Young Children with Autism
A Closer Look at Language, Communication, and Developmental Patterns

Friday, October 22, 2004

Rubloff Auditorium at Loyola Water Tower Campus
25 East Pearson Street, Chicago, Illinois
Funding was provided by the McCormick Tribune Foundation and the Harris Foundation.

About the Symposium

Variability of Language and Communication Deficits in Children with Autism
Helen Tager-Flusberg, Ph.D.

Impairments in language and communication are among the core symptoms of autism spectrum disorders (ASD).  Indeed, language acquisition is the most important predictor of future outcomes for children with ASD.  However, there has been little research investigating the significant variability found among children and adults with ASD in both their language and communication skills.

Dr. Tager-Flusberg discussed two components of the language and communication deficits that occur in autism: the universal impairments that occur in pragmatic aspects of communication and discourse, and the more variable linguistic deficits.  Her talk highlighted the different language subgroups of children with autism, including those who have normal language ability (the group commonly diagnosed with Asperger syndrome), and those with autism and language impairment.  In addition, she presented comparisons between language-impaired children with autism and children with other developmental language disorders.  Finally, Dr. Tager-Flusberg discussed the implications of her work on language subtypes for genetic research on autism and language disorders.

Helen Tager-Flusberg is a professor in the Departments of Anatomy and Neurobiology, and Psychology, and serves as director of the Lab of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience at Boston University.  Her research explores the connections among genes, brain pathology and cognitive and language impairments in autism and other genetically-based developmental disorders.  She is the co-editor (with Simon Baron-Cohen and Donald Cohen) of the recent volume Understanding Other Minds: Perspectives from Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, published by Oxford University Press.  She is the director and principal investigator for the newly-funded NIH Autism Research Center of Excellence at Boston University.

Autism Spectrum Disorders:
Variable Patterns in Development
Catherine Lord, Ph.D.

Children and adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are unique, not just in the behaviors that define the disorder, but also in several unusual developmental patterns.  These variable developmental paths reflect differences in outcome and may interact with treatments.  These paths also provide clues about the relations between aspects of development within ASD.

Dr. Lord shared findings from her research that show the diversity of developmental patterns among children with ASD.  She focused on three groups of children whose patterns are significantly different: 1) children who experience regression in social or communication skills and/or word loss in the second year of life; 2) children who exhibit improvement in language functioning in the older school years; and 3) children who have the onset of seizures during adolescence.  Finally, Dr. Lord discussed the meaning of these variable developmental patterns for our conceptualizations about ASD, and the links between biological markers and these patterns.

Catherine Lord is the director of the University of Michigan Autism and Communication Disorders Center (UMACC) and a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the same institution.  She served as chair of the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences committee on the effectiveness of early intervention in autism.  Her research has focused on longitudinal studies of social and communicative development in ASD.  She has also been involved in the development of standardized diagnostic instruments for ASD with colleagues from the United Kingdom and the United States which include a parent interview and an observational scale, now considered the gold standard for research dianoses all over the world.

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