The current diagnostic criteria for the autism spectrum disorder (ASD) include the possibility to specify concomitant language difficulties. Purpose: Our main aim was to explore whether children with ASD-Level 1 (ASD-L1) present difficulties in the acquisition of structural language, as little work has been done in this regard so far. As a…

Keeping a conversation going is the social glue of friendships. The DSM criteria for autism list difficulties with back-and-forth conversation but does not necessitate that all autistic children will be equally impacted. We carried out three studies (two pre-registered) with verbally fluent school children (age 5-9 years) to investigate how…

Purpose: Individuals with proximal 16p11.2 copy number variants (CNVs), either deletions (16p11.2DS) or duplications (16p11.2Dup), are predisposed to neurodevelopmental difficulties and disorders, such as language disorders, intellectual disability, and autism spectrum disorder. The purpose of the current study was to characterize language…

Purpose: Chromosome 16p11.2 deletion syndrome (OMIM #611913) is a rare genetic condition resulting from the partial deletion of approximately 35 genes located at Chromosome 16. Affected people exhibit a variable clinical profile, featuring mild dysmorphisms, motor problems, developmental delay, mild intellectual disability (ID), socialization…