A psycholinguist approach of language and communication in autism spectrum disorder (ASD)

Psycholinguistics is a field that combines methods and theories from psychology and linguistics to gain a fuller understanding of human language. The connection between the human psyche and language is the focus of research in psycholinguistics. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a common and heterogeneous neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by language impairment, social and communicative deficits and repetitive behaviours. Echolalia is considered a predominant feature of ASD. Early intervention should be started as soon as a diagnosis is made, as social, play and language domains do not develop at the expected rate or in the expected multimodal, integrated manner. Using the language sample analysis technique, it is observed that echolalia and the number of abstract words do not influence mean utterance length, but the number of novel words correlates with mean utterance length. The psycholinguistic approach helps to gain a deeper understanding of language deficits and influences speech therapy intervention.