The follow-up study reports data from a population-based series of 23 Swedish children diagnosed in childhood as suffering from infantile autism and other childhood psychoses and followed through to the ages of 16-23 years. Intelligence quotient at diagnosis and communicative speech development before six years were the most important prognostic…

This study of 43 individuals (ages 9 to 26) with autism, autistic-like, or childhood-onset pervasive developmental delay found that the 8 subjects who experienced regression in their language development were perceived as using less well-developed oral communication skills. No relationship was found between a period of regression and the presence…

Analysis of the conversations of 6 children (mean age 11 years) with semantic-pragmatic disorder found they were more likely to produce initiating utterances (rather than acknowledging or responding utterances) with both familiar and unfamiliar partners than other children of similar age or ability. Subjects did not produce more utterances or…

Eighteen cases of disintegrative psychosis (DP) were compared with 52 cases of infantile autism (IA) with speech loss and 145 IA cases without speech loss. DP cases showed clearer regression after more satisfactory development than the IA cases with speech loss, and by age seven were more severely retarded but similar in autistic symptomatology to…

A study of five adult males with autism investigated which combination of input/output modalities (typed or spoken) enhanced the syntactic, semantic, and/or pragmatic performance of individuals with autism when engaging in conversations with a normal language adult. Results found that typed communications facilitated the use of longer utterances.…