Communication problems in children with autism and intellectual disability : depicting the phenotype

Children with autism and intellectual disability form a particularly vulnerable group, as both disorders have a significant impact on the way and level of information processing and communication. However, children with autism and co-occurring intellectual disability are often excluded from research. Therefore, this study focused on problems in functions, forms, and content of communication by comparing children with autism and intellectual disability with children with intellectual disability only and typically developing children. The results showed that low-functioning children with autism, especially nonverbal children, have severe problems in the use of communicative functions (Chapter 3). In children with autism and intellectual disability receptive language is generally more impaired than expressive language. Joint attention and symbolic skills are strongly related to concurrent language skills (Chapter 4). Because of the limited symbol understanding in low-functioning children with autism, level of sense-making has to be taken into account before starting interventions (Chapter 5). Relative strengths in visual perception can be used to offer the best suitable intervention (Chapter 6). The results of our study emphasize that communicative interventions should have improvement and support of language comprehension as a key target, but also should target the motivation to communicate.