Lecture 9 - Atypical Development II - ASD Flashcards
Define Autism Spectrum Disorder
- Difficulties understanding emotions/ emotional cues
- Neurologically based developmental disorder (ho w brain is structured)
- Complex set of disorders, on a spectrum of severity
- Chronic impairment in social relations/ functions
- Now several disorders are unified under ASD
Outline Kanner (1943) findings about the social stuff in ASD- Autistics Disturbanecs of Affective Contact
First to explore/ identity childhood ASD
- Social aloofness - socially different to others their age
- Own individual, shutting out the outside world
- Fearing change to their internal/ external env
- Limited in spontaneouty
- Struggle doing pretend play, and empathising with others
Outline Kanner’s (1943) findings about other things ASD effected
- Language was just about naming things, not so much for communication. But learnt language okay, just used it differently
- may refer to self as you, as thats what people say to him
- and call others i as thats what they say: i will give you this
- not interested in those around them
- Anxious tenseness in social world
- begin accepting a small group into their world
Outline Kanner’s case of donald (1943)
- he played within him self, didnt acknowledge anyone else, didnt play with them
- ASD impacts: Isolation, peer relations, play
What are the 3 DSM criteria for part A of ASD?
- Part A focus on social and emotional interaction
Part A focus on social and emotional interaction
- DEFICITS IN SOCIAL COMMUNICATION AND SOCIAL INTERACTION
Deficitis in:
- social-emotional reciprocity
- nonverbals- communicative behaviours in social interaction (e.g. eye contact)
- Developing, maintaining and understanding relationships
What are the 4 DSM Criteria for Part B of ASD
- which is about patterns of behaviour
RESTRICTED, REPETITIVE PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOUR, INTERESTS, OR ACTIVITIES
- repetitive motor movements
- Ritualised patterns
- Fixated interests
- Difficulties processing sensory information
Outline the prevalence of ASD
1- 1.5% of children
- more boys than girls - 5:1
Outline heritability of autism
Chance of sibling having ASD is 50X greater than average
- MZ twins: 77%
- DZ: 31%
- Siblings 20%
What are some potential causes of ASD outlined by Wendy Chung
- Advance paternal age
- Epilepsy medication of pregnant mother
- Maternal infections
- genetic is pretty much strongest one, but doesnt explain it all
What are the 4 social impairments in ASD
- as part of Part A of diagnosing
- Joint attention
- Language and communication
- Emotion
- Peer relationships - may lack peer support - peer recktion and isolation likely
- Impacts educational outcomes and mental health
- adolescence is a period of tough social times
Outline Joint attention as a social impairment
“Two people using eye gaze and gesture to share attention towards an interesting object or event”
- Preverbal communication
- getting someones attention towards something you are attending to - you are sharing that experience
- Children respond to these attention directives from 9 mo
- at 12mo they can do it - requesting attention or directing attention - advanced social skill, understand their can communicate to modify behaviour of others
- ASD’s are less likely to engage in joint attention with CG
- lack of interest in social world
- Especially problems with eye contact
Outline Language and communication as a social impairment
- develop language slower
- less responsive to their name when young
- Articulation normal
- High functioning ASD’s = good vocab, but less talk about mental states
- Severe autism = no language
Difficulties: • directing or Sharing attention • initiating communication - tend to be quieter •Pronouns • non-segmental phonology - tone, prosidy etc •Turn taking •Eye gaze • echolalia • sarcasm difficulties • metaphorical language
- ASD impairs language, just at different severities
- language has fewer functions - just factual stuff
Outline Echolalia
- Repetition of words or phrases someone else has said, with similar intonation
- Immediate or delayed
- Irrelevant or meaninfuless, or inappropriate
- Does help them with turn taking - not pointless
- They do this when they dont know what else to do
Outline Emotions as the 3rd social impairments
- Difficulties with emotion recognition, sharing
- Less concern or empathy for others
- Emotional and social experiences are intertwined
- Difficulties with regulation - easily stressed
- Poor emotional coordination and timing
- ASD interventions teach them to recognise what emotions others are feeling
Outline Redy et al (2002) study into Humour and Laughter in ASD
- ASD laughed in tickling and peekaboo play
- but didnt laugh in response to funny faces or sociall inappropriate acts
- rarely joined in with others laughter
- rarely tried to make others laught
- Less attended to others smiles and laughts
- May laugh in situations where it was unacceptable to laugh
Outline peer relationships as the 4th social impairments
- Difficulty forming and understanding friendshps, but they want friends (80% have at least 1 friend)
- Fewer friends, shorter contact with them
- See friendship as being about companionship, not intimacy
- Even if have knowledge of what makes a good friend, they have difficulty applying it
- is it because: Social interaction difficulty means they cannot have meaningful relationships - lack of eye contact, language/ communication,
- or because they have different views of what makes a good friend
Do they know what a good friend is, but struggle to enact this, or just have abnormal view of what friends are
What are the 2 factors that explain friendship patterns?
