Autism Spectrum Disorder Analysis

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) is a developmental disability that usually becomes evident from an early age. Autism spectrum disorders "significantly affects verbal and nonverbal communication, social interaction, and imaginative creativity" (Perry, Woolfolk & Winne, 2016). ASD is becoming more prevalent in our societies. In the 1970s, it is estimated that one in 2000 children has autism spectrum disorder. However, more recent estimation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States shows that "one in 88 children has autism spectrum disorder" (Durham University, 2012) with boys five times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with ASD. Estimation from the UK show similar findings with "one out of every 100 people …show more content…
Due to their difficulties, young children with ASD often lack adequate early communicative exchanges. These early communicative exchanges are important for the development of inner speech as children grow older, as a person's communicative ability is strongly associated to the person's ability to think in words (Durham University, 2012). It is proposed that the lack of inner speech use in many people with ASD may be one of the contributing factors leading to some of the repetitive behaviours that people with ASD often display (Durham University, 2012). Another reason that inner speech may be important for people is that use of inner speech may increase mental flexibility in people. This is especially relevant to people with ASD because people with ASD often lack mental flexibility and often find changes in their environments disturbing and stressful. Findings from a study shows that although children with ASD's mechanism for inner speech is intact, they were able to use inner speech in short term memory recalling tasks such as word repetition; they usually do not use it in the same manner as their peers without ASD (Durham University, 2012). Furthermore, even though the autistic children participating in the study were verbally able, they did not use inner speech when solving problems and planning. This implies that there are distinct differences between verbal …show more content…
For quite a few of these people, social and communication problems may persist into adulthood. A study on young adults with ASD over a 12-months period finds that "almost 40 percent of youth with ASDs never got together with friends", half of them "never received phone calls or were invited to activities", and "28 percent were socially isolated with no social contact whatsoever" (Washington University in St. Louis,

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