“Post Primary – tell me less”

The Social Communication area, children with ASD’s:

• May not appreciate the social uses and pleasures of communicating – this is true even of those who have a lot of speech, “which they use to talk” at others and not “with” or “to” them.
• May not understand that language isn’t a tool for conveying information to others.  They may be able to ask for their own needs but find it hard to talk about feelings or thoughts and will not understand the emotions, ideas and beliefs of other people.
• May not really understand the meaning of gestures, facial expressions or tone of voice.  More able children with ASD’s do use gestures but these tend to be odd and inappropriate.
• May understand and use language very literally, with an idiosyncratic, sometimes pompous choice of words and phrases and limited content and meaning.  Although some children are fascinated by words, they will not use them to interact socially.

(This video clip is taken from the Teacher's Toolkit DVD)

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