Difficulties in language development encountered by children with autism Exemplified by Croatian

Rad se bavi jezičnim poteškoćama djece oboljele od autizma. Prvi dio rada donosi povijesni pregled istraživanja autizma te definiciju same bolesti. Slijedi klasifikacija autističnog poremećaja u odnosu na njemu slične pervazivne poremećaje te kriteriji kojima se stručnjaci služe pri dijagnosticiranju. Ukratko je objašnjena i etiologija autizma, a opisuju se i općenita obilježja pacijenata oboljelih od ovog poremećaja. Poseban je naglasak u radu na jezičnim poteškoćama djece oboljele od autizma koje se obrazlažu i potkrepljuju literaturom, ali i primjerima sakupljenima tijekom istraživanja. Potonje je izloženo u posljednjem dijelu rada.This paper deals with difficulties in language development encountered by children with autism. The first part presents a historical review of autism research and definition of the disease itself. The following section brings the classification of autistic disorder, comparing to the similar pervasive disorders, and the criteria used by experts to diagnose this disease. The etiology of autism has been explained briefly whereupon we described the general characteristics of autistic patients. Special emphasis in this paper is on the language difficulties of autistic children exemplified by the literature and the examples collected during the research. Finally, research is described in the last part of the paper