Autism- 11th of March 2012

So after becoming a bit stuck on topics this week I decided to look on blackboard and came across a link to autism on BBC news. Autism is quite a personal subject to me due to a family member having it and after looking around (and even after learning about it in Developmental) I realised how little I personally know about something so close to my heart.

So autism, what is it? It is a lot more common then we think, with 1 in 100 sufferers. “Autism is a lifelong developmental disability that affects how a person communicates with, and relates to, other people. It also affects how they make sense of the world around them”. This quote is of the autistic website for Wales (interesting read) and basically shows that people with autism mainly have problems with communication and also may experience over or under sensitivity to their senses of sound, smell, taste and touch. As we can imagine, this can cause many issues in life and some people that are sufferers need constant care and attention. Autism is a lifelong condition and isn’t something you can just cure. It is part of the autism spectrum because although all Autism sufferers experience same difficulties, sufferers will experience them in different ways. It is thought that it is possible to detect autism from a much earlier age now based on infant’s brainwaves from as early as 6 months. The children in the study were shown pictures of people’s faces that switched between looking at or away from baby, and babies suspected with autism shows lack of eye contact as well as a large difference in brainwaves when looking at each image (Professor Mark Johnson, UCL).

So now I have given you a brief outline of autism (and this is meant to be a research blog), I’m going to discuss some causes and also ways it can be measured and intervention programmes to help. The first subject is causes. People from all nationalities, cultures and societies can become autism sufferers, although research has suggested it is more common in men than women, with 1.8% of males compared to 0.2% of females (Brugha, 2009). Further research showed that with people that are high-functioning autism sufferers the ration of boys to girls was 2:1 (Wing, 1981). The exact cause of autism is unknown and still constantly under investigation but it is thought to be linked to both nature and nurture which changes brain development. There have been many discussions that many girls with Autism are never referred for diagnosis, so this results in missing statistics (Attwood, 2000. Ehlers and Gillberg, 1993 and Wing, 1981). The thought is that based on behaviour characteristics for the diagnostic criteria, boys are more disruptive then girls anyway and girls could be better at simply hiding their difficulties. A further hypothesis by Rimland (1964), suggested that males are more susceptible for hereditary diseases, infections and other conditions which is why there are more vulnerable than girls. It could also be argued that genes for autism are located on the X chromosome and because girls inherit two (one from mother and one from father); the one from father has an imprinted gene which somehow protects them from autism (Skuse, 2000).  However this is a very reductionist view as it is likely more than one gene is linked to autism (Lord and Schopler, 1987). In the diagnosis stage of this, a team of specialists carry out assessments including a clinical psychologist, speech therapist and psychiatrist. They all assess the child separately but then bring data together for a multi-dimensional view increasing reliability of diagnosis.

So although there is no cure for autism yet, there are several different intervention programmes which have been proved to be effective. There has been the idea that behaviours in children with autism have been reinforced by parents and could be shaped through differential reinforcement (Ferster, 1961). Further research has showed how children with autism can learn to speak through shaping and positive reinforcement (Lovass, 1966). Research has shown that EIBI program is beneficial for children with autism. This programme is made up of prompts and reinforcement to encourage suitable behaviour. However skills taught through this are arguably not generalizable to other situations. This programme is very time consuming and takes between 20-40 hours per week to be effective and costs 20,000 a year however the children do show an increase in IQ and social skills (Howard et al, 2007 and Smith et al, 2000).

In conclusion Autism needs to continue being researched as it is a common behavioural disorder which can have very upsetting circumstances for both parents and the children. Although it has no cure current studies have helped develop to EIBI programme and do show its effectiveness for helping develop children with autisms academic achievement and communication skills.

Wooooo long blog….hope your enjoyed, good bye guys J

 

 

http://www.autism.org.uk/

Wing, L. (1981). Sex ratios in early childhood autism and related conditions. Psychiatry Research, 5, pp129-37