We will need to come to understand a person's internal and external communication ability as separate from either speech capacity or our potentials to acquire object-based, picture-based or word-based language systems. This can be very confusing at first for both family and service providers. We find that a metaphor helps. In “transportation theme” terms, communication could be either the roads or rivers on which we move ideas between each other. Verbal language might be the gas in spoken or written vehicle on our communication highways, while non-verbal winds or steam might power exchanges of information cargo via boats full of objects or pictures. Both modes are very use-able communication transportation systems with matching vehicles, which we may, or may not yet, be able use to get our messages where we want them to go. We may need to learn how to drive or to sail to be able to interact well as people with and without Autism. With this interactive transportation metaphor in mind, it lets review basic definitions of some relevant communication terminology before the rest of this article:

COMMUNICATION FUNCTIONS: the purposes for which we use information that is transmitted and received in various forms, such as object or picture exchanges, hand-signs or written and spoken words.

FORMS OF COMMUNICATION: the motor, visual and auditory sensory channels we use to exchange labels, ideas and systems of information, such as requests, rejections, naming, comments, gaining and maintaining attention, manners, questions and answers, imagination, abstractions and conversations.

EXPRESSIVE COMMUNICATION: information we send out to others in shared forms for many functions.

RECEPTIVE COMMUNICATION: information we receive from others in shared forms for many functions.

SPEECH: the ability to use breath force and oral motor structures to make sound units (phonemes) that may be used to express meaning from infantile expressive sounds to typical spoken words.

LANGUAGE: a system of meaningful signs, symbols or sound units and words (morphemes), that can build sets of larger units, like sentences, which follow a shared set of grammatical rules (syntax and semantics). Symbols, pictures and words may be used to create shared bases of language.

VERBAL: simple and complex communication forms and functions that can be expressed or received by means of words. So a person may be verbal with or without speech capacity.

NONVERBAL: simple functional and higher social concepts expressed or received via basic forms of actual objects, tokens, picture exchanges OR subtle social cues from body gestures and facial expressions.

DEFINING COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS IN AUTISM:
The initial knowledge and communication skills and abilities of early childhood, such as basic verbal information processing, early childhood language acquisition, the later emergence of more advanced levels of abstract thinking and skills in mutual social conversation are essential to functioning, learning and relating as a typically able member of all social cultures. Yet, these four developmental aspects of communication ableness represent primary and/or secondary areas of developmental loss for most young children, and more than half of all of the adults with Autism. These significant communication losses for young children may represent either remedial or permanent conditions. But most people along the spectrum of Autism, who have matured past the stage of adolescence, have more stable levels of underlying communication capacities.

Because communication controls 90% of learning, we all need well organized systems of information exchange internally (with self) and externally (with others), to process, remember, use and transform useful ideas in relationship to each other--that is to think. So communication capacity impacts both learning and teaching, and so everyone’s functioning and behavior. Therefore, any level of pervasive communication disability can be more significant than similar levels of general cognitive disability. Therefore, Autism may have a greater functional impact than similar levels of mental retardation. Given that 80-90% of adults with mental retardation now live in community without support, while 80-90% of adults with similar levels of Autism require lifelong functional support services, then this hard reality becomes clear. But effective communication interventions can turn that statistical risk completely around.

Research shows that expertise is often grounded in the ability to define problems well. So a critical goal of the service community for people with Autism may be to determine “What is the nature of the communication problems people may experience with Autism?”

ACQUIRE A SHARED SET OF NAMES FOR OBJECTS, EVENTS, PLACES & PEOPLE
Most people with Autism show significant delay in developing an understanding of the objective and particularly the subjective meaning of people, objects, places and events. In other words, despite our best nurturing, children with Autism do not show a typical timely understanding of the world around us based on innate developmental problems. Many young children with Autism initially have difficulty developing verbal language in ways that let them easily identify and spontaneously exchange singular word labels for objects or actions. Communication losses can be due to a variety of biologically based expressive and receptive disabilities. These can significantly and/or permanently affect the structure and function of the parts of the brain related to verbal information processing and memory. Those of us with severe neurological losses due to Autism may struggle to gain the basic verbal skills typical of early childhood, even over our lifetime. Yet some children with Autism may show early strengths in learning rote picture/word labels, with singular and concrete meanings that they are able to memorize. But early relative strengths need to be understood and addressed in terms of any related deficits. Delaying intervention for deficits in the hope of things working out is a very risky bet.

LEARN & USE THE MEANING OF THINGS TO EMPOWER CONCEPT BUILDING
Even if children with Autism have some rote or even functional language skills they often still seem to miss the developmental milestone of becoming fully aware of the vast power of the forms of communication people without Autism use to communicate. They may have functional language in early childhood contexts that does not translate to adult functioning levels over time. Providers can help maximize growth by using effective behavioral and/or developmental methods of communication interventions. Intervention is often most critical for people with Autism because we have difficulty building independent verbal and nonverbal communication systems with complex meaning in the rapid way typical children do between 3 to 5 years of age. This base of foundation communication ableness may be splintered and delayed life long, even if early intervention is provided and continual progress is shown. This is a hard reality. So the realization of innate language acquisition capacity, even once many labels for things are understood, is not a foregone developmental outcome when Autism is found. Both verbal and nonverbal children with Autism often have to work to explicitly learn rather than to implicitly self construct useful ideas about our worlds. This very need is evidence of the force of the underlying communication disorder. So, relative to our individual communication potentials, people with Autism do not automatically learn the clear, complete, correct systems of meanings for people, objects and events they need for building complex verbal concepts and transforming knowledge into adaptive, flexible and functional uses independent of support and supervision. This means we may not automatically interpret or accurately remember the meaning of new words and concepts, particularly in terms of all their related content and contexts. Yet, it is this typical capacity for quick, unconscious verbal information processing that fuels the power of communication which we rely on to understand and interact with each other.

