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