Most autistic kids have a serious, receptive language disability. This indicates auditory processing difficulties.

I think we will have to take a close look at auditory input and the pathway to the brain.

Imagine living in a world where your visual perception was accompanied by an auditory delay so that the information you see does not match what you hear. A world where every tonal change caused pain or loud sounds were garbled and indistinguishable. In this world, you may not even know if the sound is directed at you. Maybe you have no way of filtering sound.

Thats why a very structured, visual schedule is important to autistic students. Its very hard for them to make any sense of an auditory world and while this is not a 'hearing' problem, we know very little about what causes damage to the auditory nerves and the pathways that allow us to communicate.

Hearing and language begin in the womb. Damage can occur at any time and in our noisy world, I often wonder if auditory trauma could cause autism. I'm just glad that these kids are being diagnosed and treatments are being explored. I think its much more humane than putting them in asylums. Thats what would have happened not so long ago. Luckily, we now recognize that autistic children show a wide range of intelligence and we are learning how to meet their needs.