CNTNAP2 and autism: One such gene is CNTNAP2, which is associated with a non-word repetition deficit in SLI (Vernes et al., 2008), with delay in producing a first word in males with autism (Alarcón et al., 2002, 2008), and with level of language-related behavior at age 2 in children from an unselected sample of the general population (Whitehouse et al., 2011).