Thursday, 1 November 2012

FamoUS pEOPLE with Aspergers


The following people have or believed to have a form of Asperger Syndrome or Similar Condition....
The following information has been check on at least 3 different Websites to try and make sure i have the correct facts
Heather Kuzmich
(born 19 April 1986)
is an art student and American fashion model.Heather is best known for being a contestant of America's Next Top Model, where she was the fourth runner-up of the show. During the show, it was revealed that Kuzmich has Asperger syndrome and ADHD Kuzmich was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome when she was fifteen years old Heather signed to the women's division of Elite Model Management in Chicago and Hong Kong She has also appeared on the cover and inside of Spectrum Magazine, a magazine for families and individuals who have autism.
Just shows people with Asperger Syndrome can have both Beauty and brains…

William Henry Gates III KBE
(born 28 October 1955)
is an American entrepreneur and chairman of Microsoft, the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. Microsoft had revenues of US$51.12 billion for the fiscal year ending June 2007, and employs more than 78,000 people in 105 countries and regions.

Peter Howson OBE
(born 1958)
is a Scottish painter. He was an official war artist in the 1993 Bosnian Civil War. He has produced some of his most shocking and controversial work detailing the atrocities which were taking place at the time. One painting in particular Croatian and Muslim, detailing a rape created controversy partly because of its explicit subject matter but also because Howson had painted it from the accounts of its victims rather than witnessing it firsthand. Much of his work cast stereotypes on the lower social groups; he portrayed brawls including drunken, even physically deformed men and women.
His work is exhibited in many major collections and is in the private collection of celebrities such as David Bowie, Mick Jagger and Madonna who inspired a number of paintings in 2002
Howson was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2009 Birthday Honour


Michael Edward Palin, CBE
(born 5 May 1943)
is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter best known for being one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python and for his travel documentaries. Palin wrote most of his material with Terry Jones. Before Monty Python, they had worked on other shows such as The Ken Dodd ShowThe Frost Report and Do Not Adjust Your Set. Palin appeared in some of the most famous Python sketches, including "The Dead Parrot", "The Lumberjack Song", "The Spanish Inquisition" and "Spam". Palin continued to work with Jones, co-writingRipping Yarns. He has also appeared in several films directed by fellow Python Terry Gilliam and made notable appearances in other films such as A Fish Called Wanda, for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role



Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock KBE
(August 13, 1899 – April 29, 1980)
was an iconic and highly influential director and producer who pioneered many techniques in the suspense and thriller genres. After a substantial film career in his native Britain he moved to Hollywood and became an American citizen in 1956, although he also remained a British subject. He ultimately directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades, from the silent film era, through the invention of talkies, to the colour era. Hitchcock was among the most consistently successful and publicly recognizable world directors during his lifetime, and remains one of the best known and most popular of all time.



Sir Isaac Newton FRS  
(4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727)
was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, theologian, natural philosopher, and alchemist to be the greatest single work in the history of science, described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, laying the groundwork for classical mechanics, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries and is the basis for modern engineering. He showed that the motions of objects on Earth and of celestial bodies are governed by the same set of natural laws by demonstrating the consistency between Kepler's laws of planetary motion and his theory of gravitation, thus removing the last doubts about heliocentrism and advancing the scientific revolution.



Jane Austen
(16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817)
was a British novelist whose realism, biting social commentary, and masterful use of free indirect speech, burlesque, and irony have earned her a place as one of the most widely-read and best-loved writers in British literature




Albert Einstein
(March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955)
was a German-born theoretical physicist. He is best known for his theory of relativity and specifically mass-energy equivalence, E = mc2. Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.




Hans Christian Andersen or simply H.C. Andersen
(April 2, 1805 – August 4, 1875)
was a Danish author and poet, most famous for his fairy tales. Among his best-known stories "The Snow Queen", "The Little Mermaid", "The Emperor's New Clothes" and "The Ugly Duckling". During Andersen's lifetime he was feted by royalty and acclaimed as having brought joy to children across Europe. His fairy tales have been translated into well over a hundred languages and continue to be published in "millions of copies all over the world".





