Pragmatic language disorder and perspective taking in autistic speakers

The relationship between pragmatic referential communication skill and the cognitive ability to assess and assume another person's conceptual viewpoint was investigated in the autistic population. Ten high functioning autistic adolescents and young adults were matched for age and sex to normally development controls and give referential communication and perspective-taking tasks that had been previously demonstrated to be of comparable complexity. The groups were selected to be similar in terms of language skill. But despite their intact, elementary perspective-taking skills, the autistic subjects displayed significant communicative dysfunction. This suggests that factors other than a deficiency in the development of a ''theory of mind'' are significant contributors to the social communicative disorder associated with autism.