Language in autism: domains, profiles and co-occurring conditions

Abstract

This article reviews the current knowledge state on pragmatic and structural language abilities in autism and their potential relation to extralinguistic abilities and autistic traits. The focus is on questions regarding autism language profiles with varying degrees of (selective) impairment and with respect to potential comorbidity of autism and language impairment: Is language impairment in autism the co-occurrence of two distinct conditions (comorbidity), a consequence of autism itself (no comorbidity), or one possible combination from a series of neurodevelopmental properties (dimensional approach)? As for language profiles in autism, three main groups are identified, namely, (i) verbal autistic individuals without structural language impairment, (ii) verbal autistic individuals with structural language impairment, and (iii) minimally verbal autistic individuals. However, this tripartite distinction hides enormous linguistic heterogeneity. Regarding the nature of language impairment in autism, there is currently no model of how language difficulties may interact with autism characteristics and with various extralinguistic cognitive abilities. Building such a model requires carefully designed explorations that address specific aspects of language and extralinguistic cognition. This should lead to a fundamental increase in our understanding of language impairment in autism, thereby paving the way for a substantial contribution to the question of how to best characterize neurodevelopmental disorders.

Sentence production and sentence repetition in autistic adolescents and young adults: Linguistic sensitivity to finiteness-marking

“…Further, some assessments are succinct by design to maximize utility for point-of-service clinical design-making in inpatient settings. As such, despite excitement about increasing accessibility of language assessment across the autism spectrum (Kover & Abbeduto, 2023; Schaeffer et al, 2023), best practices for language assessment that is developmentally appropriate and age appropriate in autistic adolescents and adults remains elusive (Howlin & Taylor, 2015).…”

“…Finiteness-marking, or marking of tense and agreement, is one aspect of morphosyntax and a clinical marker of LI in autism (Eigsti et al, 2011; Modyanova et al, 2017); see Ash and Redmond (2014). In turn, sentence repetition and sentence production are useful for assessing morphosyntax in autism (Schaeffer et al, 2023). Evidence-based assessment also requires understanding how to interpret and use measures (Girolamo et al, 2022b; Messick, 1990).…”

Intellectual development in young children with autism spectrum disorders: A longitudinal study

“…All the autistic children were high-functioning and attended mainstream classes in public schools. In this study, children with high-functioning autism are defined as autistic children who have fluent speech and intelligence within the normal range (Norbury & Bishop, 2002;Schaeffer et al, 2023). In the present study, longitudinal IQ scores were obtained at two timepoints over a 4-year period (2019-2023) as part of the autistic children's periodic cognitive and language assessment at the diagnostic centers.…”

Embracing gestalt language development as a fundamental neurodiversity-affirmative practice

“…Reviews of language in autism discuss it briefly, if at all (e.g. Boucher, 2012;Schaeffer et al, 2023) or frame it simply as 'normal' language developmental processes (e.g. Gernsbacher et al, 2016).…”