Makaton

I hadn't come across Makaton before, so thanks for drawing it to my attention, there are some very interesting ideas there.

I have rather the opposite problem to what seem to be the main core of Makaton users. My spoken language skills are reasonably good, and were as a child (with the exception of pragmatic language skills that rely on interpreting another person's state of mind). However, I have always had a great deal of difficulty with gestural and postural communication; almost a kind of "receptive dyspraxia" whereby I find it hard to interpret other people's body motion. I find it very hard to copy a demonstration of someone tying a knot or dancing, for example, because I can't translate their movements into equivalent movements of my own.

My initial answer to your question was; "I'm the kind of autistic person who doesn't need this.". But then I wondered whether anyone had any comments about using Makaton as a means to use speech to augment gestural skills rather than the more common way around. I can also lose speech and/or the ability to understand others' speech when I have a melt-down or shut-down, so I wondered whether people find that they can still sign at times when they lose their speech temporarily in this way.

I hadn't come across Makaton before, so thanks for drawing it to my attention, there are some very interesting ideas there.

I have rather the opposite problem to what seem to be the main core of Makaton users. My spoken language skills are reasonably good, and were as a child (with the exception of pragmatic language skills that rely on interpreting another person's state of mind). However, I have always had a great deal of difficulty with gestural and postural communication; almost a kind of "receptive dyspraxia" whereby I find it hard to interpret other people's body motion. I find it very hard to copy a demonstration of someone tying a knot or dancing, for example, because I can't translate their movements into equivalent movements of my own.

My initial answer to your question was; "I'm the kind of autistic person who doesn't need this.". But then I wondered whether anyone had any comments about using Makaton as a means to use speech to augment gestural skills rather than the more common way around. I can also lose speech and/or the ability to understand others' speech when I have a melt-down or shut-down, so I wondered whether people find that they can still sign at times when they lose their speech temporarily in this way.