Rosetta (104)

[Skydiver]

Even with the 'good' government there seems to be a 'they're not human' attitude....in that way they do seem to be mimicking x-men....you have magneto/reg flag, wanting independence and preaching 'we're better than them', you have the government, that seems to kinda tolerate the alphas, as long as they can be ignored and they lock away any that aren't ignorable, and then you have the professor and his team....tolerated as long as they're helpful, but I wonder how they'll be treated if they're no longer of use?

[Gollumpus]

Even with the 'good' government there seems to be a 'they're not human' attitude....in that way they do seem to be mimicking x-men....you have magneto/reg flag, wanting independence and preaching 'we're better than them', you have the government, that seems to kinda tolerate the alphas, as long as they can be ignored and they lock away any that aren't ignorable, and then you have the professor and his team....tolerated as long as they're helpful, but I wonder how they'll be treated if they're no longer of use?

It is a shame that the writers aren't coming up with something just a bit more novel as far as government conspiracy.

I think it's already known (in a general sense) what will happen to any alphas who aren't on the DoD team, they're off to Alphaville. Rosen pretty much summed it up when he said to Hicks that he (Hicks) should stay with him (Rosen) so he could be protected. That scene reminded me of "Bladerunner", where Decker is told that he's "either cop or he's little people."

What generally happens to the alphas who are incarcerated by the government? I suspect they will be locked away and experimented upon for purposes like: 1.) finding out how these people got the way they did; 2.) finding any ancestral or environmental commonalities; 3.) seeing if these "mutations" could be prevented; 4.) protecting the population from alphas who misuse their abilities (ie. they don't use them for government sanctioned purposes); 5.) seeing if these "mutations could be steered in a way the government could use to their benefit... As it happens I have been watching some "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" and saw the episode "The I in Team" (4th season). This is the one where they unveil the Adam character who is part human, part demon and part robot, the result of government experimentation. I think the writers are planning on going down this road. Hopefully, the writers will come up with something more interesting than the DoD attempting to develop a super-soldier, or some similar cliche line.

I see a number of areas which we may also be developed: 1.) are the alphas a recent event, or have they been around for more than a few decades?; 2.) are they the result of a natural occurrence (environmental or evolutionary) or are they due to something else (extra-terrestrial origin)?; 3.) I figure we will see the unveiling of a rogue element in the DoD who are using the alpha research for their own nefarious ends.

regards,
G.

[Skydiver]

yeah, the inevitable government conspiracy angle is....well a cliche i was expecting. are they natural? or are they engineered? is the govt trying to understand something new or keep the lid on past misdeeds? are alphas safe as long as their powers are discreet? or are any of them found rounded up?

i think the only really unique angle was that autism can mask/hide/be a symptom of alphaism. that autistics are more savants than anything else.

the rest are plot lines we've seen before in other shows

[Giantevilhead]

A therapist might be able to determine certain meaningful patterns in Anna's movements, however, could that therapist determine that what Anna was doing was an actual language, rather than merely making noise? I am assuming that without a frame of reference, a therapist would be lost and assume that the sounds for which Anna was responsible were nothing more than noises which were pleasing to Anna's ears, but lacking any meaning to Anna or to the therapist. It might even be determined that Anna found the tactile sensations of running her fingers over a brush to be pleasing and that the noise was unimportant.

A therapist, who assumed that Anna was more cognitively capable than what would have been the norm for someone in her condition, might actually try to teach Anna some form of basic "sign" language as a starting point. I assume a recognized form of sign language would be used as that is what the therapist would know. I am assuming that this process would take a long time and would have limited success due to Anna's inability to control a lot of her movements.

I suspect it would be highly unlikely that Anna could teach her language to a therapist due to Anna's limited ability in the direction in her movements. Further, I suspect that it would be extremely difficult to try to understand Anna's language and differentiate what was noise and what had meaning ("Was that a double T or did she just have a finger cramp, again?"). I think teaching someone the basics of "AnnaSpeak" would be necessary to assist in programing the tablet so that it would respond to Anna's communications. If not, just how much longer would this process take?

So, after all that time, Anna would finally be able to talk to the members of Red Flag and they would recognize her as their leader...

I'm not buying it. The timeline is far too truncated. She is far too young and lacking in experience. And this is not just an ageist thing. I just do not see the Anna character being that young for all the time I think would have been needed to communicate with her, and I do not believe Anna would have been able to accumulate enough experience, ability, what-have-you to be able to lead an organization like Red Flag. And where did all of her anger/hate towards non-Alphas come from? I can understand her being angry about her personal situation, but how did that evolve into her leading a group of terrorists and cold blooded killers?

I suspect that she is a valuable part of Red Flag, and perhaps her saying that "Red Flag works for me" was merely a conceit on the part of the character. Anyhoo, I suppose it will be interesting to see what is done with the character in future episodes.

regards,
G.

It depends on the type of therapist. A behaviorist would be more likely to understand the language. A functional analysis of her behavior would reveal set relationships between stimuli and response. In behavior analysis, verbal behavior is any written, gestural, or signed behavior involved in communication. There are basic operants in the functional analysis of verbal behavior. For example, there is the mand, which is behavior controlled by deprivation. Basically, if someone behaves in more or less the same way whenever they're thirsty, that would be a mand. Then there is the tact, which is basically behavior related to labeling. If someone behaves in a specific way when they see a particular object, that would be a tact. There's the echoic, which is basically imitation. However, the correspondence only has to be in terms of the similarity between stimulus and response. For example, if every time someone says "hello," and I wave my hand in a specific way, that could be considered an echoic for the word "hello." Then there's the intraverbal, which is behavior under the control of other verbal behavior. For example, if whenever I say "one, two, three, four..." and the person responds with a specific behavior or series of behaviors that correspond to the following numbers, that could be an intraverbal. There's the autoclitique, which is the behavior that modifies other verbal behavior.

Anyway, here's a video with some info on behavior analysis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKSvu3mj-14
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erhms...eature=related

The way the pigeons communicated was through what behavior analysts would call mands and tacts.

In terms of how long it would take, ABA therapy for autism takes about 4 to 8 hours per day. That's a lot of time for the therapists to figure out that Anna can communicate. In fact, computers could make things a lot easier. It would not be difficult to make a correspondence between the sounds Anna makes and the alphabet. A computer would be much better at picking up those sounds than humans.

As for Anna's limited dexterity, her fine motor movements seemed quite good. She was able to make very small distinctions between her movements to fool Gary.