[Autism spectrum disorder and specific language disorder. Are two different entities or a continuum of neuropsychological manifestations?].

Follow-up of children with delayed language development underscores the fact that, in several cases, language difficulties coexist with other symptoms such as social behavior changes. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and language specific disorder (LSD) are developmental disorders that are defined differently, but have some common language and social behavior characteristics which impose diagnostic difficulties. For this reason it is believed that they may share not only symptomatic but also ethiological aspects. With that in mind, we performed a literature search of works that discussed and, with their results, clarified this issue. Although several studies have allowed clearer and frequent diagnosis of both ASD and LSD, many cases persist in which the question in this article's title cannot be clearly answered, especially in children younger than two years of age.