Lecture 9 - Neurodiversity and developmental disorders

Question 1

What makes a developmental disorder?

Answer 1

• onset in the developmental period, usually before school
• effects can either be specific to 1 domain or global deficits across a no. of domains
• diagnosis looks at overactive behaviours and deficits
• there is a high rate of co-occurance

Question 2

Autism and ASD?

Answer 2

• ASD is used as an umbrella term to cover autism
• first described by Kenner 1943
• relatively common

Question 3

What do we know about autism?

Answer 3

• Present across the lifespan
• Present across all different IQ levels
• Diagnosed in more males than females
• Profiles vary greatly - diagnosis comes from both deficits in social and communicative abilities and repetitive behaviours

Question 4

Spiky profiles?

Answer 4

• profiles are very different
• this means that differences between strengths and weaknesses are magnified
• can help how we frame needs

Question 5

Communication difficulties?

Answer 5

• experience persistent difficulties in social communication and interaction such as:
  -> failure to respond to or initiate social interactions
  -> non verbal communicative behaviours used for social interaction
  -> difficulties adjusting behaviour to suit social contexts

Question 6

Restricted or repetitive behaviour?

Answer 6

• repetitive motor movements
• insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines
• fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity
• hyperactivity to sensory input or unusual interests

Question 7

Heterogeneity?

Answer 7

• ASD is a heterogeneous disorder (huge variability)
• we don’t know what causes autism
  -> no genes have been identified
  -> no link to the MMR vaccine
• the effects and severity greatly vary between people

Question 8

TOM and autism?

Answer 8

• autism may be due to a deficit in the theory of mind
• only 20% of children with ASD passed the Sally Anne Task

Question 9

Autism and executive function?

Answer 9

• autism may be due to poor executive function
• executive function = umbrella term for high order control processes
• working memory and attention are lower in ASD

Question 10

Autism and central coherence?

Answer 10

• may be due to weak central coherence
• central coherence = ability to derive overall meaning from a mass of details
• there is a detailed focused processing style in ASD
• favour a local vs global processing style

Question 11

Autism and the extreme male brain?

Answer 11

• Baron- Cohen noticed higher instances of ASD in males than females
• attempted to explain it in terms of the difference between male and female brains
• females are better at empathising, eye contact and reading emotions
• male brains are better at systemising and structural/ factual information

Question 12

Criticisms of the explanations for autism?

Answer 12

• there is ASD in females and a lot goes undiagnosed
• its been suggested that females are better at masking
• poor evidence for male/ female differences in the general population
• not every child has a deficit - 50-70% had deficits on TOM, EF

Question 13

Williams syndrome (WS)?

Answer 13

• sporadic genetic disorder (rarely runs in families)
• deletion of 25-28 genes on chromosome 7
• main gene affected = elastin gene
• medical effects:
  -> feeding difficulties
  -> extreme heart and blood vessel abnormalities
  -> hyperacusis (sensitive hearing)
• physical effects:
  -> facial dysmorphology
  -> short height
• language is a relative strength and children with WS have a higher language ability than children with DS
• struggle with visuospatial tasks
• show pro-social compulsion
• enjoy looking at faces

Question 14

Down syndrome (DS)?

Answer 14

• genetic trisomy of chromosome 21
• medical effects:
  -> sucking and feeding problems
  -> heart defects
  -> hearing and vision deficits
• physical effects:
  -> facial dysmorphology
  -> slow growth
• IQ is severely delayed
• struggle with visuospatial tasks
• enjoy looking at faces