Henry Cavendish
 (October 10, 1731 - February 24, 1810)
was a British scientist noted for his discovery of hydrogen or what he called "inflammable air".He described the density of inflammable air, which formed water on combustion, in a 1766 paper "On Factitious Airs". Antoine Lavoisier later reproduced Cavendish's experiment and gave the element its name. Cavendish is also known for his measurement of the Earth's density and early research into electricity.




Charles Robert Darwin
(12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882)
was an English naturalist After becoming eminent among scientists for his field work and inquiries into geology, he proposed and provided scientific evidence that all species of life have evolved over time from one or a few common ancestors through the process of natural selection The fact that evolution occurs became accepted by the scientific community and the general public in his lifetime, while his theory of natural selection came to be widely seen as the primary explanation of the process of evolution in the 1930s, and now forms the basis of modern evolutionary theory. In modified form, Darwin’s scientific discovery remains the foundation of biology, as it provides a unifying logical explanation for the diversity of life.


Satoshi Tajiri
born on August 28, 1965)
is a Japanese electronic game designer and the creator of Pocket Monsters, better known as Pokémon. Tajiri went to work for Nintendo and spent the next six years working on Pokémon. He became friends with Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of MarioThe Legend of ZeldaPikmin, and Donkey Kong, who also became a mentor to Tajiri. As a tribute to Tajiri and Miyamoto, Ash Ketchum (the anime counterpart of "Red" in the games) is named Satoshi and Gary Oak (the anime counterpart of "Blue" in the English games, and "Green" in the original Japanese version) is named Shigeru in the Japanese version of Pokémon. Most recently, Tajiri (along with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata) served as an executive producer for the Game Boy Advance game ScrewBreaker released outside of Japan as Drill Dozer.
Satoshi Tajiri has allegedly been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome according to the Independent.co.uk but i have been contacted by Game freak inc press officer saying this information is not correct.


James Maury "Jim" Henson
(September 24, 1936 – May 16, 1990)
was the most widely known puppeteer in American television history. He was the creator of The Muppets and the leading force behind their long creative run in the television series Sesame Street and The Muppet Show and films such as The Muppet Movie (1979) and The Dark Crystal (1982). He was also an Oscar-nominated film director, Emmy Award-winning television producer, and the founder of The Jim Henson Company, the Jim Henson Foundation, and Jim Henson's Creature Shop. Henson is widely acknowledged for the ongoing vision of faith, friendship, magic, and love which infused nearly all of his work



Charles Monroe Schulz
(November 26, 1922 – February 12, 2000)
was a 20th-century American cartoonist best known worldwide for hisPeanuts comic strip.Schulz's drawings were first published by Robert Ripley in his Ripley's Believe It or Not!. His first regular cartoons, Li'l Folks, were published from 1947 to 1950 by the St. Paul Pioneer Press; he first used the name Charlie Brown for a character there, although he applied the name in four gags to three different boys and one buried in sand. The series also had a dog that looked much like Snoopy. In 1948, Schulz sold a cartoon to theSaturday Evening Post; the first of seventeen single-panel cartoons by Schulz that would be published there. In 1948, Schulz tried to have Li'l Folkssyndicated through the Newspaper Enterprise Association. Schulz would have been an independent contractor for the syndicate, unheard of in the 1940s, but the deal fell through. Li'l Folks was dropped in January, 1950


Thomas Jefferson
(April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826)
As a political philosopher, Jefferson was a man of the Enlightenment and knew many intellectual leaders in Britain and France. He idealized the independent yeoman farmer as exemplar of republican virtues, distrusted cities and financiers, and favored states' rights and a strictly limited federal government. Jefferson supported the separation of church and state and was the author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779, 1786). He was the eponym of Jeffersonian democracy and the co-founder and leader of the Democratic-Republican Party, which dominated American politics for a quarter-century. Jefferson served as the wartime Governor of Virginia (1779–1781), first United States Secretary of State (1789–1793) and second Vice President (1797–1801).


Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni
(March 6, 1475 – February 18, 1564)
commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet and engineer. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci.



