Autism & Language

Ethan Weed

2026-06-17

Autism

Leo Kanner

Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact (1943)

8 boys and 3 girls

Two essential features:

  1. severe problems in social interaction and connectedness from the beginning of life
  2. resistance to change or insistence on sameness.

(Kanner, 1943)

Leo Kanner

Also: language features such as

  • echolalia
  • pronoun reversal
  • unusual prosody

(Kanner, 1943)

Hans Asperger

“Autistic psychopathy” in childhood (1944)

Described four boys with marked social difficulties, unusual and particular interests, and good verbal skills

(Asperger, 1944/1991)

Formal diagnosis

DSM-III (1980) Introduces three domains:

  1. qualitative impairments in reciprocal social interaction
  2. impairments in communication,
  3. restricted interests/resistance to change and repetitive movements.

(American Psychiatric Association, 1980)

Formal diagnosis

DSM-IV (1994)

  • Sticks with the main three domains
  • Many subcategories of Pervasive Developmental Disorders:
    • Autistic disorder
    • Asperger’s disorder
    • Rett’s disorder
    • Childhood disintegrative disorder
    • Pervasive Developmental Disorder not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS)

(American Psychiatric Association, 1994)

Formal diagnosis

Problems with the DSM-IV

  1. too much overlap betwen subcategories
  2. hard to know which subcategory to diagnose
  3. poor predictive power on later outcomes
  4. restrictions on treatment eligibility based on subtcategory

Formal diagnosis

DSM-V (2013): A more dimensional approach - subtypes are out

(Lord & Jones, 2012)

(American Psychiatric Association, 2013)

Dimensions and categories

(Rosen et al., 2021)

Prevalence

  • 1970: 3 in 10,000 children [.3 in 1000 children] (Treffert, 1970)
  • 1999: 7 in 10,000 children [.7 in 1000 children] (Fombonne, 1999)

Prevalence

(Chiarotti & Venerosi, 2020)

Prevalence

(Chiarotti & Venerosi, 2020)

Prevalence

(Jensen De López & Thirup Møller, 2024)

Research Interest

(Rong et al., 2022)

Language

(de Saussure, 1916/1959)
(de Saussure, 1916/1959)

Language in Use

Aspects of Language

  • semantics
  • morphology and syntax
  • pragmatics (including prosody)

Discourse

(de Saussure, 1916/1959; Gill, 2000)

Prosody

Three types of prosodic feature:

  1. pitch
  2. rhythm
  3. timbre

Two types of acoustic feature:

  1. source features (e.g. pitch, jitter)
  2. temporal features (pauses, articulation rate, etc.)

(Cole, 2015)

Autism and Language

Atypical Discourse

(Baltaxe, 1977)
(Baltaxe, 1977)

Atypical prosody

(Baltaxe & Simmons, 1985)

Re-introducing context

(Vorlet, n.d.)

Discourse in context

Narrative (Jones et al., 2022)
Get-to-know-you (Schillinger et al., 2026)

Normal but different

Narrative (Zane & Grossman, 2024)
Narrative (Zane & Grossman, 2024)

Prosody in context

Sentence repetition (Weed et al., 2023)
Narrative (Liu et al., 2026)

Prosody in context

Narrative (Weed et al., 2026)

Prosody in context

Acoustic features

  • IQR pitch
  • % Pause
  • Wiggliness
  • Spaciousness
Narrative (Weed et al., 2026)

Prosody in context

Narrative (Weed et al., 2026)

Prosody in context

Weed et al. (2026)

Context, context, context…

Caldwell-Harris & Posner (2024)
Kissine & Clin (2024)

Rethinking language in autism

  • Communication is a collaboration
  • “Double-empathy”
  • Not all language is for communication
  • Language can also be about itself
  • Meaning can be idiosyncratic

(Milton, 2012; Sterponi et al., 2015)

Summer reading

Haddon (2024)

