Transcription
Hi, I'm Dr. SH Horwi. Here at The National Center for Learning Disabilities, welcome to the next of our Ask the Expert video series. Today, what I'd like to do is talk a little bit about autism spectrum disorder, or autism. You notice that I use the term autism spectrum disorder because it is, in fact, a spectrum. It isn't a single disorder. Individuals have different characteristics. They all have certain things in common, and we'll talk about those common features and characteristics in a moment.
When we talk about autism, we often talk about pervasive developmental disorder, PDD, also referred to as PDD-NOS, or other. We also refer to it as Asperger's syndrome, or high-functioning autism. And we talk about childhood disability or disorder.
So, what are some of the characteristic features, predominant features of autism? Well, individuals who fall within this autism spectrum disorder have difficulties in social interaction. They have difficulties in communication, and they have difficulties in the area of behavior. So let's look at each of those individually.
In the social interaction area, individuals with autism have great difficulty maintaining and establishing eye contact. They have difficulty reading facial expressions, and their facial expressions at times are also somewhat flat and not particularly expressive. They have difficulties with body posture, knowing how to move their body, making their bodies available to others, and being able to read emotional signals, knowing when emotions are triggering certain kinds of responses, or being aware of their own emotional status. They have difficulty in the area of reciprocity. That's the give and take that you experience when you're in social situations with others. Those who have autism also seem not to have a shared interest in or enjoyment with others. So their experience is a very personal, introspective, solo kind of enjoyment that they take in the kinds of ways that they behave socially. They are not at all tuned into, or have difficulty tuning into, the achievements of others. They have difficulty understanding other people's feelings, and especially when you think about young children, one of the hallmark early signs of autism is a lack of social kind of stuff. So, for example, playing peekaboo. You know, young children often break out into laughter because it's fun and there's a smile attached to it, and they giggle. Young children with autism tend not to do that, and they're often not comforted by touch, which can be very disconcerting, certainly to young families, to parents, and to siblings.
In the communication area, we talk about people with autism in verbal and nonverbal domains. We very often see delay or even a lack of talk. Young children with autism will sometimes begin to develop language and then it will abruptly stop. In many cases, that language just never develops. They have difficulties in the communication domain with taking turns. So if they say something, and when they say something, it's often not in a reciprocal kind of give and take way. They have difficulty remaining engaged in conversations. Very often, what we hear and what we see in the communication domain is stereotyped kind of communication. So they often repeat a phrase or repeat a sound or repeat a word, and they may also be echolalic. They may repeat something that someone else says. They may echo the actual words that someone else has said. Again, in the communication domain, visual difficulty taking other people's perspectives. They have difficulty understanding and responding to human innuendo. It is very difficult for them, and again, as mentioned before in the social interaction area, they tend to be concrete and focus on their self needs as opposed to the needs of others around them.
In terms of their behavior, very often individuals on the autism spectrum focus on parts or pieces of things and not the whole. They may focus on a button on a shirt, or they may focus on the wheels of a truck, but not necessarily how that truck works, or that a button is part of a piece of clothing that has a particular function. They often have preoccupations. So they may be preoccupied with toothbrushes, or they may be preoccupied with certain kinds of toys, or certain kinds of objects around the house. They have a very high need for routine. Very, very difficult kinds of autism often are evidenced in some rocking behavior. So there's a rocking back and forth of the whole body. There may be some flapping behavior, which could be arms or legs or both, and what I call twirling, which is taking something and shaking it in your hand or moving it back and forth, banging it around, tapping with it. Very often, individuals on the autism spectrum have hypersensitivities to certain things. For example, the texture of clothing or the texture of food, or they may actually show a lack of awareness of those kinds of things.
Great interest is that when you think about the autism spectrum disorder, those individuals could be of low IQ. They could have pretty significant cognitive challenges, or they could be gifted.
Features of ADHD that we see in many individuals on the autism spectrum, and anxiety and depression are often complicating factors in this set of disorders. We all know of movies like Rain Man, where we see someone who has extraordinary, highly developed and sophisticated abilities. Individuals with autism, individuals with autism present with like skills. They are incredibly capable of remembering things, like maps or dates, or even have certain gifts in the area of music. They have some unusual sensory issues. So, for example, individuals with autism may react differently to touch. They may find touch very aversive, or they may have difficulties managing touch. And they may that some individuals with autism spectrum disorder may have difficulties with modulation of pain. And again, they have difficulties often with certain textures. Also seen in that autism population, difficulties with sleep and activities of daily living are interrupted. For your child to be able to dress and feed and do certain kinds of activities for daily living, which may include, in some higher functioning individuals, the ability to travel from one place to another, manage money, and do those kinds of activities for daily living.
For more information about autism spectrum disorders and other disabilities, disorders of attention and behavior, please visit the LG website.