Purpose: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) services and research have evolved over the past decades to mitigate the negative effects of this lifelong condition on those who live with it and the society. The purpose of this article is to shed light on the current state of ASD services and research in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and discuss future directions to enhance services and research in relation to accessibility and optimizing the journey of care for individuals with ASD. Conclusions: Background information is provided about the KSA and its role in the region as a major country to lead the advancement of ASD services, regulations, awareness, and research. ASD in KSA is gaining more attention and recognition at all levels, which will ultimately lead to larger opportunities to provide a high-quality service at the levels of diagnosis and intervention.

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Communicative differences are a feature of ADHD and measuring differences in verbal behavior can elucidate critical features of the disorder. This study focuses on quantity of verbal output through investigating the verbal productivity and length of turns in children with ADHD compared to age-matched typically developing (TD) children. The participants were twenty Saudi 4-5 year old boys. Ten were typically developing and ten had a diagnosis of ADHD. A 30 minute sample of speech during free play was collected from each child in conversation with an unfamiliar adult interlocutor (UI). All sessions were filmed and audio-recoded, the interactions transcribed then number of turns and whole words per turn counted. The results were statistically analyzed and showed that children with ADHD had a reduced verbal output with respect to total number of words, total number of verbal turns and average number of words per turn compared to typically developing children of similar age. It is argued that the differences are evidence of the negative effect of the core behavioral characteristics of ADHD on verbal pragmatic skills.