Are these speech issues common for people on the spectrum

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I speak faster than I think. I'm often mashing words together or saying things with the wrong vowel sounds. Yesterday I asked someone about zher outfoot. I meant outfit but I couldn't process the word as fast as I was speaking. I realized my mistake afterwards. On that same day I said that I texted someone on "priday". I meant to say "at pride on Sunday" but I mashed the words pride and Sunday together. I do this quite often when I'm speaking. It doesn't show up in my writing because I have time to process things but I have very poor grammar when I speak. I mash words together and get vowel sounds wrong.

I know speech issues and motor deficits are common comorbidities of Autism. Is this particular speech issue related to Autism.

I had the same problems when I was younger, though not now unless I'm really flustered or stressed. Since autism isn't something that normally disappears with age, I'm guessing constant practice made the difference.

Last edited by Thelibrarian on 05 Jul 2013, 11:28 am, edited 1 time in total.

Hey sound it to me but I could be wrong

Also want to point out speech issues are not a comorbids with autism they are prt of autism.


A combo irbid is a condition that you have besides another condition from what I understand generally when people use this they mean a secondary scondition (that may often have a high correlation) with the primary


Because speech and communication issues are part of autism they would be considered a comorbids.


Atleast that's how I understand it.

Motor skills frankly I believe are generally part of autism but right now they are.concidered a comorbids

i think everyone can do that from time to time (like when i heard the man on the radio say 'the while of ight' instead of 'the isle of wight' then he laughed and corrected himself) but speech issues can be common with people on the autism spectrum. i have speech problems myself. i speak slow and cant pronounce some words first time so i have to say them a few times to say them right.

i was very delayed in speech when i was a child. i didnt learn to communicate verbaly til i was about 9 or 10, and even then i spoke like the same as a 2 and a half year old or 3 year old when i was about 9-13, then i began getting a bit clearer but im always going to have noticeble speech delays.

Yes, those are common features of autism. If you are having trouble with this, you might book a session or two with a speech therapist to get some tips on how to get your speech to become more clear. Lots of people go to speech therapy for things like having a lisp or not being able to pronounce some sound, so it shouldn't be too hard to get a few lessons. It sounds like you probably need to practice a sort of "parallel processing"--thinking of what to say, while keeping the rest of the sentence in your mind, while pronouncing the part of the sentence you are thinking of. If you have trouble doing that, it would make sense that you might try to say everything all at once, mash your words together, or talk too fast--you're trying to get the words out before you forget them.

An alternative to speech therapy would be joining debate team or drama team, someplace where you would learn phrasing and diction in a more formal sense. If your problems are relatively mild and you are past what speech therapy can teach you, then you could go on to those things to learn to speak more clearly.

Yes, I often mix up words, though I think it might be more dyslexic than spectrum-related. That being said, I don't think it's uncommon for those of us on the spectrum to have speech issues. I also stutter, which I am uncertain as to its prominence with those on the spectrum.

I can mix words up or merge two of three words together in a mumbly sort of way, but I know that is due to lack of confidence for me.

This happens to me constantly. I often mix up the sounds in the word or the word morphs weirdly into some other word, very similarly as you described. I also often accidentally mix up the beginnings of words in a sentence, e.g. if I would want to say This is an autism forum, I might say This is a(n) forism autum. And sometimes as this happens, I have real difficulty getting the right way into mind.

My biggest difficulty though, which probably is strongly linked to autism, is that I often can’t get words into my mind. I see or feel the thing in my head, but I can’t get the word into my mind and thus verbally out. Like today someone at work suddenly asked where a certain item was. The answer was simple: It is in a box at a certain desk, but all I could get out was It is… It is… It is there where… You know there… accompanied with that circulative hand motion you try to force the words out with. Luckily the person still figured it out and completed the blanks of nouns after a while with the help of my figurative hand signs portraying a box at a certain direction…

I don’t have dyslexia. I write and read very well. So it seems to be a separate thing in my case. I had a speech delay, but reading for me was/is easy. I've always been a good reader and speller.

That certainly sounds familiar.

I thought a speech delay was a part of Autism. I didn't have that. That's why I was diagnosed with AS when it still existed. I said comorbidity because it wasn't a speech delay and it seems like it's either new or it's suddenly become worse than usual. I had speech therapy for my stuttering in elementary school. I'm not stuttering now and I don't think I was fumbling with words as much 2 years ago.

It's still not an issue that causes problems it's just weird and kind of funny. It happens often enough that there's always a time where something silly comes out of my mouth which I can laugh it.

I had another mix-up that didn't come out of my mouth because I was alone but I said soup in my head when I meant soap and I actually did it several times by accident even after I realized it. I was thinking about the new Old Spice commercial where it says "nope I was right it's a really weird commercial for soap". I replaced soap with soup.

Just as I was typing this I typed saids when I meant says. I edited it but I've underlined the spot where it happened.

I THINK faster than I SPEAK. My brain races, and the words try to keep up. I merge them together because I am trying to get them out to catch up with my thoughts. I don't know if it's the same as you or the opposite. I have to reign in my speech, pace it, because I am aware that others may not be able to understand. This is in fact why I hate talking. It seems so tedious and slow. But because I talk a lot, people say 'oh she loves to talk', but NO, I DO NOT. I wish I could transfer chosen thoughts directly into people's heads.
Part of the reason I prefer to avoid people is that when they seem to not know something relevant to whatever we are discussing, I feel compelled to tell them. There seems to be a lot they don't know - even basic stuff. I don't want to tell them, and they prefer ignorance to hearing it from me. I don't like it any more than they do. This is why I like smart people. If I am the ignorant one, I am happy to learn from them, and they are usually happy to show off their knowledge to someone who is genuinely interested.
I always try to be respectful of everyone, I am not an intellectual snob. I just can't carry on a conversation based on wrong information - it is beyond pointless.