Autism and Asperger Syndrome: Language Use

This chapter reviews recent, evidence-based research on social communication and pragmatic skills in Asperger syndrome. Twenty-five papers were included following a systematic review by three reviewers. The studies focused on six themes related to social communication and pragmatics in Asperger syndrome (AS): (1) conversation skills, (2) the Children\’s Communication Checklist, (3) making inferences and interpreting nonliteral language, (4) production and discrimination of voice and prosody characteristics, (5) pausing and disfluencies, and (6) testing and proposing processing explanations. The studies reported fairly consistent findings regarding conversation skills and prosody in AS. There was less agreement about disfluencies and neurocognitive explanations for social communication difficulties in AS, suggesting areas where further research is needed.