Early pragmatic accomplishments and vocabulary development in preschool children with autism

This longitudinal parallel case study followed the development of pragmatic accomplishments and vocabulary development in five children with autism fr om the prelinguistic to early one-word stage of language. As would be expec ted, there was considerable variability in the rates of vocabulary acquisit ion across the five children. Qualitative analyses suggested that rate of v ocabulary acquisition was associated with both type and diversity of pragma tic skills. This preliminary investigation lends support to the hypothesis that not all pragmatic accomplishments are related to language outcomes in precisely the same way.