DEVELOP FLEXIBLE UNDERSTANDINGS THAT ALLOW THE CREATION AND GENERALIZATION OF NEW IDEAS
For people with Autism, the labels and concepts they are initially able to learn tend to be stored in more rote memory and held in more rigid meaning structures, even when they achieve typical intellectual levels. Since the ideas learned are less flexible, they are less transformable into new and and more dynamic ideas. They are often held in more fixed and less negotiable frames too. The development of our thinking may actually become less functional as we age into more demanding settings. Therefore children and adults with Autism, whether we have basic communication disabilities or not, have difficulty expanding our basic communication skill sets for functional language into flexible concepts that let us collaborate and participate in an easy flow of mature ideas. So often times we seek success in more objective jobs and find belonging in the most straight forward social settings.

SOCIAL USE OF COMMUNICATION FORMS & FUNCTIONS
All children with Autism initially miss the developmental milestone of becoming aware of the even more pivotal social power of communication. Most lack the typically rapid recognition of social cues, unconscious processing of social information, and ongoing growth of social knowledge about people. These are the social cognitive related communication skills that automatically reframe human communication as a universally shared set of tools we all use, not just to function, but also to relate together as individuals and as groups. This social communication difficulty for children and adults with Autism is most true across unfamiliar activities, settings, and people (more or less true of people with Asperger's). Particularly effected is our capacity and/or our motivation to participate in reciprocal social dialog in more mature and typically appropriate ways. Due to these related social cognitive deficits most people with Autism, even those who are able to communicate, have to struggle to gain and exchange complete and accurate understanding of the meaning and relevance of social beings and subtle social activities. This can impact the formation of friendships, intimate relationships and other key work relations early on. But none of the communication or social difficulties mentioned here mean that people with Autism cannot be ethically socially engaged or authentically included. It only means that they will depend on us developing the adaptive communication systems and effective social strategies to become their partners in the journey to connect across the communication gaps and social canyons that Autism creates between us all.

THE MUTUAL BINDS OF ANY COMMUNICATION GAPS
Because it presents serious communication delays, disorders, or disability, Autism automatically creates MUTUAL gaps in clear, consistent, and competent communication exchanges. Our shared social perspectives and relatedness are always affected by it too. Therefore, this condition and the problems it creates reciprocally impacts both people with AND without Autism when we must be together. Mutual communication gaps that create such “wide social canyons” are the common causes of problems at sites with less trained or less stable Autism provider teams. Mutual behavior problems between clients and such staff occur if this problem is not understood, valued, engaged and equitably negotiated. When the mutual effects of Autism are misunderstood, denied, ignored, or forced serious problems are usually inevitable. This shared reality of Autism conditions and relations comes out of three inescapable binds:

First, if any two parties are not able to get our thoughts and feelings successfully and accurately exchanged with each other then BOTH of us experience critical functional communication break downs. This is not a choice for anyone involved, not the child, the family or the service providers. Only interventions that foster MUTUAL communication skill growth and training in typical and adaptive communications strategies for both people with AND without Autism can release everyone from this first mutual communication bind.

Second, without a more complete understanding of each other’s perspectives of reality, positive and productive social relationships are very difficult to establish and maintain, even with extensive training in many individual communication intervention strategies. Predictably, everyone becomes confused and upset when typical adult providers do not have the Autism community training we need and consensus on the adaptive social readiness, ableness and willingness we need in relationships with people with Autism. Only education that fosters MUTUAL individual social awareness strategies, social groups’ identity development along with training in able diversity education for both people with AND without Autism can release all our relationships from this second mutual social bind.

Third, no one can communicate in isolation, or relate if socially excluded, or function all alone, so none of us can survive on our own. Life’s hard realities mean that we all need each other to survive and ever hope to thrive across our diverse worlds--yes even typically more able people NEED people with Autism to be able-to-function well if we all are to function well in inclusive communities. But in our current resource and social realities, people with Autism are faced with particular challenges of information isolation and social unawareness that create a mutual experience of social exclusion from each other, even when we well-meaning typical providers are right there to help. So, ironically, people with Autism are often dependent on the very people THEY find so hard to live, work and cope with across settings. This problem will not just go away. This means we will all need authentic able allied support to manage the realities of Autism. Understanding the mutual binds of Autism is therefore both our greatest able dilemma and yet also our greatest cultural opportunity to build a stronger Autism community -- but only if we engage in accurate problem defining and find inclusive solutions. If not now...when?

We have long had problematic Autism policies and unresolved community relations crisis. That is now compounded by national budget deficits and services funding crisis in many states. This means that people with Autism and our family and service providers will not be getting our needs for well-funded supports and realistic demands met. It means we are all at risk. The question will now become whether we all own the realities of the risks this creates or whether we begin to simply blame the innocent victims involved in this lack of social justice. We strongly suggest that all interested parties join the Autism Society of America/and in your state and work together to have a VOICE that the typical social communities may finally hear.

Understanding Autism Webbook. Copyright © 2000-03 by Sharone Lee. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. All names, concepts, methods, materials, products and publications are protected by trademark and copyright, and no part of this text or this web page may be reproduced or distributed in any manner, for any purpose, including educational purposes, without express written consent from: THRESHOLD • SALEM, OREGON • 503-375-9462 • sharone@understandingautism.org. Portions of "Communication Primer" were published in The Net Journal of the Autism Society of Oregon, with the Author's permission in 1999 and 2002.