Autism Flashcards
2 domains of autism:
- Criterion A: social & communication differences
- Criterion B: focused interests + behaviours
what are the three topics in criterion A? how many does the individual need to have for diagnosis?
- social-emotional reciprocity
- non-verbal communication
- relationship management
3/3
what are the four topics in criterion B? how many does the individual need to have for diagnosis?
- Repetitive behaviour
- Flexibility in thinking
- Really intense interests
- Differences in experiences of the senses: taste, sight, smell, touch
2/4
what do we specify with or without in the autism diagnosis?
intellectual disability and language impairment
what is level 1 vs. level 3 autism?
based on support needs:
1. minimal support
3. most intense support needs
ADOS-2:
massive test: a lot of materials, and toys that are designed to elicit the behaviours we want to observe
- need training to administer and score the ADOS
Explaining how to brush teeth example:
- Looking for the integration of describing how you do something and using gestures (miming while describing)
- Bonus item: responding to name being called after the description and turning away
- Absent in autism: responding to name call
Misconceptions when observing people with autism:
no facial expressions used for social communication… eye contact + facial expressions are used
that they don’t have emotions: yes there have emotions but a lot of them are internal
Autism Reframed
- Honest, direct, enjoys interest -based interactions
- Independent, enjoys time alone, favors deep connections
- Systematic, procedural, logical, analytical, detail -oriented
- Reliable, consistent, predictable
- Knowledgeable, focused, dedicated
- Adventurous, brave, active
- Not afraid to go “against the grain”
- Independent
- Unique ways of thinking, being, connecting, and regulating
Repetitive behaviours (stim: self-stimulated behaviours):
- Hand-flapping
- Lining up objects
- Rocking
- Playing with fingers
- Looking at a fan going around again and again (visual stim)
Enjoyable + soothing
Demographics
- ~1-2% of population (adults and children)
- 3:1 boys to girls with concerns about missing girls (they often have intense interest that are more likely to be in line with lost of other kids their age (ex: celebrity, makeup, a person like best-friend))
- Heritability estimates ~80% (similar levels to ADHD)
Important differentials and “pink flags”, should consider if many are found in a patient’s file and autism hasn’t been considered yet
- Social anxiety disorder
- Borderline personality disorder
- Avoidant-restrictive food intake (ARFID)
- Other eating disorders
- Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder
- Anxiety disorders
- Mood disorders
- Developmental coordination disorder
- Language disorder
Why is is important to recognize subtle presentations of autism characteristics?
- If you’re going your whole life with these things and getting improper feedback (you don’t fit it, you’re not trying hard, etc.) it doesn’t feel good and can cause mental health problems (common for people to have anxiety and low mood but the undiagnosed autism can explain that cause others aren’t making you feel normal)
- Just by diagnosing autism accurately can decrease poor mental health symptoms
Bottom-Up Processing
- Not part of diagnostic criteria, but commonly seen thinking style in autistic people
- Processing details before context, so tend to miss context or need it explicitly explained
- Tend to provide a lot of details, seem to struggle to know what is relevant/irrelevant
Leads to context blindness: missing the context
- Sitting on Julians side of the desk and using his iPad
- Standing extremely close to Julian
- Evey new situation is built from bottom up so its harder to generalize things due to context
Can people with autism have unique phobias related to sensory elements?
Yes
Ex: Fear of spontaneously combusting
Ex: Fear of toilet flushing
