Meaning what you say? Comprehension and word production skills in young children with autism

Abstract

Thirty-one, representative, one- to three-year-old children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) were given the MacArthur Communicative Developmental Inventory (CDI) for parent completion and the Reynell Developmental Language Scales III (RDLS) for assessment by a speech and language pathologist. Correspondence across scales was good to excellent, indicating that parents of children with ASD can often be trusted in their report on children's language and communication abilities. The children had considerably better word production than comprehension and gesture skills, which is a pattern that is reversed in comparison with typically developing children. These findings suggest that children with ASD who have some spoken language may well be overestimated on the basis of superficially (at least relatively) good word production skills.