What is Nonverbal

This chapter examines how the core deficits discussed in Chapter 2 account for the linguistic deficits discussed in Chapter 1. It explains why diminished attention to speech and diminished joint attention behaviors impede linguistic immersion, potentially limiting the acquisition of vocabulary and syntactic structures. It discusses echolalia and how it reflects limitations in syntactic understanding. It also discusses how difficulty interpreting facial expressions and social interactions impedes the acquisition of socio-emotional vocabulary. It then turns to social communication, also known as pragmatics, as well as to comprehension, and explains why these aspects of language are, to varying degrees, universally impaired across the autism spectrum. Finally, it offers further discussion of non-speaking autism: why it often correlates with nonverbal autism and what the underlying issues appear to be. It concludes with 13 takeaways related to language and literacy acquisition in autism that will inform later chapters.