The topic of the first paragraph is passive and active defences. Economic interdependency does not fall into either category and so must be included in a separate paragraph.

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FOUR: ELEVEN SENTENCES

Wing (1988) has argued that rather than thinking rigidly in terms of a discrete syndrome of autism, we should be aware that there is a continuum of autistic disorders.

Wing would regard a child as falling on the autistic continuum provided they showed this triad of social impairment, irrespective of other symptoms.

The more studies are conducted into questions of diagnosis, the stronger becomes the impression that difficulties in recognising the boundaries of autism are not solely a consequence of the subjective and elusive nature of the symptoms.

Children with this social impairment are characterised by a triad of deficits in social recognition, social communication and social understanding.

She regards social impairment as the core symptom of such disorders.

In the sphere of social communication, for instance, the severely impaired child may make no effort to initiate communication at all; the more moderately impaired children may use language to achieve some end, such as obtaining an object; the mildest form of impairment corresponds to subtle difficulties in recognising the needs of conversational partners.

In each of these domains, a wide range of severity of impairment is recognised.

However, she noted that impairments in other areas do tend to co-occur with the social triad, in particular repetitive and stereotyped activities, poor motor coordination and abnormal responses to sensory stimuli.

Rather, it seems that we are dealing with a disorder that has no clear boundaries.

As far as language is concerned, the child with the triad of social impairment will by definition be defective in the pragmatic aspects of language.