Lecture 6 - What is Autism Flashcards
What was the historical perspective of Autism
Kanner - autism is a very rare condition, children with learning disabilities
Asperger - described something that was much more common, but that differed in severity
What is the medical perspective of autism
Conceptualised as a neurodevelopmental disorder, which consists of three types of impairments:
- impaired social functioning
- impaired social communication
- impaired social understanding
What is the key criteria for ASD?
The symptoms and behaviour must be present from early childhood. It is seen as a neurodevelopmental disorder, therefore, it should have childhood antecedents, and you will have had to have the impairments since early development.
These impairments also cannot be due to other disorders/diagnoses (co-morbid)
Why are the rates of diagnosis and prevalence of ASD increasing
It may not be that more people are developing autism, we are simply just getting better at detecting and diagnosing the disorder
What is the estimated prevalence of ASD
1%
What is the prevalence of ASD when looking at gender
ASD shows to be more prevalent in males. However, this could simply be due to the research on early detection of autism being predominantly on body, and the early detection material being based on boys.
What are the different screening tools used for ASD
Social Communication Questionnera (SCQ)
Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS)
Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (M-CHAT)
Autism Quotient (AQ)
What is the Autism Quotient measuring
It was developed to screen for autism in people of typical intelligence and for those adults who ‘missed’ diagnosis.
It s 50 questions that assess across 5 social domains
What is good about the AQ as a screening tool
It has a high sensitivity value: .95
It however has a low specificity value: .52 - it will be detecting a lot of ‘false positives’ however, you would rather this and have loads of people coming in, than people being missed off and not receiving treatment, and perhaps these individuals might go on to be diagnosed with another form of autism (subthreshold) or MH disorder
Name some of the diagnostic tools for ASD
Autism Diagnostic Interview (ADI-R)
Diagnostic Interview for Social and Communication Disorders (DISCO)
Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS)
What is the ADOS
It is a play based assessment, and for older children and adults, it is more of a conversational assessment.
Assessment based on 4/5 modules, that are selected based on the language ability of the individual
It is regarded as the gold standard, when combined with an interview
Problems with the ADOS
It is relatively costly and takes a week to train someone to be able to do the assessment.
Also, it only really works where the interactions are flowing nicely and feel natural. The observer also needs to be able to code and identify atypical and typical actions correctly.
What is the broader autism phenotype?
The idea of their being continuously distributed autism traits in the general population, that are just expressed more mildly than that of full-diagnosed autistic disorders.
And that, characteristics of autism are more commonly expressed in families of people with autism.
What are the roles of genetics in ASD
- Those who share genes, tend to share the subthreshold symptoms of autism
- There is a genetic influence on prevalence of autism, it is not just an environmental effect
What did Constantino and Todd find?
In their large twin study, looking at a population cohort, using the SRS, they found that autism occurs in the whole population, just at a sub threshold level.
