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Autism (CHILD PSYCH) - Coggle Diagram
Autism (CHILD PSYCH)
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) refers to a range of conditions that are developmental disorders, including Asperger's Syndrome and Atypical autism
Autism is a lifelong, developmental disorder that affects how a person communicates with and refers to other people, and how they experience the world around them. mOre commonly referred to as ASD as there is a range of severity for Autism's symptoms - Mild Autism = Asperger's Syndrome which is still listed in the ICD-10 but has been removed from the DSM due to connects with Hans Aspergers and his reported supporting of the Nazi regime involved in killing people with Autism
we focus on 'severe' or Atypical
Features:
More boys than girls, for Asperger's 10b:1g, for autism 4:1 worldwide, 6/1,000 with ASD worldwide, 1 in 100 in the UK, 2/1,000 with Autism or 0.2% of the population globally.
Characteristics:
A child can be identified as Autistic between 2-3 and is likely to become apparent due to a lack of eye contact, or not anticipating the needs or intentions of others - usually issues with social interaction along with repetitive behaviour.
Social Issues:
- lack of empathy, inability to show love or emotions, difficulties in understanding people, problems with building social relationships ( no response to name at the end of the 1st year, preferring to play alone).
Communication Issues:
lower than normal language ability (slower at babbling and gesturing) however there are individual differences as some children with Autism can talk clearly though may have little comprehension. Problems communicating with others: may use single words or repeat themselves (or echolalia which means to repeat exactly what they hear), facial expressions may not match what they have said and may have difficulty reading other's body language or taking most things literally.
Repetitive behaviours:
low levels of imaginative thinking (lining up toys or doing the same thing for a long time, also becoming upset of someone disrupts the order that they have created), a preference for order and organisation, and a resistance to change (systemising), obsession ( a great depth of knowledge in one particular area).
Other: low IQ or normal, high ability in one particular area aka
autistic savants
Evidence: the Sally-Anne task: Sally has a ball, she puts this in a basket, Sally goes out for a walk, Anne takes the ball out of the basket and puts the ball in a box. Then Sally comes back and she wants to play with the ball. Where will she look?
Pass: She will look in the basket
Fail: She will look in the box
This is because a child without theory of mind cannot understand the situation from Sally's point of view despite 'knowing' where the ball is.
People with Autism are often 'low empathising' but 'high systemising'
Extreme Male Brain: Biological Explanation of Autism
the key
cognitive
aspects of autism - low empathy, high systemising - are common features of the male brain which leads to the hypothesis that high levels of testosterone (a hormone related to 'male' characteristics) may contribute to an 'extreme male brain' where these characteristics are intensified resulting in Autism
Baren Cohen et al (2005) believed this was caused by high levels of testosterone in the womb while the foetus was developing - at around 8 weeks the male embryo releases testosterone and causes a male brain to develop with some distinct differences from that of a female brain
Examples: men typically score higher on systemising and lower on empathising than women - autistic children score even higher on systemising and even lower on empathising
generally women tend to be better at reading body language and therefore understanding Paralinguistics - something autistic people find particularly difficult
as there are more boys with autism than girls: Asperger's 10:1 and Autism 4:1 this suggests autism is in some way linked to male characteristics or biology - also boys brains tend to grow faster and the same is true for people with autism
Evaluation:
Strengths:
Falter et al tested 28 autistic children and 31 'normal' children on mental rotation and figure disembedding tasks and found autistic outperformed the 'normal'
Males scores higher on a systemising questionnaire and women scored higher and Complex Facial Expressions test and those with Autism did better than the men in the 1st questionnaire and worse than the women in the 2nd
Baren-Cohen also suggests that the fact both men and people with autism have a longer ring finger than their second finger - this has been related to prenatal testosterone levels and this may support a biological explanation of autism related to higher levels of testosterone
Weaknesses: Bailey at al's study showed 60% concordance rate for autism in MZ twins versus 0% in DZ twins - this supports a higher genetic contribution to Autism than EMB - Not all ASD behaviours are consistent with that of an Extreme Male Brain as aggression levels are shown to be higher in males but this does not translate to children with ASD so saying "extreme male brain' over simplifies Cause and effect are hard to establish due to the variety of confounding variables that affect Autism eg wether EMB is due to testosterone and causes a lack of TOM or vice versa which reduces the validity
Theory of Mind: Cognitive Explanation of Autism
TOM refers to the cognitive ability to understand other people'e mental states and to see the world from another's perspective - when a child has TOM they can recognise each person has their own set of beliefs, emotions, likes and dislikes that may be different.
The development of this begins in early life at about 5 months+ when children begin to recognise different facial expressions, but understanding meaning comes later. After developing their ability to reliably interpret the facial expressions of others - they can use this non verbal info as a guide of social behaviours.
It is important to know that all children without autism - even those with learning difficulties - have a developed TOM by the
age of 4
Baren Cohen's theory is that children lack a TOM which demonstrated 'mind-blindness' which can be used to explain their typical lack of social skills
Therapies
ABA (Applied Behavioural Analysis): this therapy tackles unwanted behaviours in order to teach more appropriate forms of communication and social skills. It includes token economy features, sets out encouraged behaviours and rewards them using positive reinforcement.
Evaluation: Baren Cohen et al (1985) - out of children with DS, 'normal' and autistic only the autistic ones failed the Sally-Anne test Is an incomplete explanation as it does note resolve the verbal issues with autistic children as these skills do not lie on interpreting social scenarios Research is mainly focused on pre school children as this where rapid development of mental-state understanding is recognised, but this means less is known about the development of TOM in older children TOM is presented as a contributing factor to autism, however the absence of it may only be a characteristic - as due to autism TOM may not develop so this adds to the complexity of autism and reduces the validity of TOM as a cause