A Singapore psychologist has suggested that teen blogger Amos Yee may have autism spectrum disorder.

In a report that was part of the Singapore Prisons' assessment of the 16-year-old's suitability for reformative training, Dr Munidasa Winslow, the prison-appointed psychologist, indicated this — the first time such a possibility has been formally brought up.

On Tuesday morning in a crowded court hearing in Singapore's Chinatown district, District Judge Jasvender Kaur, who in May found Amos Yee guilty of insulting Christians and transmitting an obscene image online, sent him to the Institute of Mental Health for two weeks pending a formal diagnosis.

He has, however, been assessed to be physically and mentally fit for reformative training, the sentence he is likely to be given at his next court appearance next month.

This penalty is a step harsher than probation, which is the sentence he was initially offered, but refused to be assessed for, while hoping he would get a quick jail term that he could serve and be done with.

The offending material at the centre of Yee's case was a a YouTube video he made, where he spoke harshly about the nation-state's late leader Lee Kuan Yew, and also an obscene image, which depicted Lee and the late British leader Margaret Thatcher in a sexual position, that was put up as part of a post on his blog.

More importantly, though, these two items were criminally offensive because he devoted a section of his video to comparing his negative impression of Lee and his Singapore admirers to Jesus Christ and Christians, and by virtue of the fact that the image was inherently obscene — and it is a crime here to transmit such content online.

Yee's action in re-posting the video and blog post roughly a week after he was let out of jail to be assessed for probation, alongside his refusal to cooperate with probation officers, got him re-incarcerated while being assessed for reformative training.

His mother, Mary Toh, was among several international human rights groups and activists calling for his release, saying her son was mistreated while in jail and has been driven to depression and entertaining suicidal thoughts.

She said, among other things, that Yee's sentencing process was "tainted" and that he was "made to suffer disproportionately for his offence":