficulties to understand and comprehend what is being said or read. Students
Support Services (2000: 1) characterizes this disorder as having difficulties
understanding language. The difficulty may be in the word level or sentence level.
The child also has poor listening skills, difficulty following directions, difficulty
understanding word with multiple meaning or figurative language.
Further, Better Health Channel (2015: 1) argues that receptive language
disorder is often associated with development disorder such as autism. There is no
standard set of symptoms that indicates receptive language disorder since it varies
from one child to another. However, the symptom may include; not seeming to
listen when they are spoken to, lack of interest when the story books are read to
them, inability to understand complicated sentence, inability to follow the verbal
instructions, parroting words (echolalia).

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14

Based on the explanation above, it can be concluded that receptive
language disorder refers to the difficulties of understanding and comprehending
the sentences or utterances that someone says or reads to them.

2.1.1.1.3 Mixed Receptive-Expressive Language Disorder
Some people have symptoms of both receptive and expressive language
disorder, well known as mixed Receptive-Expressive Disorder as the last of types.
Looking at the phrase used, it may be analyzed that mixed receptive-expressive
language disorder is a combination of both receptive and expressive which
suffered altogether by a person. This statement is strengthened by APA (1994: 58)
that an individual with Mixed Receptive-Expressive Disorder has the difficulties
associated with expressive language disorder (e.g., limited vocabulary, errors in
tense, and difficult to produce complex sentence) and also in receptive language
development (e.g., difficulty understanding words, sentences, or specific types of
words).
Mixed receptive-expressive language disorder (Tots, 2004, cited in
Purwaningsih, 2011, 14) identifies developmental delays and difficulties in the
ability to understand spoken language and produce speech. A person who has
mixed receptive-expressive language disorder will not only have the inability to
understand and/or use words in context both verbally and nonverbally, but also
have inability to express ideas, inappropriate grammatical pattern, and inability to
follow directions.

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15

Briefly, mixed receptive-expressive language disorder is a combination of
the difficulties either in understanding the language or producing the language
that is said to them. They may also have problems in both understanding and
speaking words or sentences. This deficit can be overcome to help the autistic
people by some treatments. It can help the sufferer to be able to communicate
with others although the deficit is not totally recovered. The following subtopic
explains more the treatments for autistic sufferer.

2.1.2 Treatments
Every problem must be a way. It becomes the problem when parents have
children who suffer disturbance in their brain that affect language disorder and
difficult in communicating such as autism. According to Medical Dictionary,
treatment can be defined as the management and care of patient and the combating
of a disease or disorder, called also therapy. Some treatments may be not only
done by the therapist but also the family. Many treatments can be given by the
parents to help their children improve their language and social communication,
such as speech-language therapy, verbal behavioral therapy, and animal-assisted
therapy.
Speech and language therapy is defined as therapy services, including
diagnostic evaluation and therapeutic, intervention, that are designed to improve,
develop, correct, rehabilitate, or prevent the worsening of speech/language
communication and swallowing disorders that have been lost, impaired, or
reduced as a result of acute or chronic medical conditions, congenital anomalies,

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or injuries. Speech and language disorders are those that affect articulation of
speech, sounds, fluency, voice, swallowing, and those that impair comprehension
or spoken, written, or other symbol system used for communication. (MassHealth,
2005: 1)
Speech and language therapist asses people with communication
difficulties and help people to overcome and/or adapt to arrange of
communication problems. The technique which the speech and language therapist
uses to help someone’s communication difficulties will depend on the particular
problems which they have. For example, if they have difficulty understanding the
meanings of words (receptive), the sufferer may be asked to match words to
pictures and judge whether words have the same meaning. If they have difficulty
finding the words that want to be said, the therapy might include practicing
naming pictures and repeating words your therapist says (Stroke association,
2012: 2-3).
The purpose of speech and language therapist is to increase language and
communication ability especially language production by how children can
express their idea in words. Besides, it also helps the sufferer to recover as much
as their speech as possible and/or find alternative ways of communicating.
A family also can help the autistic child by teaching him verbal and nonverbal communication using always talking, and manipulation. In this case of
always talking, the family always explains to the sufferer and shows the activity
that can improve their understanding. In the manipulation method, the family or

