Autistic individuals face communication challenges, including difficulty with eye contact, indirect gestures, and joint attention. Verbal communication may involve repetitive speech patterns and a lack of inflection and facial expression. Some individuals may be limited to direct gestures and expressive sounds.
Communication in autism is generally one of the biggest challenges faced by individuals with the condition. An individual with autism typically has various characteristic communication difficulties, including a lack of eye contact, an inability to express thoughts correctly, and an inability to use or understand indirect gestures. Verbal autistic individuals may have certain characteristic speech patterns, such as repetitive or specialized speech, and may also speak in a monotonous manner, without appropriate inflection and facial expression.
A person with autism often seems to be disconnected from others and sometimes seems to function within their own private world. This aspect of autism causes difficulties with an individual’s joint attention and imitative skills. Generally, a deficit in the development of these skills significantly affects communication in autism.
Joint attention involves a person’s tendency to base one’s reaction to a stimulus on the reaction of another individual and usually develops naturally in early childhood. For example, if an individual is looking at a scary image, he might take a look at another individual to gauge that person’s reaction to the image and shape his own reaction accordingly. Imitation is a similar skill that involves a person’s ability to mirror the behavior, body language, and voice inflection of other individuals in order to communicate appropriately. Again, this skill is usually developed in early childhood. When these skills are lacking, as is usually the case in autism, communication skills generally do not develop appropriately.
In many cases, communication in autism is characterized by a complete lack of eye contact or inappropriate eye contact, such as staring for excessive periods of time. During normal communication, most people use eye contact to engage another person. Individuals with autism do not use this communication mechanism appropriately in their interactions with others.
Individuals who have autism often have difficulty interpreting and using indirect gestures. For example, if a person points across the room to an object, an autistic individual will not understand that the gesture directs his or her attention to the object. Generally, communication in autism involves direct and tactile gestures. Rather than verbally pointing to or requesting an item, a person with autism will typically communicate the need by physically taking a person by the hand to the desired item or placing a person’s hand on the item they want assistance with.
Expressing thoughts through words, whether written or spoken, is a skill that many with autism find it difficult to develop. Some individuals with autism never learn to speak or write and are limited to direct gestures and expressive sounds. This type of communication in autism is extremely challenging and frustrating, especially when the individual is not in a controlled environment with people familiar with the particular gestures and expressions used to communicate.
When an autistic individual is able to develop verbal communication, their speech patterns may have certain characteristic tendencies. For example, many individuals with autism develop repetitive speech patterns, repeating a particular phrase over and over or parroting what another person has said. Others may talk profusely about a particular topic but are unable to express themselves on other topics. Generally, however, even when verbal communication in autism is at a high level, vocal tones often lack inflection and the individual typically lacks appropriate facial expressions to accompany his or her words.
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