Essay On Impairment In Social Communication

As mentioned above, the triad of difficulties/impairments is broken down into three areas. Breaking each area down enables individuals to understand the impact that the triad has on a person with autism, and the difficulties that comes with each impairment.

• Impairment in social communication (difficulties with communicating effectively with others)

The learning of language and communication skills and the ability to use these appropriately is known as social communication. Spoken language may occur much later than that of a typical child, or in some cases may not occur at all. In some instances, a child may appear to be hitting language development milestones, however may regress massively before their 5th birthday.

Normal development milestones indicate that a 2-year-old should be able to use a minimum of 10 different words appropriately, however a child on the autism spectrum may have fewer or even none. It is to be noted that a child on the autism spectrum may

The difficulties that they have with non-verbal communication may be responsible for this, not being able to read social cues; lack of eye contact etc. Another difficulty may be that people with ASD can find it a challenge to empathize and understand others. Typically, relationships with others are reliant on both parties being able to put themselves in the other person’s shoes and see the world from their perspective. For this to happen, a person must be able to acknowledge and understand that others may have different thoughts from their own. A person with ASD may not have this skill, therefore the social interaction is limited. Another contributing factor may be related to behaviour that they display and the lack of ability to empathise, their behaviour may impact on another person’s feelings or emotions, thus creating problems with social