References

References

American Psychiatric Association. (1980). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (3rd Edition).
American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th Edition). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890420614.dsm-iv
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th Edition). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425787
Asperger, H. (1991). “Autistic psychopathy” in childhood. In U. Frith (Ed.), Autism and Asperger Syndrome (1st ed., pp. 37–92). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511526770.002 (Original work published 1944)
Baltaxe, C. A. M. (1977). Pragmatic Deficits in the Language of Autistic Adolescents. Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 2(4), 176–180. https://doi.org/10.1093/jpepsy/2.4.176
Baltaxe, C. A. M., & Simmons, J. Q. (1985). Prosodic Development in Normal and Autistic Children. In E. Schopler & G. B. Mesibov (Eds.), Communication Problems in Autism. Springer US. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4806-2
Caldwell-Harris, C. L., & Posner, S. D. (2024). When autistic writing is superior to neurotypical writing: the case of blogs. Educational Review, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2024.2302119
Chiarotti, F., & Venerosi, A. (2020). Epidemiology of Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Review of Worldwide Prevalence Estimates Since 2014. Brain Sciences, 10(5), 274. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci10050274
Cole, J. (2015). Prosody in context: a review. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 30(1–2), 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2014.963130
de Saussure, F. (1959). Course in General Linguistics Ferdinand de Saussure (E. C. Bally, A. Sechehaye, & A. Riedlinger, Eds.; W. Baskin, Tran.). McGraw-Hill. (Original work published 1916)
Fombonne, E. (1999). The epidemiology of autism: a review. Psychological Medicine, 29(4), 769–786. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291799008508
Gill, R. (2000). Discourse Analysis. In P. Atkinson, M. W. Bauer, & G. Gaskell (Eds.), Qualitative researching with text, image and sound: a practical handbook (pp. 172–190). (Original work published Sage)
Haddon, M. (2024). The curious incident of the dog in the night-time (First Vintage Contemporaries edition). Vintage Contemporaries.
Jensen De López, K., & Thirup Møller, H. (2024). Prevalence of Autism in Scandinavian Countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden), and Nordic Countries (Finland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland). Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, Volume 20, 1597–1612. https://doi.org/10.2147/NDT.S466081
Jones, R., Zane, E. R., & Grossman, R. B. (2022). Like, it’s important: The frequency and use of the discourse marker like in older autistic children. Autism & Developmental Language Impairments, 7, 23969415221129132. https://doi.org/10.1177/23969415221129132
Kanner, L. (1943). Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact. Nervous Child, 2(3), 217–250.
Kissine, M., & Clin, E. (2024). Voice pitch and gender in autism. Autism, 13623613241287973. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613241287973
Liu, T., Davison, K. E., Kershenbaum, A. M., Weed, E., Gabrieli, J. D. E., Tager-Flusberg, H., & Zuk, J. (2026). Rethinking Prosody Production in Autism: Nuanced Insights From Individual Differences and Network Analysis Approaches. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 69(2), 660–678. https://doi.org/10.1044/2025_JSLHR-24-00690
Lord, C., & Jones, R. M. (2012). Annual Research Review: Re‐thinking the classification of autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 53(5), 490–509. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2012.02547.x
Milton, D. E. M. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: the “double empathy problem.” Disability & Society, 27(6), 883–887. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2012.710008
Rong, P., Fu, Q., Zhang, X., Liu, H., Zhao, S., Song, X., Gao, P., & Ma, R. (2022). A bibliometrics analysis and visualization of autism spectrum disorder. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 13, 884600. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.884600
Rosen, N. E., Lord, C., & Volkmar, F. R. (2021). The Diagnosis of Autism: From Kanner to DSM-III to DSM-5 and Beyond. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 51(12), 4253–4270. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-04904-1
Schillinger, S., O’Connor, H., Groves, E., Franke, H., Abashidze, N., Petersons, C., Shen, S., Prescott, K., Cox, C., Weed, E., Fusaroli, R., Grossman, R., Parish-Morris, J., & Eigsti, I.-M. (2026). “A Quick Hello”: Exploring Informal Self-Introductions of Autistic and Non-Autistic Adolescents over Zoom.
Sterponi, L., De Kirby, K., & Shankey, J. (2015). Rethinking language in autism. Autism, 19(5), 517–526. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361314537125
Treffert, D. A. (1970). Epidemiology of Infantile Autism. Archives of General Psychiatry, 22(5), 431. https://doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.1970.01740290047006
Vorlet, C. (n.d.). Context Matters [Ink on paper].
Weed, E., Fusaroli, R., Simmons, E., & Eigsti, I.-M. (2023). Different in Different Ways: A Network-Analysis Approach to Voice and Prosody in Autism Spectrum Disorder. Language Learning and Development, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2023.2196528
Weed, E., Groves, E., Fusaroli, R., & Grossman, R. (2026). Perceptual Consensus across Neurotypes: INSAR 2026.
Zane, E. R., & Grossman, R. B. (2024). Normal but Different: Autistic Adolescents Who Score Within Normal Ranges on Standardized Language Tests Produce Frequent Linguistic Irregularities in Spontaneous Discourse. Autism & Developmental Language Impairments, 9, 23969415241283378. https://doi.org/10.1177/23969415241283378