Home
Language Blog
Language Intervention Language Therapy
Language eBook
Programs
Inferencing
Language skills
Shared Reading
Best Resources
Information about Language Commentary
Free Activities
What is language?
Language Disorder
Tips for Parents
Advanced Lang
Reading Disorder Vocabulary Comp
Comprehension
Dyslexia Defined
Literacy
Phonological A
Social Language Autism
Asperger's Syn
Figurative lang
Pragmatic lang
Best Books Information Book Activities
Benefits...
Best books
1st Grade Books
3rd Grade Books
6th Grade Books
Textbooks
Website Information My Website
Best Practice
Contact Me
Research Articles
About Me
Privacy Policy
Information for Teachers and Speechies Teacher Tips
Board Games
Grammar
Links
Classroom lang
Speech Errors

[?] Subscribe To This Site

XML RSS
Add to Google
Add to My Yahoo!
Add to My MSN
Subscribe with Bloglines

Autism Behavior Characteristics




Autism Behavior Characteristics. Autism is a neurological disorder that affects language and cognitive development in young children.


Symptoms of autism begin to become noticeable between the ages of 2 -3 years.


Children with autism look no different than typically developing children and can only really be diagnosed through observed behavior, and by their results on cognitive and language assessments.




Autism Behavior Characteristics cont...



Three of the more observable autism behavior characteristics are impairments in communication, social exchange, and repetitive routines.


Lets look at these in some detail...


Communication: Children with autism are perhaps most affected by their difficulty communicating to others. The difficulty is usually evident in both verbal communication and non-verbal. Verbal communication includes comprehension of other's speech and using spoken language in a meaningful way. Non-verbal communication includes body language, such as using and interpreting facial expression, gesture - such as pointing - and awareness of social rules on personal space, etc.


In worse case scenarios children with autism may present with no speech, or have significantly delayed speech and language. Whereas children with high functioning autism, though they use good grammar and have functional language, may have difficulty with social communication.


Social exchange: Social exchange is related to communication. All social exchange relies on social language skills, or in technical terms, pragmatic language skills. Children with autism have great difficulty understanding and adapting to social rules or norms.


For instance, children with autism often have an inability to play cooperatively with their peers. An example might be a child with autism playing a game of basketball with his classmates.


The game can often descend into chaos as the child with autism, having no toleration for other children's idiosyncrasies, and who sticks rigidly to the rules, attempts to control all aspects of the game.


Of course, this behavior doesn't go down too well with children with typical social language skills. More often however, children with autism choose not to interact with their peers at all, and will happily play for hours either lining up objects or sitting at a computer playing a favorite game.


Routines: Children with autism need routines, which they follow rigidly and often rely on heavily. If their routine is disrupted they can become highly anxious and distressed. Repetitive behaviors such as repeating words or sentences over and over (echolalia)and hand or finger flapping are also characteristic of autism.


Autism Intervention: Carol Gray's, Social Stories



Return from Autism Behavior Characteristics to Home Page


footer for autism behavior characteristics page