AUTISM - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

• Impairments in social interaction, communication, and imaginative play.
• Apparent before age 3.
• Also includes stereotyped behaviors, interests, and activities

• Impairments in social interactions, and presence of restricted interests and activities
• No clinically significant general delay in language
• Average to above average intelligence

• 1. Communication/Language
• 2. Social Interaction
• 3. Behaviors
• 4. Sensory and movement disorders
• 5. Resistance to change (predictability)
• 6. Intellectual functioning

• Broad range of abilities, from no verbal communication to quite complex skills
• Two common impairments:
• A. Delayed language
• B. Echolalia

• 50% of autistic individuals will eventually have useful speech (?)
• Pronoun reversal: “You want white icing on chocolate cake.”
• Difficulty in conversing easily with others
• Difficulty in shifting topics
• Look away; poor eye contact

• Common in very young children (Age 3)
• Immediate or delayed (even years)
• Is there communicative intent with echolalia?

• One of hallmarks of autism is lack of social interaction
• 1. Impaired use of nonverbal behavior
• 2. Lack of peer relationships
• 3. Failure to spontaneously share enjoyment, interests, etc. with others
• 4. Lack of reciprocity
• Theory of mind?

• Repetitive behaviors, including obsessions, tics, and perseveration
• Impeding behaviors (impede their learning or the learning of others)
• Will need positive behavior supports
• A. Self-injurious behavior
• B. Aggression

• Very common
• Over- or under-sensitive to sensory stimuli
• Abnormal posture and movements of the face, head, trunk, and limbs
• Abnormal eye movements
• Repeated gestures and mannerisms
• Movement disorders can be detected very early – perhaps at birth

• Change in routine is very stressful
• May insist on particular furniture arrangement, food at meals, TV shows
• Symmetry is often important
• Interventions need to focus on preparing students for change if possible

• Autism occurs in children of all levels of intelligence, from those who are gifted to those who have mental retardation
• In general, majority of individuals with autism are also identified as having mental retardation – 75% below 70
• Verbal and reasoning skills are difficult
• Savant syndrome

Baron-Cohen, Leslie & Frith (1985)

Does the Autistic child have a Theory of Mind?

The Sally-Anne Test

A tool to diagnose Autism?

• That autistic children do not have a
• THEORY OF MIND
• are unable to recognise that other people may have ‘their own’ representation of the world in their heads

Another Advanced Test of Theory of Mind: Evidence from Very High Functioning Adults with Autism or Asperger Syndrome.

Simon Baron-Cohen and Therese Jolliffe (University of Cambridge)

Catherine Mortimore and Mary Robertson (University of London).

1997

• 4 high functioning autistic adults with IQ > 85 (WAIS-R) diagnosed using DSM-IV with language delay.
• 12 Asperger Syndrome adults diagnosed using ICD-10 with no language delay.
• All together 13 males and 3 females.
• All within normal intelligence range.

• Sampling – clinical sources plus advert in National Autistic Society magazine ‘Communication’.

• 50 normal age matched adults (25 males and 25 females). They were Cambridge (non-university) residents. No psychiatric illness (self-report). A random selection from the subject panel. Their IQ was not measured but was considered to be within the normal range.

• 10 Adult Tourette Syndrome (TS) sufferers. Age matched with groups 1 and 2. (8 males and 2 females). Diagnosed using DSM-IV. Sampling frame was a tertiary referral centre in London.

• IQ greater than 85 (short form WAIS-R using block design, object assembly and vocabulary comprehension). Short form used owing to limited time available for testing. Short form correlates with full scale 0.91.

• Groups 1 and 3 had to pass 2 1st order false belief tasks and a second-order task (all passed). A first-order task requires the subject to infer the thoughts of another person. A second-order task involves the subject reasoning about what one person thinks about another person’s thoughts.

• · Eyes Task
• · Strange Stories task
• · 2 control tasks
• Presented in random order.

• Magazine photos
• 15cm X 10cm
• Black and White
• Midway along nose to just above eyebrow.
• 3 second exposure and then a forced choice between 2 mental states.

• “Which word best describes what the person is feeling or thinking?”
• 25 pictures

1 Serious or Fantasising

2 Anticipation or Despairing

3 Certain or Doubtful

4 Submissive or Defiant

5 Uncertain or Confident

6 Concerned or unconcerned

7 Distrustful or Trustful

8 Suspicious or Trusting

9 Unfriendly or Friendly

1 Fantasising

2 Anticipation

3 Doubtful

4 Defiant

5 Confident

6 Concerned

7 Distrustful

8 Suspicious

9 Friendly

• Four judges 2 male and 2 female picked the labels and opposites in open discussion.
• Eight judges 4 males and four females independently agreed the labels unanimously.
• They were blind to the hypothesis.
• Task validated by Happes (1994) strange stories.

• Gender recognition task – the same eyes were used but participants were required to recognise gender.
• Basic emotion recognition task (emotion task) – participants are required to judge the emotion of the whole face.
• Six faces were used – happy, sad, angry, afraid, disgusted and surprised. These are considered to be basic emotions.

• The performance of the autistic participants was equivalent to that of the Asperger’s.
• On the strange stories task in the Tourette participants made no errors whereas the Asperger’s made many mistakes.

• Intelligence is not a factor here as all participants were within the normal range.
• frontal lobe damage also is not a factor as Tourette’s participants did well even though frontal lobe damage is thought to be a factor in Tourette’s syndrome.