Piecing the Puzzle Together

Piecing the Puzzle Together

Some people might think autism is just the acting out of withdrawal from reality. There is so much more to this disability. Autism cannot be cured by paying more attention to someone. In reality, there is absolutely no cure. Some key factors of autism are early diagnosis, characteristics of autism, and therapeutic help.

Nevertheless, Lou Kanner, who modernized the term "autism", believed that these children represented an entirely different clinical psychiatric disorder (Singer 1). The more modernized definition states: autism is a neurodevelopment disorder characterized by impairment in emotional expression and recognition, difficulty with social relationships, delayed and/or abnormal language and communication (Singer 1). It is also known as autism spectrum disorder. Aspergers consists at a high functioning level on the spectrum. Meanwhile, autism is towards the bottom of the spectrum with a low functioning level (Singer 1).

Autism, unlike other types of childhood psychoses, begins in or near infancy and has both cognitive and affective components (Singer 1). Prior to 36 months of age; pervasive lack of responsiveness to other people; gross defects in language development and, if speech is present, peculiar patterns; bizarre reaction to environmental aspects (resistance to change); and the absence of any symptoms of schizophrenia (Singer 1). Language development in children with autism is almost always delayed (Slaughter 2). Between 25% and 30% of autistic children never acquire spoken language, despite having normal hearing abilities (2).

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the prevalence of autism has been estimated at around 1 in 150 children. Study of the sex distribution shows that it is approximately three to four times as common in male as in female children (Singer 1). Research on physiological causes of autism indicate a genetic component: siblings of autistic children are fifty times more likely to be diagnose with autism that children who do not have an autistic brother or sister (1).

Autistic children come from families within a wide socioeconomic range, and more than 75% of them score in the moderately intellectually disabled range on intelligence tests before, or in absence of, effective treatment (Singer 2). The mental profiles of autistic children can be uneven, however, with particularly low verbal IQ scores but normal or near-normal scores on measures of mathematical and spatial IQ (Slaughter 3). Those with a more severe retardation may go to special schools (4).

One of the most controversial proposals in the 1990's was that mumps, measles, and rubella (MMR) vaccination that is given at approximately 18 months of age caused at least some forms of autism because the timing of the vaccine often corresponds with the earliest detected symptoms of autism (Singer 1). However, researchers in the United States and Europe have determined that this vaccine does not cause autism. This is based on the fact that vaccination rates held steady throughout the 1990's at almost 97% of children, yet the rate of autism diagnoses increased sevenfold during the same time period (Singer 1).

One characteristic of autism is disordered communication. Early nonverbal communication such as gaze following and panting to share information is delayed or fails to emerge (Singer 2). A prominent speech pathology in autism is either immediate or delayed reputation or something heard not in a meaningful way but as a simple parroting back; these phenomena are called immediate and delayed echolalia, respectively (Singer 2). Their speech is often delivered in a monotone, is repetitive, and focuses mainly on their own concerns (Slaughter 2).

Another characteristic is lack of true language situational cues (Singer 2). Some autistic children also develop very ritualistic preoccupations with an object or a schedule. For example, they may become extremely distressed with events as minor as rearrangement of furniture in a particular room or home (Singer