Autism Symptoms And Signs – Communication

A lack of adequate and effective communication skills accentuates the autistic child's social interactions. For the parent who suspects autism in his child, there are some specific communication impairments to watch for. 

 Children learn to talk at their own individual pace. Within a few months of birth, the average child begins babbling in imitation of the speech he hears around him. By the age of one, most children speak or obviously understand a number of words. However, for the autistic child, there is a dramatic lack of vocabulary building. Either there are only a few words they understand and respond to, or they simply do not acquire speech. In fact, about half of the people diagnosed with autism never learn to speak. 

 One of the more apparent clues to autism in a child is the misalignment of verbal cues and his response to them. For instance, if a parent points out a toy to the child, the child with autism will often look at the pointing hand and finger rather than the usually more fascinating toy. On the other hand, a child with autism won’t point out an interesting puppy to his parent in order to share the experience. Related to this is the child's impaired ability to make his wants and needs know and will point at something he wants rather than using a word to describe it. 

 The verbal impairment extends to imaginative play, wherein the ability to use a word for an object or idea is key to cooperative play with other children. 

 Even if the child with autism does manage to interact verbally with other people, he has a lot of difficulty in starting or maintaining a conversation with them. He lacks the intuitive ability to understand the use of humor, for example, and may react to it in its literal sense. Along with his lack of spontaneity and intuition, the child with autism often repeats phrases he has learned over and over again, perhaps as part of an internal ritual. This is parroting of others’ speech is known as echolalia. 

 Work on developing the autistic child's communication skills before the age of two prevents the skills atrophy. Caught early enough and with intensive therapy, many of the communication problems will decrease in time and the child may attain near-average competency. Without intervention before the age of two, many children with autism who lack communication skills are at risk of epilepsy and associated seizure disorders. 

 There are many more resources and information about autism signs, symptoms, treatments, and cutting edge medical research in, Autism