ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on some prominent and characteristic features of the psychology of autism, with a view to exploring how far a social–developmental account might explain the typical profile of cognitive abnormalities. It discusses the tradition of developmental psychopathology in pursuing universal principles of child psychology through a consideration of abnormal development. The research team were concerned to explore the relations among the play, joint attention, and language deficits of their young autistic subjects. The results were that although the autistic children demonstrated a range of different functional acts and some symbolic play, the non-autistic children tended to engage in relatively more frequent, more varied, and more integrated acts in both play categories. The chapter explores the thesis that is the very essence of autistic individuals’ characteristic abnormality in language comprehension and use. It considers autistic children’s comprehension of word meanings, again there is evidence for surprisingly normal abilities in at least certain domains.
