Background: Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that onset in the first 3 years of life and led to lifelong disability.Despite the early onset of symptoms, diagnosis of thissyndromedoes not happenuntil severalyears later, somany childrenlosethe opportunityfor earlyintervention.There arevarious toolsforscreening anddiagnosis, buttheirdesign, strengths and weaknesses aredifferent. The aim of ...

Autism in most diagnostic systems is classified among the developmental disorders. This is appropriate in almost all cases, even though the occasional appearance of fullblown autistic syndromes in adolescents (Gillberg, 1986) (and even adults; Gillberg, 1991) highlights the need to keep an open mind about the biological basis for autistic symptoms being a priori linked with developmental proces...

Previous analysis of data from 505 preschool children with disordered communication, falling into the a priori categories of Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), Developmental Language Disorder, and Nonautistic Low IQ, showed that PDD is statistically distinct from nonPDD. Current analyses of the 194 children with PDD also showed the existence of two subgroups within PDD. Children in these t...

The previous chapter looked at the communication characteristics of PDD and attempted to understand these in terms of language processing. It was proposed that in order to understand better the communication difficulties in this population the cognitive processing of this population also needs to be looked at. The current chapter focuses on what is known about cognitive processing in PDD and co...

The utility of the developmental quotient (DQ) obtained with the Psychoeducational Profile Revised (PEP-R) was assessed as a means of estimating cognitive ability in young children with pervasive developmental disorders. Data from the PEP-R were analysed in a sample of 44 children aged from 2.0 to 5.9 years (mean 3.46 ± 1), 13 with an autistic disorder and 31 with a pervasive developmental diso...