27-Jun-2005
Fourteen-year-old Benjamin Garbowit memorizes long lists of ingredients from food labels but has trouble understanding the point of even simple storybooks. The eighth grader from Short Hills, New Jersey, struggles through a conversation with a stranger, offering mostly one-word utterances. And he is confused by common gestures such as a pat on the head from his mother. "What does it mean?" he wants to know. "Is it love?"