Effectiveness of Cognitive Factors on Dyslexia and Speech Delay among Childrenwith Autism Spectrum Disorders

Abstract

Autism as a developmental disorder of the brain is characterized by difficulties in
social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication and stereotyped or repetitive behaviors
and in some cases, cognitive delays. Speech problems and speech delays are prevalent in almost
one fourth of autistic children due to other factors such as neurological and physiological
problems. Furthermore, there may be some other language disorders like dyslexia and speech
sound disorder affecting speech delays among children with autism spectrum disorder and
receptive language may lag behind expressive language development in ASD. Definitely, it seems
that there is a relationship between these two language disorders which can be studied
cognitively. Consequently, this research was conducted to investigate the relationship between
these disorders from cognitive perspective and examine the underlying factors that contribute
these difficulties. Our findings indicate that cognitive deficits such as inadequate phonological
processing, inefficiency in the working or short-term memory system, difficulties with
automatizing skills and Problems connected with visual processing in autism boys affect reading
process and then comprehension generally and consequently cause early speech and language
delay.