Test 4 Flashcards
1
Q
Autism Spectrum Disorder
A
- Deficit in social communication and interaction
- restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests, and activities
- must show both
2
Q
Deficits in Social communication
A
- Social–emotional reciprocity: the normal back-and-forth of conversation and social interactions through the sharing of interests, affect, or emotions;
- Nonverbal communication: the effective use of eye contact, gestures, and facial expressions, and
- Interpersonal relationships: showing an interest in others and the capacity to make and keep friends.
3
Q
Restricted Repetitive behaviors, interests, or activities
A
- Stereotyped or repetitive behaviors including speech (e.g., repeating words or phrases), movements (e.g., hand gestures), or use of objects (e.g., lining up toys);
- Excessive adherence to routines or resistance to change, such as the need to dress, eat, or bathe at a certain time or in a certain manner;
- Restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus, such as a fascination with hobbies that are unlike those of children of the same age and gender; and
- Unusually high or low sensitivity to sensory input, such as a tendency to become upset by certain sounds, textures, or tastes; or an unusually high pain threshold
- The most common stereotyped behaviors among lower-functioning children with ASD include rocking, hand flapping, whirling, and making unusual repetitive mannerisms with hands and fingers
- strong desire for daily routines. rigid on how things are supposed to be
- Highly fixated on interest
- Longitudinal studies indicate that restricted, repetitive behaviors or interests usually emerge after deficits in social communication
4
Q
Language Impairments (ASD)
A
- One of the first signs is inconsistent use of early pre verbal communication. this is crying, making noise, early sounds, eye contact in order to get what they need
- those who begin to speak many regress between 12- 30 months
- can talk in second or third person
- Echoloalla: repeating words or phrases over and over again. Consistently talking about the same topic.
-echolalia—that is, they repeat words that they hear others speak or overhear on television and radio.
5
Q
Social interaction
A
- limited social expressions
- limited gestures, facial expressions, non verbal communication
- atypical processing of faces and facial expression. they dont recognize and have difficulty processing the emotions of other
- deficits in social and emotional reciprocity. mirror back the expression of someone else’s
- lack of social imitation and make believe play. This can impact peer relationships by not being able to read social cues
- lack of make believe play. can’t pretend to be something else
- defects in joint attention. can’t focus their attention with someone else. like two people looking at a picture, they can’t do this.
6
Q
Intellectual deficits
A
- about 70% have intellectual impairment. which means lower IQ score
- 5% display isolated and remarkable talent
- The distribution of IQ scores among children with ASD did not differ based on gender or ethnicity.
- Children’s intelligence is strongly associated with the severity of ASD symptoms, degree of adaptive functioning, and response to treatment
- It is possible that as the definition of ASD has been expanded to include high-functioning children, a smaller percentage of children with ASD have intellectual disability.
7
Q
Communication disorders
A
- the most common comorbid disorder
- they can be mute, no functional verbal language
-The severity of these language problems is usually associated with children’s verbal intelligence; children with higher verbal IQs tend to show superior language skills, although they almost always display some deficits in the use of language during social interactions - pronoun reversal: using the wrong pronoun. Instead of saying I am hungry they might say You are hungry. They might refer to themselves in third person
- verbal communication is often one sided. They seem to be talking to others rather than talking with others. Some high-functioning children with ASD talk constantly. Their discussions are usually described as pedantic ramblings that exhaust their listeners. Often, these children do not seem to care whether anyone is listening to them at all.
8
Q
Abnormal Prosody
A
their tone or manner of speech is atypical or awkward. For example, some children with ASD speak mechanically. Other children speak with an unusual rhythm or intonation, using a singsong voice. Still others talk loudly or stress the wrong syllables when speaking.