Wolfgang Mozart
 (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791)
was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. His output of over 600 compositions includes works widely acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. Mozart is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers, and many of his works are part of the standard concert repertoire.
 Authors of fictional works have found Mozart's life a compelling source of raw material.An especially popular case is the supposed rivalry between Mozart and Antonio Salieri, particularly the idea that it was poison received from the latter that caused Mozart's death; this is the subject of Aleksandr Pushkin's play Mozart and Salieri and Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Mozart and Salieri. The idea receives no support at all from modern scholars.Modern audiences have been gripped by the account of Mozart's life given in Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus, as well as the film based on the play. Shaffer seems to have been especially taken by the contrast between Mozart's enjoyment of vulgarity (noted above) and the sublime character of his music. The scene in Shaffer's work in which Mozart dictates music to Salieri on his deathbed is entirely an author's fancy; for the question of whether Mozart did any dictation on his deathbed at all see


George Orwell
(25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950)
who was an English writer and journalist well-noted as a novelist, critic, and commentator on politics and culture, George Orwell is one of the most admired English-language essayists of the twentieth century, and most famous for two novels critical of totalitarianism in general (Nineteen Eighty-Four), and Stalinism in particular (Animal Farm), which he wrote and published towards the end of his life




Dan Aykroyd
(July 1, 1952)
is an Academy Award-nominated and Emmy Award-winning Canadian-American comedian, actor, screenwriter, musician, and ufologist. He was an original cast member of Saturday Night Live, an originator of the Blues Brothers (with John Belushi), and has had a long career as a film actor and screenwriter. Some of his well known films are Ghostbusters, The Blue Brothers, My Girl and many many more. 
Aykroyd described himself (in a radio interview with Terry Gross) as having mild Tourette syndrome that was successfully treated with therapy when he was a preteen, as well as mild Asperger syndrome.The diagnosis of Asperger syndrome did not exist in the 1960s, when Aykroyd was a preteen. It is unclear if Aykroyd received the diagnoses of TS or AS from a medical source, whether he was speaking in his role as a comic, or whether the diagnoses were self-made. It was an audio interview, so the audience could not see Aykroyd's facial expressions, but the interviewer indicated uncertainty about whether Aykroyd was kidding.


Ludwig Van Beethoven
(December 16, 1770 – March 26, 1827)
was a German composer and virtuoso pianist. He was a crucial figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western classical music, and remains one of the most respected and influential composers of all time.




Thomas Edison
(February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931)
was an American inventor and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph and a long lasting light bulb. he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production to the process of invention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.

