**6. Reasons for co-occurrence of ASD with other developmental disorders**

Several theories have been put forward to explain the shared symptoms of the various de‐ velopmental conditions – in other words why specific learning and language and social dis‐ orders are not specific. It is likely that all the explanations below play a part in cooccurrence; the causality of co-morbidity is most probably due to a complex web of interacting factors.
