W9 - Autism ✅ Flashcards

1
Q

What is meant by neurodiversity?

A

refers to the variability of human nervous systems

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2
Q

What is the medical model of disability?

A
  • Focus on impairment as the cause of being unable to access goods/services or participate in society
  • Focuses on services to ‘fix’ their ‘problems’
  • Over-focusing on what the person cannot do instead of what they can do.
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3
Q

What are the features of the Social model of disability?

A
  • Preferred model
  • Created by disabled people
  • Differentiates between impairment and disability
  • Do not ‘have’ a disability but a disability is experienced
  • Seeks to remove barriers to allow disabled people to participate in society
  • Autism is a different ‘way-of-being’
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4
Q

What is the benefit in collaborations with the Autistic Community?

A
  • Acceptance of Autistic people
  • Research co-designed by autistic people has more impact (more validity)
  • Reducing stigma by using preferred terms and avoid ableist language
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5
Q

What is the diagnostic criteria for Autism?

A

Symptoms:
- Persistent difficulties in social communication and interaction
- Restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests, or activities
- Hyper- or hypo-sensitivity
- Symptoms must be present in the early developmental period

HOW to diagnose?
- standardized diagnostic interviews with person and/or caregivers
- observation of person in various settings (home, school, clinic)

Impact:
- symptoms cause clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of current functioning
- co-occuring diagnoses are common (e.g. ADHD, anxiety, depression)

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6
Q

What is the underlying biological mechanisms of autism

A

Brain scans:

  • Smaller subcortical volumes of the pallidum, putamen, amygdala and NAC
  • Increased cortical thickness in the frontal cortex and decreased thickness in the temporal cortex
  • No age-specific differences found

Genetics:

  • Significant rate of autism between monozygotic twins (60%) compared to dizygotic twins (5%)
  • Broader autism phenotype between siblings

Interactions between the environment and biological factors (genes, brain systems, cognition and behaviour)

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7
Q

What are the possible explanations for sex/gender difference between autistic people?

A

Estimate ratio of autistic males to females is 3:1

  1. Genetic difference:
    - sex chromosome, hormones
    - amount of rare copy number variants (CNVs)
  2. Underdiagnosis of autistic women and girls
    - different set of symptoms and behaviours for autistic females
    - autism being considered a “boy” disorder
  3. Camouflaging: higher level of camouflaging seen in autistic females -> affect misdiagnosis
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8
Q

What is meant by camouflaging & coping strategies?

A

Pressure to ‘fit in’ with neurotypical social communication

Three subscales:

  • Masking: hide autistic characteristics
  • Compensation: actively compensate for difficulties in social situations
  • Assimilation: trying to fit in with others in social situations
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9
Q

What are the criteria for a universal autism theory?

A

The universal theory must be:
1. Specific to ALL autistic people
2. Sensitive/universal to ALL behavioural features of autism
- difference in communication
- specific behaviours
- areas of interests

Attempt to explain/establish causal relationship to autism development

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10
Q

Limitations of creating a universal theory for autism?

A
  • Compared characteristics against “normative standards” by standardised tests
  • Narrow sample (WEIRD, university students, without co-occurring diagnoses)
  • Often not informed by the autistic community
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11
Q

What are the factors that contribute to difference in social communication in autistic people?

A
  1. Emotion recognition (Alexithymia)
  2. Cognitive empathy: tested using the Theory of Mind
  3. Communication: tested using Double Empathy problem
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12
Q

Are there difference in emotion recognition in autistic people?

A
  • No significant difference in brain activation for facial recognition
  • There is a sub-group of autistic people that perform worse in facial expression recognition
  • Higher levels of alexithymia (inability to aware and identify one’s feeling) in autistic people

=> increase in anxiety symptoms and clinical social features that cause difficulty in social processing in autistic people

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13
Q

Are there any difference in cognitive empathy in autistic people? (Theory of Mind)

A

No group difference in brain regions activation between non-autistic and autistic participants

Two possible reasons:
- Differences in current autistic feature profiles
- Earlier findings obtained samples that were smaller, more homogeneous, and had potentially different feature profiles

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14
Q

Difference in peer-to-peer transfer of information?

A
  • Difficulty in autistic communication are apparent only when interacting with non-autistic people and are alleviated when interacting with autistic people.
  • Selective difficulties occur when autistic and non-autistic people are sharing information
  • Significantly lower rapport within mixed groups
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