AwesOME


Famous People Who Have/Had Aspergers Syndrome: NOTE: Also included are famous people for whom there is a lot of speculation that they have or had Aspergers Syndrome, but who may not have (or have had) Aspergers at all.
  • Adam Young, multi-instrumentalist, producer and the founder of the electronic project Owl City.
  • Adrian Lamo, American computer hacker
  • Carl Soderholm, speaker in neuropsychiatric disorders
  • Clay Marzo, American professional surfer
  • Craig Nicholls, frontman of the Australian garage rock band, The Vines
  • Dan Aykroyd, comedian and actor: Aykroyd stated he has Asperger's, but some feel he was joking.
  • Daniel Tammet, British autistic savant, believed to have Asperger Syndrome
  • Daryl Hannah, actress
  • Dawn Prince-Hughes, PhD, primate anthropologist, ethologist, and author of Songs for the Gorilla Nation
  • Gary Numan, British singer and songwriter
  • Heather Kuzmich, fashion model and reality show contestant on America's Next Top Model
  • James Durbin, finalist on the tenth season of American Idol
  • Jerry Newport, American author and mathematical savant, basis of the film Mozart and the Whale
  • John Elder Robison, author of Look Me in the Eye
  • Judy Singer, Australian disability rights activist
  • Liane Holliday Willey, author of Pretending to be Normal, Asperger Syndrome in the Family; Asperger syndrome advocate; education professor; and adult diagnosed with Asperger syndrome at age 35
  • Lizzy Clark, actress and campaigner
  • Luke Jackson, author
  • Michael Burry, US investment fund manager
  • Nicky Reilly, failed suicide bomber from Britain
  • Paddy Considine, actor
  • Peter Howson, Scottish painter
  • Phillipa "Pip" Brown (aka Ladyhawke), indie rock musician
  • Raymond Thompson, New Zealand scriptwriter and TV producer
  • Richard Borcherds, mathematician specializing in group theory and Lie algebras
  • Robert Durst, American real estate developer accused of murder
  • Robert Napper, British murderer
  • Satoshi Tajiri, creator and designer of Pokemon
  • Tim Ellis, Australian magician and author
  • Tim Page, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and author
  • Travis Meeks, lead singer, guitarist and song writer for acoustic rock band Days of the New.
  • Vernon L. Smith, Nobel Laureate in Economics
  • William Cottrell, student who was sentenced to eight years in jail for fire-bombing SUV dealerships
Speculated to have Asperger's Syndrome
  • Abraham Lincoln,1809-1865, US Politician
  • Alan Turing, 1912-1954, English mathematician, computer scientist and cryptographer
  • Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, German/American theoretical physicist
  • Alexander Graham Bell, 1847-1922, Scottish/Canadian/American inventor of the telephone
  • Anton Bruckner , 1824-1896, Austrian composer
  • Bela Bartok, 1881-1945, Hungarian composer
  • Benjamin Franklin,1706-1790, US polictician/writer
  • Bertrand Russell, 1872-1970, British logician
  • Bobby Fischer, 1943-2008, World Chess Champion
  • Carl Jung, 1875-1961, Swiss psychoanalyst
  • Charles Rennie Mackintosh, 1868-1928, Scottish architect and designer
  • Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, US poet
  • Erik Satie, 1866-1925 - Composer
  • Franz Kafka, 1883-1924, Czech writer
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900, German philosopher
  • George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950, Irish playwright, writer of Pygmalion, critic and Socialist
  • George Washington, 1732-1799, US Politician
  • Gustav Mahler, 1860-1911, Czech/Austrian composer
  • Marilyn Monroe, 1926-1962, US actress
  • H P Lovecraft, 1890-1937, US writer
