• Non-verbal autism refers to individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) who have significant difficulty using spoken language to communicate. It does not mean they cannot communicate, all the students that you see in the picture are non-verbal, but all of them can use Avaz to communicate and they have also learned to type and communicate. 

In Autism, impairment in communication is one of the core symptoms, irrespective of whether the individual is verbal or nonverbal. The population of individuals with ASD is heterogeneous, that means Autism is a spectrum condition which affects individuals differently and in varied degrees. They can have abilities ranging from significant cognitive & language impairments (e.g. they need more support), or may have above average cognitive and language abilities (i.e. they need less support). The core characteristics and challenges associated with ASD will have an impact on the development of critical social communication skills.

Impairment in Social communication include deficits in:

• Joint attention
• Social reciprocity
• Social cognition

Joint Attention

Joint attention is the shared focus of two or more individuals on the same object or event. Deficits in joint attention include :

• Difficulty orienting towards people in social environment
• Limited frequency of directing another`s attention to share an item or event
• Restricted range of communicative functions to seek engagement and comfort from others
• Limitation in recognizing and describing another`s emotional state

All these effects the learning behaviour of the individual in the spectrum.

Social cognition refers to the mental processes involved in perceiving, attending to, remembering, thinking about, and making sense of the people in our social world. Social cognition is a sub topic of various branches of psychology that focuses on how people process, store, and apply information about other people in social situations. It focuses on the role that cognitive processes play in social interaction. Deficits in Social Cognition leads to :

• Challenges in social and emotional learning, including difficulty
• Understanding and regulating emotions,
• Appreciating the perspective of others,
• Developing prosocial goals, and
• Difficulty differentiating one`s own feelings from the feelings of others, taking the perspective another person, and modifying language accordingly (i.e., theory of mind).
• Difficulty integrating diverse information to construct meaning in context (i.e., central coherence).

Self-Concept in Autism

Deficit in discrimination between self and other is what you might notice in Autism. Poorly expressed preference for human interaction rather than physical and sensory input occurs in extreme in autism. They also have lack of communicative intent and do not get reinforced by the response of others.

Social Referencing

Social Referencing occurs when individuals (most typically infants) use cues from people in their environment to learn what behaviors, emotions and actions are appropriate in the particular setting. This is a type of social learning and is an integral part of the developmental process in human infants. The observation of others behavior leads to the eventual imitation of these behaviors. Infants learn to analyze the facial expressions and actions of others in order to determine socially appropriate emotions and behavior. Looking for emotional clues about a situation in the faces of other people is called social referencing. For example, if a child sees fearful expression on his mother`s face as he reaches to touch something, he will be less likely to touch it.

Understanding Social Situation

The main difficulty in people with autism is their inability to understand and read others emotional expression and to react in social cues. This would lead to difficulties in most social skills such as:

• sharing attention, 
• social initiation 
• difficulty in social reciprocity 

They will have difficulty in sharing their emotions and understanding others. This no way means that people with autism lack emotions. This only explains that due to their inability to understand emotions, children with autism may lack the sense of empathy and behave in socially appropriate manner. 

All these difficulties in communication make them more vulnerable to temper tantrums, low self-esteem, lack of confidence, dependency, behaviour issues and gradual social isolation. With age this communication gap increases more, puberty issues, hormonal changes, physical changes make life more difficult and incomprehensible for them. So as parents of individuals in the spectrum it is utmost necessity that we help our kids in their most difficult areas, hence developing communication using an alternate method is a must, especially for non-verbal Autism.

Developing communication using a high tech AAC is not a rocket science and it can be trained by following a step-by-step process. However, it is a long-term process, and we as the communicating partner of our child need to be patient, consistent and persistent. Developing communication will help the individual in the spectrum to have:

• better communication access – about his needs, wants, wishes, protesting, complaining, or express feelings, body pain, illness, etc
• reduce frustrations, tantrums, behaviours
• functional education becomes easy with more understanding & enhancement of receptive language
• increases vocational opportunities
• provides empowerment & independence
• boosts self-confidence & self esteem
• helps in social inclusion