Autism is a neurological developmental difference that influences (i) social interaction and social communication, and (ii) behaviour and processing sensory information. To break that down:

• Neurological means it’s an aspect of the individual’s nervous system; how the brain processes. This means autistic people process information in a different way, focusing more on some things and less on others than non-autistic people.
• Developmental difference means that the characteristics of autism primarily show up at a different stage of development, so many autistic people tend to start communicating, reading, engaging in self-care and so on, at a different pace to non-autistic people.

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