  • Henry Cavendish, 1731-1810, English/French scientist, discovered the composition of air and water
  • Henry Ford, 1863-1947, US industrialist
  • Henry Thoreau, 1817-1862, US writer
  • Isaac Newton, 1642-1727, English mathematician and physicist
  • Jane Austen, 1775-1817, English novelist, author of Pride and Prejudice
  • Kaspar Hauser, c1812-1833, German foundling, portrayed in a film by Werner Herzog
  • Ludwig II, 1845-1886, King of Bavaria
  • Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1889-1951, Viennese/English logician and philosopher
  • Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770-1827, German/Viennese composer
  • Mark Twain, 1835-1910, US humorist
  • Michelangelo, 1475 1564 - Italian Renissance artist
  • Nikola Tesla, 1856-1943, Serbian/American scientist, engineer, inventor of electric motors
  • Oliver Heaviside, 1850-1925, English physicist
  • Richard Strauss, 1864-1949, German composer
  • Seth Engstrom, 1987-Present, Magician and World Champion
  • Thomas Edison, 1847-1931, US inventor
  • Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826, US politician
  • Vincent Van Gogh, 1853-1890, Dutch painter
  • Virginia Woolf, 1882-1941, English Writer
  • Wasily Kandinsky, 1866-1944, Russian/French painter
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1756-1791, Austrian composer
Historical people
  • Alfred Hitchcock, 1899-1980, English/American film director
  • Andy Kaufman, 1949-1984, US comedian, subject of the film Man on the Moon
  • Andy Warhol, 1928-1987, US artist.
  • Charles Schulz, 1922-2000, US cartoonist and creator of Peanuts and Charlie Brown
  • Glenn Gould, 1932-1982, Canadian pianist
  • Hans Asperger, 1906-1980, Austrian paediatric doctor after whom Asperger's Syndrom is named
  • Howard Hughes, 1905-1976, US billionaire
  • Isaac Asimov, 1920-1992, Russian/US writer on science and of science fiction, author of Bicentennial Man
  • Jim Henson, 1936-1990, creator of the Muppets, US puppeteer, writer, producer, director, composer
  • John Denver, 1943-1997, US musician
  • L S Lowry, 1887-1976, English painter of "matchstick men"
Contemporary People
  • Al Gore, 1948-, former US Vice President and presidential candidate
  • Bill Gates, 1955-, Entrepreneur and philanthropist. A key player in the personal computer revolution.
  • Bob Dylan, 1941-, US singer-songwriter
  • Charles Dickinson, 1951, US Writer
  • Crispin Glover, 1964-, US actor
  • David Helfgott, 1947-, Australian pianist, subject of the film Shine
  • Garrison Keillor, 1942-, US writer, humorist and host of Prairie Home Companion
  • Genie, 1957-?, US "wild child" (see also L'Enfant Sauvage, Victor, )
  • James Taylor, 1948-, US singer/songwriter
  • Jamie Hyneman, 1956-, Co-host of Mythbusters
  • Jeff Greenfield, 1943-, US political analyst/speechwriter, a political wonk
  • John Motson, 1945-, English sports commentator
  • John Nash, 1928-, US mathematician (portrayed by Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind, USA 2001)
  • Joseph Erber, 1985-, young English composer/musician who has Asperger's Syndrome, subject of a BBC TV documentary
  • Keith Olbermann, 1959-, US sportscaster
  • Kevin Mitnick, 1963-, US "hacker"
  • Michael Palin, 1943-, English comedian and presenter
  • Oliver Sacks, 1933-, UK/US neurologist, author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Awakenings
  • Paul Kostabi 1962-, writer, comedian, artist, producer, technician
  • Pip Brown "Ladyhawke", 1979-, New Zealand Singer/Songwriter, Musician
  • Robin Williams, 1951-, US Actor
  • Seth Engstrom, 1987-, Magician and World Champion in Sleight of Hand. The best man with a deck of cards that the world has ever seen.
  • Tony Benn, 1925-, English Labour politician


