Autism & Language

Ethan Weed

2026-06-17

Autism

Leo Kanner

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.

Leo Kanner

Also: language features such as

  • echolalia
  • pronoun reversal
  • unusual prosody

Hans Asperger

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

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.

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)

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)

Dimensions and categories

(Rosen et al., 2021)

Prevalance

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

Prevalance

(Chiarotti & Venerosi, 2020)

Prevalance

(Chiarotti & Venerosi, 2020)

Prevalance

(Jensen De López & Thirup Møller, 2024)

Research Interest

(Rong et al., 2022)

Language

(de Saussure, n.d.)
(de Saussure, n.d.)

Autism and Language

(Baltaxe, 1977)
(Baltaxe, 1977)
(Schillinger et al., n.d.)
(Weed et al., 2026)
(Weed et al., 2026)
(Weed et al., 2026)

References

References

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
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
de Saussure, F. (n.d.). Course in General Linguistics Ferdinand de Saussure (E. C. Bally, A. Sechehaye, & A. Riedlinger, Eds.; W. Baskin, Tran.). McGraw-Hill.
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
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
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. (n.d.). “A Quick Hello”: Exploring Informal Self-Introductions of Autistic and Non-Autistic Adolescents over Zoom.
Weed, E., Groves, E., Fusaroli, R., & Grossman, R. (2026). Perceptual Consensus across Neurotypes: INSAR 2026.
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