9
Q
Behavioral and emotional disorders
A
- Children with ASD are more likely than their typically developing peers to experience other mental health problems
- most common co occurring disorder is ADHD, then anxiety, then OCD
10
Q
Medical and Physical conditions
A
- more likely to experience medical problems
- Approximately 70% of children with ASD experience gastrointestinal problems (e.g., acid reflux, constipation, nausea/vomiting)
- sleep diffitculties
- epilepsy, seizures are more likely to occur in children with ASD and intellectual learning disability than ASD alone
11
Q
Prevalence
A
- 1-2% have been diagnosed, not as common as other disorders
- more common in boys than in girls. 4 time more prevalent
- ASD is increasing. people are more aware of what ASD look like. the signs
- there is more media coverage and presence
- This disorder is more common among higher income families, higher SES because they have access to better medical, educational, and behavioral services for their children. more likely to advocate for child’s needs
- Prevalence is higher among non Latino whites
African American are more likely to have it than hispanics
12
Q
Boys vs. Girls- ASD
A
- older children with ASD, girls earn lower average IQ scores than boys and are more likely to have severe or profound deficits in intellectual functioning
-Younger children with ASD show that girls have greater problems with social communication , whereas boys display greater severity of restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped behavior than girls.
-Young girls with ASD are also more likely than boys to experience sleep and mood problems
-In general, boys and girls with ASD show more similarities than differences
13
Q
Age of onset
A
- around age 2, this can be when children start to speak, form sentences, and interact with others
- earliest point of development for a reliable detection is from12- 18 months
14
Q
Causes
A
- Biologically based neurodevelopment disorder
- Biologically based: genes
- neurodevelopment: the brain, how it’s functions and is formed
15
Q
Causes: Genetics- ASD
A
- ASD has a strong genetic component
- Roughly 50% of variance in children’s ASD signs and symptoms is attributable to genetic cause
- ASD runs in families, if a parent has one child that has it they are at risk for having another child with ASD. Their risk of having children with ASD increases with the number of children they have with ASD
- no one single gene that causes autism, it is multiple genes
- advanced maternal age (older parents) is associated with ASD
- older fathers are more likely to have children with ASD than younger men
- Men 50 years of age and older are more than twice as likely to have a child with ASD than men younger than 30
- grandpaternal age also increases children’s risk for ASD. If your father or your partner’s father was older when you were born your offspring may have elevated risk for ASD
16
Q
Brain abnormalities
A
- multiple brain regions may be involved
- rapid brain growth and synaptic density in infancy and early childhood, followed by a period of deterioration and a loss of neural connectivity in later childhood and adolescene
- three brain regions impacted: amygdala, the fusiform gyrus, and portions of the prefrontal cortex
- Frontal lobes: might impact executive functioning, theory of mind, amygdala, emotions, processing and reading emotions.
- lack of normal connectivity and communication across brain region
- social brain: critical to our functioning in social situations
17
Q
Synaptic density and neural connections
A
- unusual head growth, starting at 4 months
- by 12 months, the averaged head circumference of these children is typically one SD larger than their peers, then head growth tend to descelerate and become similar to that of other children
18
Q
growth dysregulation hypothesis
A
infants and young children later diagnosed with ASD show unusual maturation of the cortex, characterized by large head circumference, brain volume, and synaptic density. Whereas typically developing infants experience a period of rapid brain growth followed by synaptic pruning, infants later diagnosed with ASD show only rapid growth. Their brains may form too many neural connections, thus reducing the efficiency of brain activity. By late adolescence or early adulthood, however, many of these individuals show an abnormal decline and possible deterioration in neural connections
19
Q
Amygdala
A
- located in the limbic system, an area important to social and emotional functioning
- It becomes highly active when we watch other people’s social behaviors and attempt to understand the motives for their actions or emotional displays.
-people with ASD showed significant reductions in amygdala activity - Individuals with ASD often show reduced amygdala volume or neural density relative to healthy controls
20
Q
Right Fusion form
A
- help process human faces
- helps understand social behavior
-underside of the temporal lobe, near the occipital lobe
-When healthy adults are asked to view images of human faces, especially faces displaying emotions, they show strong activation of their right fusiform gyrus. In contrast, children and adolescents with ASD who are asked to process facial expressions do not show increased activation in this brain region - These findings indicate that people with ASD process facial information using parts of their brains that most people use to process information about objects. This abnormality in processing may help explain the difficulty that people with ASD have understanding others’ emotions and social behavior
- Underactivity of this brain region in people with ASD might impair their understanding of social situations and contribute to their social deficits
