Language growth in verbal autistic children from 5 to 11 years

To examine predictors and growth in language for verbal autistic and non‐autistic children with/without low language from 4 to 11 years. Receptive and expressive language trajectories were compared in a community sample of 1026 children at ages 5, 7, and 11 years, across four groups: two autistic groups; one with and one without low language; and two non‐autistic groups; one with and one without low language. Groups were delineated on baseline assessment at 4 years. Non‐autistic and autistic children with low language had lower mean expressive language scores than the non‐autistic typical language group (22.26 and 38.53 units lower, respectively, p