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Autism and the Comprehension of Language

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Communication Problems in Autism

Part of the book series: Current Issues in Autism ((CIAM))

Abstract

The comprehension of language is one of the most difficult constellations of skills for children and adults with autism to acquire and to use. Yet our knowledge of what we can do about these difficulties is at an extraordinarily rudimentary level. Part of the problem is that the meaning of the term comprehension has varied from highly specific and idiosyncratic descriptions (e.g., reaction time to negative, passive sentences read silently by psychology undergraduates) to characterizations that are too broad to be scientifically tractable (e.g., comprehension as the “full understanding of world events”). To have some idea what we can do to facilitate language comprehension in persons with autism, we need to first ask “What is the comprehension of language anyway?”

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© 1985 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Lord, C. (1985). Autism and the Comprehension of Language. In: Schopler, E., Mesibov, G.B. (eds) Communication Problems in Autism. Current Issues in Autism. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4806-2_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4806-2_14

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-3203-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-4806-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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