Autism was originally described as involving an apparent lack of motivation for social interaction. Social motivation has not figured prominently in subsequent theorizing regarding this disorder. Instead, theory of mind deficits have taken center stage as a theory of autism. This is surprising because evidence of social motivation deficits appear...
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is a highly heterogeneous and pervasive developmental disorder that affects nearly 1 in 150 children. A primary indicator of ASD is behavioral language impairment with respect to social communication, but the neurophysiology behind this impairment is not well understood. Both the perception and production of prosody...
Impairments in the social use of language, or pragmatics, constitute a core characteris-tic of autism. Problems with pragmatic language have also been documented in fragile X syndrome (FXS), a monogenic condition that is the most common known genetic cause of autism. Evidence suggests that social cognitive ability, or theory of...