Summary Of Media Portrayal: Autism The Musical

Media Portrayal: Autism the Musical Autism the Musical is a documentary that followed the lives of five different children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and their families, as the children participate in creating and performing in a musical over a 22-week period. Autism the Musical is “real-life”, in that all of the scenes are candid, with each child starring as themselves, giving viewers the ability to see how ASD affects children from first hand accounts, without scripted scenes or actors. Elaine, the director of the musical, created a program called “The Miracle Project”, in which parents could enroll their child diagnosed with ASD to participate in the production. The goal of “The Miracle Project” was for children with

There were several different characteristics portrayed throughout the documentary, however, two of the most prominent were echolalia and developing and maintaining friendships. Echolalia is the repetition of speech of others, whether it is conversational, scripted, or musical lyrics (Sterponi & Shankey, 2014). Lexi demonstrated echolalic behaviors throughout the documentary, through imitation of modeled phrases and her passion for singing. Also, developing and maintaining friendships was a social communication skill that each child demonstrated difficulty in, but all for different reasons, whether it was related to non-verbal communication, social anxiety, or negative interactions with

The characteristics of echolalia and building and maintaining friendships presented in Autism the Musical yielded both similarities and differences when compared to research studies. When comparing research regarding communicative behaviors in Autism the Musical several similarities were present. In the documentary, Lexi’s mother indicated that echolalia related to autism is associated with: introverted behavior, sameness in repetition, and limited initiation and communicative actions, which aligns with echolalic traits reported in research (Sterponi and Shankey, 2014). Also, echolalia is divided into two basic categories: immediate and delayed. Immediate echolalia occurs within seconds of a model utterance being produced, while delayed echolalia occurs hours, days, or weeks, after the model utterance is produced (Stiegler, 2015; Sterponi & Shankey, 2014). In Autism the Musical, Lexi demonstrated both types of echolalia by: imitating the director’s greeting days after seeing her face to face, and by imitating a question asked by her mother immediately after her mother said the phrase, rather that providing an appropriate answer to the question. Research also indicated that echolalia in typical language development