A Comparative Study of Infantile Autism and Specific Developmental Receptive Language Disorder

Abstract

There is now extensive evidence that autistic children manifest a specific cognitive defect involving language impairment (Rutter, 1974). The presence of such a deficit is demonstrated by the pattern of clinical findings (Rutter, 1968; Rutter, Bartak and Newman, 1971), the long term course of the disorder (Rutter, 1970), and the results of systematic experimental studies (Hermelin and O'Connor, 1970). Nevertheless, basic questions remain concerning the meaning of this deficit for theories on the nature and causation of infantile autism. First, what are the boundaries of the cognitive deficit and in particular does it extend outside language? Second, does it constitute the primary handicap which gives rise to other symptoms? Thirdly, if it does, does the cognitive deficit lead directly to the behavioural syndrome or must there be an interaction with a particular set of environmental or other circumstances for the syndrome to develop?

Motor Deficits in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Cross‐Syndrome Study

“…Some studies have shown that children with HFA have equivalent or more severe difficulties with the structural aspects of language than children diagnosed with language impairments [e.g. Bartak, Rutter & Cox, 1975], while other studies have shown that some children with SLI have significant pragmatic language difficulties in the absence of social deficits [e.g. Bishop & Norbury, 2002].…”

Can autism, language and coordination disorders be differentiated based on ability profiles?

“…Children with AD, language disorders and DCD are delayed in achieving motor milestones (4). About 40% of AD children show gross motor problems, and about 30% show fine motor problems (2 22).…”

“…DCD children have poor visuo-spatial skills (46), are more impaired on performance than verbal intelligence tasks (25), and underachieve educationally (13 20). Highfunctioning AD children and RELD children are comparable on non-verbal tests (4). On verbal tests, the two groups do not consistently differ (31 65).…”

Strategies for Conducting Research on Language in Autism

“…Because the goals of these studies were to identify unique features of language in autism-features that distinguish between autism and other populations-they generally included matched groups of children with autism and some other comparison group or groups. Comparison groups included children with other language disorders, mental retardation, or typically developing children (e.g., Bartak, Rutter, & Cox, 1975, 1977 define autism or autism spectrum disorders, it is doubtful that across studies the same criteria were used for including children under the diagnostic label of "autism." These diagnostic issues began to be overcome in recent studies through reaching a consensus in both the clinical and research communities about how to define autism and associated disorders (APA, 1994;WHO, 1993) and through the introduction of gold standard methods for achieving reliable diagnoses using the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised version (ADI-R; Lord et al, 1994) and the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS; Lord et al, 2000).…”