Cognitive Processing in Pervasive Developmental Disorder

The previous chapter looked at the communication characteristics of PDD and attempted to understand these in terms of language processing. It was proposed that in order to understand better the communication difficulties in this population the cognitive processing of this population also needs to be looked at. The current chapter focuses on what is known about cognitive processing in PDD and controversies in this area are discussed. It would appear that the exact cognitive processing profile of PDD is not yet known. In this chapter it is proposed that the planning, attention, simultaneous and successive processing (PASS) model may be a useful model to look at in relation to the cognitive processing in PDD, as many of the cognitive processing characteristics described in this population are encompassed in this model.