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therapist might manipulate the speech tools with other tools. In addition, playing
and talking, using pictures, books, and objects can use to stimulate language
development by interacting with them.
Another theory of therapy given to autism sufferer is verbal behavioral
therapy. It teaches communication using the principles of Applied Behavior
Analysis and the theories of behaviorist B.F Skinner. In this case, Verbal
Behavior Therapy focuses on four types one of them is echoic or repeated word. It
is important as the student needs to imitate to learn (autism speaks, 2014: 37).
In doing the therapies above, it can use the approach of Animal-Assisted
Therapy (AAT). This therapy is firstly introduced by Boris Levinson who used
pet as therapeutic work to help patients with autism by using a dog. He stated that
pets give comfort to autistic child and can exert his healing influence on the child
twenty-hours a day, every day of the week (Pavlides, 2008: 23). Then, Pavlides
(2008: 70) also explained that AAT animals include dogs, cats, rabbits, birds,
horses, and dolphin. Animals in AAT provoke attention and engagement,
reinforce task completion, stimulate conversation, and social integration (ibid,
77).
Further, animal is also successful to improve socio-communicative
abilities of children. Animal as communicative partners gives children a sense
(Salamon, 2010:147). Although many different types of animals have been used,
dogs are the most commonly used and discussed in the literature. Therapy dogs
seem to be able to support the development of verbal communication skill and

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care-taking practices that lead to improve understanding of personal responsibility
(Turner, 2001: 22).
The explanation above can be concluded that speech and language therapy,
verbal behavior therapy with the approach of Animal-Assisted therapy might give
beneficial treatment to children who have neurodevelopment disorder, such as
autism. Children with autism mostly have difficult to communicate with others.
The following explanation will discuss autism phenomenon clearly.

2.1.3

Autism
This study investigates language disorder of autism. So, it is better to

describe several autism definitions and phenomenon follows from some experts as
follows.
Autism is one of disturbance groups in children. The term autism was
firstly introduced by Leo Kanner in 1943. According to Kanner, autism is the
disorders which are shown by the lateness of speech acquisition and the inability
to use communicative speech, echolalia/ repeating the words, pronoun reversal,
and impaired relationship with other people, repetitive and stereotyped play
activities, and normal physical appearance (Kanner, 1943: 249-250).
Other definition of autism comes from Simmons (2006: 3) that is a
neurologic disorder involving serious impairment of abilities to interact and
communicate socially. Generally, people on the autism spectrum have great
difficulty making friends and understanding social rules. In addition, autistic

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people usually respond differently to their surroundings. Some autistic children
remain mute throughout their lives. Others may be delayed, developing language
as late as the teenage years. Inability to speak does mean that autistic children are
not intelligent.

2.1.3.1 Characteristics of Autism
There are some criteria for children who suffer autism. They are
difficulties with non-verbal communication, inappropriate facial expression,
unusual use of gestures, and lack of eye contact, strange body postures, lack of
mutual or shared focus of attention, odd pitch intonation, faster or slower rate than
normal, unusual rhythm, monotone, repetitive, and echolalia (Teaching Student,
2000: 36).
The characteristics are strengthened based on DSM-IV. According to
American Psychiatric Association in the book of Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorder Fourth Edition (1994: 70), there are some
characteristics for autistic disorder. The first is social interaction impairment. It
can be seen if the autistic have difficulty making eye contact with others, show
little gestures or facial expression when interacting, failure to develop peer
relationship, and seem uninterested in sharing enjoyment with other people.
The second is communication impairment. In this case, the autistic have
delay in, or total lack of, the development of spoken language, have difficulty
starting or continuing a conversation, have stereotyped and repetitive use of

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language. The last is stereotyped or repetitive behavior, interest, and activities.
The autistic boy may perform repetitive routines and have difficulty with changes
in these routines.
Field (2004, 27) also stated that the condition is characterized by a
withdrawal from linguistic interaction with others. The sufferer is often mute or
uses language in a non-communicative way. The symptoms of autism appear
between the ages of one and three, and are sometimes misdiagnosed as deafness.
They include delayed cognitive and linguistic development and a reduced ability
to react to people, events and objects.
In the conclusion, autism is a kind of disease that occurs in brain damage
and occurs throughout the autistic life. Thus, it may disturb their language ability
in producing and using the language or understanding what someone says. People
with autism always avoid eye contact and do not want to interact with other
people. One of the characteristics of people who suffer autism is difficult to
communicate verbally and nonverbally. The next topic will give clear information
about the language of autism.

2.1.3.2 Language of Autism
Language is the important aspect of human life. They use language to
communicate or express what they feel to others. However, not all people are
perfect. There are some people who have weakness in producing and
understanding the language, they are autism sufferer.

