Autism Flashcards
Rates/amounts of people with autism?
- boys diagnosed more frequently (3-4 for every female)
- roughly equally common across culture and social class
- 75% of children with autism have learning disability
How may parental influence cause autism?
- historically thought that a lack of bond between mother and child, cold rejecting parents but this has 0 evidence
- if parent has autism/aspergers may increase it though
Taylor (BMJ, 2002)
MMR vaccine and autism
- investigated 278 children with autism and 195 with atypical autism over period since 1979 and introduction of MMR vaccine
- no evidence for causal link
Kaye (BMJ, 2001)
MMR vaccine and autism
-????????? (don’t understand need to rewatch portion of lecture first)
What are the 2 major components of empathy?
- cognitive empathy
- affective empathy
What is cognitive empathy?
- theory of mind
- ability to attribute mental states, to infer what someone else is thinking or feeling
What is affective empathy?
-the drive to respond with an appropriate emotion to someone else’s mental states
What link is there between empathy and autism?
-both components of empathy may be impaired in autism and Asperger syndrome
What is the developmental deficit/delay in communication?
- seem not to have the abilities to attend to others to begin the development of social and communicative skills
- brain development of synapses and connectivity systems may be affected
What is the impact of having development deficit/delay in communication?
- leaves them at risk of not understanding the ‘social world’
- puts at risk of anxiety and idiosyncratic ‘coping’ behaviours
- leads to Triad of disorders of Autism
What is autism defined by?
- an absence
- a series of impairments of behaviours in individuals
What areas are autistic people impaired in?
- socialisation
- language development
- behaviour
What are signs of social impairment?
- absent/impaired imitation
- absent/abnormal social play
- impaired ability to make friendships
- no/lack of wanting to seek comfort from others at times of distress
What are the causes of social impairment?
- lacking a Theory of Mind
- underlies their difficulties in social relationships
What are the signs of language impairment?
- developmentally delayed appropriate mode of communication
- absent/abnormal nonverbal communication
- abnormalities in form of speech
- pronominal reversals
- abnormalities in production of speech
- lack of understanding about symbolic nature of language
What are signs of restricted behaviour repertoire?
- stereotyped body movements
- preoccupation with parts of objects/ attachment to unusual objects
- marked distress over changed made in trivial aspects of environment
- insistence on following routines in detail
- absence of imaginative activity
- stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest
What are the goals of intervention for autism?
- provide with adaptive skills for engaging and making sense of greater part of the world and promote independence
- relieve symptoms of anxiety, frustration, and possibly difficult behaviour
What are the difficulties with interventions?
- rigidity with routines, educational approaches rely on changing routines
- usual rewards not rewarding
What are the biological causes?
- genetics
- illness
How can genetics cause autism?
- 91% concordance in MZ twins
- nearly 0% in DZ twins
- about 3% of siblings of people with autism are also affected
How can illness cause autism?
- rubella, meningitis, tuber sclerosis, encephalitis
- often signs of increased neurological abnormality from them
- systems related to social cognition seem to be different in people with autism
