Can an autistic child learn letters and numbers?

[WorriedMomoftwins]

I am a mother of 28 months old identical twin boys. Both can read upper case alphabets, numbers 1 thru 10, recognize and name shapes (triangle, square, diamond, star, rectangle and circle). They were born at 37 months old. Other than delayed speech they have been fairly developed in other areas. I enrolled them in an Early Childhood Intervention program at 18 months old due to speech delay. At 18 months old, they were not saying any words. At this time, they say mommy, daddy, lets go, when reaching towards the end of a book or a TV show, one of them says "the end". One of them will say "milk" and "water". They also recognize several objects and animals on our alphabet flash cards and call out their names when shown the picture. If I ask, what did the cow say, they will respond properly by saying "moo". They can point to body parts appropriately when asked and they will call out the names of their body parts and point appropriately.
Here is my issue. The ECI speech therapist thinks that my kids may have autism. She would like them to be evaluated by a specialist. Her concerns are they are not making eye contacts with her (I don't agree with this concern as they make eye contacts with me, their dad and their nanny), they are not responding to their names in a consistent basis (I agree with her sometimes (about 50% of the time) they act as if they didn't hear us), they are pretend playing (they pretend to be on the phone, they pretend to roll a train on the floor and make the train sound), their speech delay (they have not developed communicative speech, i.e they do say words and they know names of several objects; however, they are not using their language skill to communicate and make requests of things they want such as more milk or juice please and so forth)..
Can a 2 yr old with the ability to read the alphabets, the numbers and recognizes shapes and some colors and knows more than fifty words possibly be autistic?
Thanks in advance.

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

Gaining such knowledge in and of itself would not rule out a disorder on the autism spectrum. It is already clear that even if there is some disodrder along the autism spectrum (and the spectrum is quite broad), it is not a severe degree of the condition.In my opion,  there is no reson to be alarmed at this point. Continue to promote their development. The upcoming year will tell a lot.

[WorriedMomoftwins]

Thank you