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Autism Classification
(extracted from wikipedia)
Autism is a developmental disorder of the human brain that first shows signs during infancy or childhood and follows a steady course without remissions or relapses.
Impairments result from maturation-related changes in various systems of the brain. Autism is one of the five pervasive developmental disorders (PDD) or autism spectrum disorders (ASD), which are characterized by widespread abnormalities of social interactions and communication, as well as severely restricted interests and highly repetitive behavior.
Of the other four autism spectrum disorders, Asperger's syndrome is closest to autism in signs and likely causes; Rett syndrome and childhood disintegrative disorder share several signs with autism but may have unrelated causes; finally, pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) is diagnosed when the criteria are not met for a more specific disorder.
Unlike autism, Asperger's has no significant delay in language development.
The terminology of autism can be bewildering, with autism, Asperger's, and PDD-NOS sometimes called the autistic disorders, whereas autism itself is often called autistic disorder, childhood autism, or infantile autism. This article uses autism to refer to the classic autistic disorder, while other sources sometimes use autism to refer to autistic disorders or even ASD. ASD in turn is a subset of the broader autism phenotype (BAP), which describes individuals who may not have ASD but do have some autistic-like traits, such as avoiding eye contact.
Autism's manifestations cover a wide spectrum, ranging from individuals with severe impairments—who may be silent, mentally disabled, and locked into hand flapping and rocking—to less impaired individuals who may have active but distinctly odd social approaches, narrowly focused interests, and verbose, pedantic communication.
Sometimes the syndrome is informally and controversially divided into low-, medium- and high-functioning autism (LFA, MFA, and HFA) based on IQ thresholds, or on how much support the individual requires in daily life. Autism can also be divided into syndromal and non-syndromal autism, where the former is associated with severe or profound mental retardation or a congenital syndrome with physical symptoms, such as tuberous sclerosis.
Although individuals with Asperger's tend to perform better cognitively than those with autism, it is unclear how much overlap occurs among Asperger's, HFA, and non-syndromal autism.
Some studies have reported diagnoses of autism in some children due to a loss of language or social skills, as opposed to a failure to make progress. Several terms are used for this phenomenon, including regressive autism, setback autism, and developmental stagnation. The validity of this distinction remains controversial; it is possible regressive autism is a specific subtype.
Social Development
(taken from wikipedia)
Autistic people have social impairments and often lack the intuition about others that many people take for granted. Noted autistic Temple Grandin described her inability to understand the social communication of neurotypicals as leaving her feeling "like an anthropologist on Mars".
Social impairments become apparent early in childhood. Autistic infants show less attention to social stimuli, smile and look at others less often, and respond less to their own name. Autistic toddlers have more striking social deviance: for example, they have less eye contact and anticipatory postures and they are less able to use other people's bodies as tools.
Three- to five-year-old autistic children are less likely to exhibit social understanding, approach others spontaneously, imitate and respond to emotions, communicate nonverbally, and take turns with others. However, they do form attachments to their primary caregivers.
They display moderately less attachment security than usual, though this difference disappears in groups containing children with higher mental development or with less severe ASD.
Contrary to common belief, autistic children do not prefer to be alone. Making and maintaining friendships often proves to be difficult for those with autism. For them the quality of friendships, not the number of friends, predicts how lonely they are.
There are many anecdotal reports but few systematic studies of aggression and violence in individuals with ASD. The limited data suggest that in children with mental retardation, autism is associated with aggression, destruction of property, and tantrums. Dominick et al. interviewed parents of 67 children with ASD and reported that about two thirds of the children had periods of severe tantrums and about one third had a history of aggression, with tantrums significantly more common than in children with a history of language impairment.
Communication
(taken from wikipedia)
About a third to a half of autistic individuals do not develop enough natural speech to meet daily communication needs.
Communications differences may be present from the first year of life, and may include delayed onset of babbling, unusual gestures, diminished responsiveness, and desynchronization of vocal patterns with the caregiver. In the second and third years, autistic children have less frequent and less diverse babbling, consonants, words, and word combinations; their gestures are less-often integrated with words. Autistic children are less likely to make requests or share experiences and more likely to simply repeat others' words (echolalia) or reverse pronouns. Autistic children may have difficulty with imaginative play and with developing symbols into language.
They are more likely to have problems understanding pointing; for example, they may look at a pointing hand instead of the pointed-at object.
In a pair of studies, high-functioning autistic children aged 8–15 performed equally well, and adults better, than individually matched controls at basic language tasks like vocabulary and spelling. Both autistic groups performed worse than controls at complex language tasks like figurative language, comprehension, and making inferences. As people are often sized up initially from their basic language skills, these studies suggest that people speaking to autistic individuals are more likely to overestimate what their audience comprehends.