Disabled World - Disability News for all the Family: http://www.disabled-world.com/artman/publish/article_2086.shtml#ixzz2B12QBFaJ

BRaIN ABnormalitiES


These are mysterious brain abnormalities, which prevent infants and children from developing normal social and/or cognitive skills. It is not yet known where in the brain the complex interaction of genes and environment causes things to go astray, but many researchers are currently working to understand this aspect of brain (neurological development and more facts are becoming known every year.
Autism 
At the most severe level of abnormality is the disability known as Autism. Autism undermines many aspects of human behavior, including movement, attention, learning, memory, language, mood and social interaction. It can be detected in the movements of babies who roll over, sit up, crawl and walk in oddly uncoordinated ways. At 18 months, many autistic toddlers will not point, share attention with others or follow the expressions of other people. By age 2 or 3, autistic children display a profound lack of responsiveness to others. Many do not talk; instead they may engage in rituals, like arm flapping, that stimulate their bodies. They dislike change of any sort. About a quarter of autistic children appear normal until age 14 to 22 months and then experience the sudden onset of autistic symptoms.
The symptoms of Autism range from mild to severe, making the true incidence of the disorder difficult to assess. Classical autism in its most severe form, which results in mental retardation, occurs in about 1 in every 1,000 births. When milder forms (which are often referred to as High Functioning Autism or Asperger's Syndrome) are included, the incidence is 1 in 500.
Autism researchers agree that it will take years before the genetics and neurochemistry of the disease are understood completely.  But thanks to a combination of new tools for examining brain anatomy and keen observation, much of the mystery surrounding this disorder has recently begun to shrink.  Within the last year (2004), several laboratories have reported exciting new findings.  Clues focus on brain development and circuitry.  In addition, certain areas of the autistic brain show signs of chronic inflammation which appears to last a lifetime.  While these clues are exciting, they do not lead to immediate treatments.  In the meantime, intensive one-on-one therapies that teach children how to control their movements and interact socially succeed in only 30 to 50 per cent of treated children, ideally by age 2 or 3. But newer treatments based upon the new research, is emerging.  The goal is to intercept the miswiring of the autistic brain and, as the brain is developing, help it grow the connections it needs. *
Asperger's SyndromeThis disability is generally considered a (mild) form of Autism. While it remains little known, the number of diagnoses has soared since psychiatric authorities formally defined it in 1994.
Hans Asperger, the Viennese pediatrician who first described the condition in 1944, called his patients "little professors" who often use words as their lifeline to the world. Most Asperger's patients have average intelligence or above (unlike autistic people, by contrast, who often suffer some degree of cognitive disability).
The most striking characteristic of the syndrome is a consuming interest in arcane subjects. For example, they can be obsessed with clocks; the Titanic; deep-fat fryers; ex-presidents, spouses and aides; refrigerators; assassins; and train, plane and bus schedules. Although everyone knows someone with an all-encompassing interest in something, the key to the diagnosis is that their obsessive behavior significantly impairs their social functioning.
Youngsters with the condition are unable to pick up on the nonverbal cues that underlie most interactions with others, but they are smart enough to come to realize, and regret, a gap they can cross only with extreme difficulty. As teenagers they may experience what one expert called "extreme teasing." While many adults manage to master enough social skills to attend college, find good jobs and even marry, others sink into isolation. Researchers report high levels of depression and suicide, and antidepressants are the most common medications given to Asperger's patients.
Treatment is usually a mix of therapies to help with some patients' problems with motor skills and sound recognition combined with the most important kinds of help; behavioral training focused on social skills, and supportive psychotherapy to deal with the emotional impact of being different. The overall goal is to use the children's strengths - intelligence and verbal ability - to overcome their deficits.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR..
Asperger's syndrome can be difficult to diagnose in preschool children. Dr. Ami Klin of the Yale Child Study Center recommends that parents seek help if they notice several of the following behaviors:
A marked lack of interest in other children, or a consistently inappropriate style of engaging others, like long monologues.
Significant difficulty in understanding other children's feelings and expressions (inability to get jokes or teasing).
Few facial or bodily gestures; speech that is pedantic in tone or vocabulary.
Little make-believe and much repetition in play.
Overreaction to minor changes in routine or environment.
Precocious verbal skills and marked self-absorption in subjects unusual for the child's age.
These symptoms usually become more prominent in older children and therefore easier to spot. Clinicians also look for the combination of high intelligence and verbal skills, the absence of same-age friendships despite desire to form them and the growth of highly circumscribed interests. Even so, every child is different, and many experts recommend a full-scale evaluation by a multidisciplinary center/ clinician familiar with the syndrome

ASperGers anD aUtisM

Although commonly associated with general intellectual disabilities - approximately 75% of people with autism have a non-verbal Intelligence Quotient (IQ) below 70 - autism can also occur in individuals of normal, or even superior intelligence.

-CogNItion For AspergERS

  • Full range of IQ
  • Visual spatial deficits are most pronounced: poor appreciation of gestalt, poor appreciation of body in space, sometimes left side inattention/neglect, may have highly developed but ritualized drawing skills that are extremely detail oriented.
  • Rote linguistic skills are normal (i.e. repetition, naming, fluency, syntactic comprehension), but pragmatic use of language is impaired: weak grasp of inference, little content, disorganized narrative despite good vocabulary and grammar. Rote recall of a story may be good, but the main point missed. Rhythm, volume, and prosody of speech are often disturbed.
  • Motor and sensory findings are common: usually poor fine and gross motor coordination, left side worse than right.
  • Attention is usually reported to be impaired and testing supports this, but the affect is desultory as opposed to distractingly impulsive, as in ADHD. It is as if people with NVLD do not know what to attend to, but once focused, can sustain attention to detail. The distinction between figure and ground is disturbed, resulting in attention errors.

-CogNItion For Autism-

  • Language impairment is a core symptom of autism, and may be  closely tied with social deficits, another key feature of the disorder. For example, children whose attention is not focused on their parents and caregivers might not pick up on the cues required for language learning. There is also a close relationship between problems with theory of mind, the ability to understand the thoughts and beliefs of others, and language impairment. 

Researchers aiming to understand the role of language in autism typically study children with high-functioning autism, or those with a high intelligence quotient.