Background – children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have an increased risk to develop challenging behaviour and the question is whether this risk is partly due to the language deficits...Show moreBackground – children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have an increased risk to develop challenging behaviour and the question is whether this risk is partly due to the language deficits most children with ASD have to face. Methods – data were collected on the expressive and pragmatic language abilities en internalising and externalising behaviour problems of 23 children with ASD (8;2 – 13;5 year; 3 girls and 23 boys). The relationship between those variables was examined using several multiple regression analyses, in which age and gender were the possible moderating factors. Results – a positive association was found between expressive language and externalising behaviour problems. A negative association was found between pragmatic language and internalising behaviour problems. No independent association was found between expressive and internalising behaviour problems, but taking in account pragmatic language, a positive association was found. There was no influence for age and gender. Discussion – an association was found between language and behaviour problems in children with ASD. The nature of the relationship en possible causality need to be further examined though. The results suggest an influence of the common discrepancy between expressive and pragmatic language abilities is more important than the absolute language abilities.Show less
