Construction of a Therapy program targeting expressive language in non verbal autistic children

Abstract

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are complex and heterogeneous disorders, characterized by deficient social communication and by repetitive and stereotyped behaviors. Language proficiency is one of the most important variables in predicting outcomes in autism. About 30–50% of individuals with ASD never develop functional speech even after receiving years of interventions and a range of educational opportunities. While the neural basis for the speech-language deficit in ASD is not well understood, multiple factors across cognitive, motor, and sensory domains are likely to play a role. These may include intellectual disability, impaired social cognition, oral-motor dyspraxia and disrupted auditory processing. Some of these non verbal autistic children in spite of having language comprehension sufficient to support expressive language and good intellectual function, faile to acquire expressive language skills. For these children lack the motor planning abilities to physically produce speech sounds and then sequence them together to form intelligible speech should be suggested.