Another possible explanation for the difficulties
in speech experienced by the children with ASD
in this study is that they are due to an underlying
neuromotor difficulty. This could help to explain the
distortions seen in both our study and the Shriberg
et al. study (2001) of adolescents and adults with
ASD. Some support for this explanation comes from
a study by Amato and Slavin (1998) who assessed
oromotor development in children with autism and
found a variety of oromotor difficulties to be present.
In addition, Noterdaeme, Mildenberger, Minow and
Amorosa (2002) found that children with high
functioning autism had more motor problems than
control children on most of the neurological subsystems
they investigated.