- Social Cognition
- Social motivation
- Social cognition
- emotion processing is slower
- Perspective taking poorer
- concrete approaches - Social Motivation
- Less rewarded by social interactions
- less drive to be in friendships
Outline Bullying in ASD
- more likely to be bullied as they are seen as odd or different
- Less likely to have friends as buffer
What developmental milestones are ASD delayed in?
- less Joint attention
- Less pretend play
- Delayed False-belief pass
- Delayed understand that words can hurt feelings
- Difficult to read faces and eyes for emotion
What are the 3 explanations for ASD
- ToM - social cognitive theory
- Empathising-systemising hypothesis
- Social Motivation Theory - a theory of social motivation
Outline ToM as a theory for ASD
- Baron-Cohen, Leslie & Frith (1985)
- Ability to explain and predict behaviour in terms of mental states
- ASD have mind blindedness
- Social world becomes confusing and unpredictable
- ASD develop some understanding of others desires and emotions - but continue to struggle with belief and other cognitive states
- Explains problems with empathy: “if i dont feel or perceive something, the other person wont feel or perceive it”
How is mindblindedness seen for certain in ASD
- Failure in joint attention
- Less pretend play - need imagination and empathy for toys
- Delays in passing false beliefs
- Difficulty understanding deception
- Difficulty predicting hurt feelings and reading eye expressions
- Basicaly: delays in putting self in others shoes
- Not all ASD have ToM defects
Outline how ASD cant represent mental states
- One character is imagining a dog, the other is holding one, Ask ASD’s who can stroke the dog
- they dont know as cannot distinguish mental and physical states
Outline Empathising-Systemizing theory (Baron-Cohen, 2009) as a theory of ASD
- ASD hae delays/ deficits in Empathy
- But have intact/ superior systemising skills
•Analyse/ construct systems, rules to explain and predict
•Applying categories and systems to things - Explains difficulty generalising - emphasises cognitive factors (systemising)
- Everything has a new system, so cannot act the same at home and at school
- notice similarities
Explains social/ communication difficulties and narrow interests, need to sameness, attention to detail
- social difficulties are not just associated with recognising others mental states, but responding to them
what are the 2 tests in the empathising-systemising theory?
The Empathy quotient
The Systemising quotient
- can be good at one but not the other. ASD’s cannot be good at both
- Trade-off here - cant be good at both
- More males drawn to systemising approach
Outline Social Motivation theory as a theory of ASD
- Chevallier et al (2012)
three components, social…, social…, social…
Social motivation = seeking to belong in the social world (social orientating), and getting pleasure from being in it (social reward). Wanting to maintain it (social maintaining
- ASD disrupts these social motivational processes - leads to deficits in social cognition
What does social motivation in TD children look like, according to Chevalier et al (2012)’s theory of social motivation
- Social orientation - preferance for faces, eyes, speech
- Social reward - collaboration and interaction is rewarding - intrinsic reward if nothing else
- Social maintaining: desire to maintain and enhance relationships
What does social motivation in ASD children look like, according to Chevalier et al (2012)’s theory of social motivation
All aspects of social motivation are disrupted
- Early impairments in social attention -> limited social learning experiences -> imbalance in attention to social vs non-social stimuli disrupts development of socio-cognitive skills
- Social Orientation - little eye-contact, not responsive to name, social aloofness. Look at non-social stimuli just as much
- Social reward - less interest in friendships (but not lonely), Less likely to offer help. Less responsive and initating social interactions - dont get any reward
- Social Maintaining - dont care about reputation or self-image, few social emotions, less likely to hide emotions
What are interventions for ASD targetted at?
- Social skills
- Language and communication
- Behaviour
Briefly outline Applied Behaviour Analysis as an intervention for ASD
- Explores interactions between the environment and behaviour
- Based on operant conditioning, positive reinforcement for correct behaviour in response to the environment
- Requires joint attention and imitation
- Teaches them about how to analyse the environment and what the right behaviour would
- Lots of effectiveness for them
- Rewarding their behaviour
Outline some criticisms for ABA interventions
X - normalising X - harmful/ abusive? X - are they too generalised? X - very intensive X - should ASD be treated? - we are all diverse and there is no 1 healthy way to be! - Neurodiversity movement
