ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an up-to-date summary of several branches of research focusing on language in Autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It summarizes the characteristics of language in autism, spotlights the profile of minimally verbal children and explores differences in lexical acquisition mechanisms and considers strategies for assessing language in children with ASD. Most children with ASD understand fewer words than age-matched typically developing children, and many are relatively more impaired in receptive than expressive language. Indeed, language development in ASD is extraordinarily heterogeneous. A substantial proportion of children with ASD are “minimally verbal”. Perhaps surprisingly, studies investigating whether children with ASD are sensitive to social cues when identifying word referents report mixed findings. ASD is often characterized by a preference for processing visual information at a local, rather than global, level. Assessing the language abilities of children with ASD is a vital component of research and applied practice.
