Social Communication

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Social Communication

Basic Characteristics

• Description

Social Communication is extremely impaired in people with ASD. People with ASD may display poor eye contact, difficulty understanding and using appropriate social gestures, difficulty in interpreting facial expressions, or inappropriate facial expressions. Additionally, many have poorly developed empathy and a lack of reciprocity. Often, those with ASD withdraw socially, which is largely thought to be caused by deficits in the superior temporal sulcus voice selective regions.² However, many people with ASD express that they would like to have friends, but do not know how to make friends and retain them. Additionally, nonverbal and verbal communication is usually impaired at least slightly in those with ASD. There is large variability in language abilities in those with ASD. Some may have some language capabilities, and some may never have the ability to communicate verbally. Others may have completely normal vocabularies. Those with verbal skills could still have trouble initiating and sustaining conversations outside of their own interests. Additionally, children with autism usually have trouble understanding and integrating abstract ideas.¹

Many scientists believe that genes interact with environmental triggers to create the phenotype observed in individuals. Certain genes are particularly susceptible to environmental triggers. Some scientists suggest that language development can be influenced by the presence of environmental triggers such as how many opportunities the child is given to interact with adults and learn language models.²

• Tests to Assess Social Communication

• Intervention

• References

1. Bertoglio, Kiah and Robert L. Hendren. New Developments in Autism. PMID 19248913

Related Information

• Indicators (dependent variables, conditions, or contrasts; measurement variables used for analysis) associated with this construct (vote or nominate by editing this page):

• Closely related pages (vote or nominate related pages by editing this page):

• CNP Level (What's this?)
  • Cognitive Concept

External Resources

• Links out:
  • Wikipedia: Joint Attention
  • Google: Joint Attention
  • PubMed: Joint Attention
  • -ucla cognitive atlas- (coming soon!)

• Database links