Developmental Differences Flashcards
What are developmental disorders?
Divergence from typical development, identified in childhood
Often lifelong, although some remit in adulthood
Can include atypical cognitive, behavioural, language or motor development
As many as 1:10 children may have developmental differences
What is typical development?
Trajectory of emergence of new behaviours and skills
What does it mean for a developmental disorder to have a genetic basis?
Inherited
Random mutation
Possible to do genetic screening
What are examples of developmental disorders that have a genetic basis?
Down’s syndrome
Fragile X
Rett’s syndrome
Turner syndrome
Williams syndrome
What does it mean to have a putative genetic basis?
Assume there is genetic basis because of circumstantial evidence
Look at twin studies
Some genetic basis but don’t know what genes important
What are examples of developmental differences have a putative genetic basis?
Autism
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
Language disorders
What does it mean to have an environmental cause or to be influenced by environmental factors?
Access to therapy
Features of home environment
Nutrition
What are examples of developmental disorders that have an environmental cause?
Cerebral Palsy
How are developmental differences diagnosed?
Usually parents take child to GP when they have concerns
GP refers child to specialist assessment services
Assessments completed by paediatricians and clinical psychologists
Look at diagnostic criteria and see what diagnosis
Takes a long time (up to 2-3 years)
What are diagnostic assessments?
History of difficulty
Standardised assessments
Observations
Questionnaires completed by parents and teachers
When was autism first described?
Mid 20th century
Leo Kanner (1943)
Hans Asperger (1944)
What is autism?
Marked by differences in social interaction, communication and Restricted Interests and Repetitive Behaviours
Lifelong differences maintained into adulthood
1 in 44 children in US have autism
On a spectrum
What type of presentation does autism have?
Heterogeneous presentation
Can be present in people with high and low IQ
Historically more common in boys than girls
Approximately 40% of autistic people are non-verbal
What is the cause of autism?
Putative genetic cause
Not caused by vaccines or bad parenting
Don’t know genetic basis
What is the Theory of Mind hypothesis for autism?
Don’t have ability to understand other minds
Children completed an unexpected transfer test
Autistic children performed worse than verbal and non-verbal ability matched groups
Could this account for broad range of social difficulties?
What is the theory of weak ‘central coherence’ for autism?
Proposed to account for non-social differences and perceptual strengths seen in autism
Autistic individuals faster and more accurate on embedded figures task and block design task
More likely to focus on parts, not whole
What is the history of ADHD?
First recognised in early 1900s - “hyperkinetic disorder”
Renamed ADHD in 1987
What is ADHD marked by differences in?
Attention
- unresponsive yet distractable
Hyperactivity
- seem to have internal dynamo
- fidgeting
- impossible to sit still
Impulsivity
- unwilling to queue
- unable to wait in turn in games
What is ADHD?
Occurs in 8 in 100 people
More common in boys than girls
Some children remit whereas others maintain diagnoses into adulthood
High heritability estimates - 75%
But affected by environmental factors - diet
What did Barkley (1997) say about ADHD?
Primary differences in executive functioning
Flexible thinking, organisation, etc, rely on executive functioning
What did Sonuga-Barke (2005) say about ADHD?
Primary differences with reward and motivation
Difficulty with delayed gratification
What are language disorders?
Prevalence about 7:100
More common in boys than girls
What language areas of the brain are implicated in some of these language disorders?
Broca’s area
Wernicke’s area
What is developmental dyslexia marked by?
Difficulty in reading and spelling that’s not explained by generally poor ability
Struggle to identify how many syllables a word has
Struggle to identify rhyming words
Difficulty discriminating between sounds of different letters
What is the basis of developmental dyslexia?
Although has genetic basis, affected by environmental factors
Whether or not a language is “transparent” (letter patterns map onto phonetics)
What is the medical model of disability?
Focus on individual being the problem
Disability caused by something internal to individual
Focus on curing disability
What is the social model of disability?
Not person’s problem, way we’ve constructed the world has put up barriers
Focus on barriers in the world
What is the neurodiversity take on disability?
Difference not disability
Neurological differences respected as any other human variation
View celebrates different forms of communication and self-expression
Not searching for a cure