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Communication problems are often one of the first indicators of possible
ASD. These may include a failure to begin gesturing, a seeming noninterest in
other people, or lack of verbal responding. Poor social interaction and poor
language and communication skills are extremely characteristics of children with
ASD (Schuler & Prizant, 1987, cited in Owens, 2003: 44).
In the autism case, there is a combination of cognitive and social
deviation. Children with autism may be only mute or they only repeat some words
what they heard. All communication aspects are difficult to be reached, except
phonological aspects. Phonologically, their articulation is clear enough although
they often appear some errors in mentioning the object. Besides, they also suffer
lower syntactic and semantic ability, because they often imitate the phrase or
sentence that they heard or echolalia (Indah and Abdurrahman, 2008: 126-127).
Furthermore, according to O’Neill (cited in Indah, 2011: 94) there are
some categorizes of language of ASD which are echolalia, pronoun, repetition,
and prosody. Firstly, echolalia is parroting the word what they heard, they usually
echoing other’s people phrase or sentences. Secondly, people with ASD usually
have difficulties in using pronoun. The following is repetition. They like create
agreement by using repetition. The last is about Prosody. Their speech is always
flat, monotones, and also they fail to understand what other people speak which
shows by the intonation pattern.
Further, the theory about language of autism is also explained by Carroll
(1985, cited in Rofi, 2011: 13). He classified language problems of autism in

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communication and their language development into four types. They are
phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics as follow.

2.1.3.2.1 Phonological Disorder
Talking about phonology, Boucher (cited in Carrol, 1985) stated that the
autistic children obviously made some kinds of phonology errors such as
substitution, deletion, assimilation, and addition. Then, Frea (cited in Mesibov,
Shea, and Schopler stated that the prosodic characteristics of people with ASD are
flat, expressionless speech, rapid, singsong intonation, errors in stress assignment.

2.1.3.2.2 Syntactic Disorder
The next language development of autism is syntax. Gleason (1998, cited
in Rofi, 2011: 15) argued that the major difficulty faced by the autistic sufferers
related to their capacity in syntax is echolalia . Echolalia has been defined as the
repetition by the child of something heard in the speech of others. In this theory,
echolalia in autism can be divided into two. They are immediate and delayed
echolalia. The autistic sufferers are in immediate echolalia when they repeat some
words what the child has just heard while delayed echolalia happens when they
repeat some words at the past.
Another theory of syntactic disorder comes from (Bartolucci 1980). He
found that children with autism were likely to omit certain morphemes,

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particularly articles (a, the), auxiliary verbs, past tense, third-person present tense,
and present progressive “ing”.

2.1.3.2.3 Semantic Disorder
Mesibov, Shea, and Schopler (2004: 64) also described semantic skill in
children with autism as the difficulty with words that changes meaning as the
classic observation of Kanner (1943). They also use unusual words and phrases,
and to have difficulty understanding the meaning of what is said to them (Lord &
Paul, 1997).

2.1.3.2.4 Pragmatic Disorder
Wilkinson (1998) stated that nonverbal behaviors which are peculiar in
autism are eye gaze pattern and gesture. Besides, they also get difficulty in turntaking and persistent questioning is characteristic. Children with autism are also
difficult to use language in conversation to share information.
Bruner (1981, cited in Mesibov, Shea, and Schoper, 2004: 64) described
three basic pragmatic function of communication: 1) behavioral regulation of
others (for example, requesting something to drink or protesting being touched);
2) social interaction (such as vocalizing to get attention); and 3) joint attention
(such as pointing to something or commenting about it in order to share
enjoyment of it with another person).

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As well as the theory of Carroll (1985) above, APA (2005, 59) also gave
description that the linguistic features of the production impairment in mixed
receptive-expressive language disorder are similar to those that accompany
expressive language disorder. The comprehension deficit is the primary feature
that differentiates this disorder from expressive language disorder. The child may
appear not to hear or to be confused or not paying attention when spoken to. The
child may also follow commands incorrectly, or not at all, and give inappropriate
responses.

2.1.4 Child Language Development
Children who have normal life will pass the development of language and
have ability to speak and understand as others. In other hand, children whose
brain are dysfunction, it may cause them having difficulty in producing or
understanding the language.
Children’s language development has some milestones from the first
babbles and words to the development of vocabulary utterances of complex
sentences. As Brown’s stages of language development (cited in Santrock, 1998:
331), the first stage consist of children at the age of 12-26 months. Their
vocabulary consists mainly of nouns and verbs with a few adjectives and adverbs,
and word order preserved. The second stages consist of children at the age of 2730 months, they are able to use plurals, past tense, be, definite and no definite
articles, and some propositions. At the age of 31-34 months, they are able to use
yes, no question, WH question and negatives and imperatives. Children are

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embedding one sentence within another at the age of 35-40 months. At the age of
41-46 months as the fifth stage, they can coordinate of simple sentences and
propositional relations. At the age of 5 years old, children are able to use rare or
complex constructions.
Language continues to obey certain principles, following the rules of
phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Berk (2000: 390)
concludes language development milestones at the age of 6-10 year, children
master pronouncing signaling subtle differences in meaning regarding Phonology,
understand humor and grasp word meaning on