Discuss the possible explanations of Autism. Refer to evidence in your answer.

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Discuss the possible explanations of Autism. Refer to evidence in your answer.

Autism as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical manual IV for mental disorders is referred to as a pervasive mental disorder, suggesting that such children show severe and extensive developmental deficits with disturbances in almost every functioning including relationships, thinking and language. The term autism stems from the Greek word ‘autos’ meaning ‘self’ and perhaps for this reason autism has been described as a ‘mental disorder characterised by self-orientation’.

There are three main theories as to what causes Autism, these theories consist of genetic theory where it is believed several different genes are responsible for autism. The ‘cold parenting’ hypothesis is where it is believed that autism stemmed as a result of innate disorder being aggravated by the behaviour of an unresponsive mother or refrigerator mother. The Cognitive theory, which is divided into ‘Theory of Mind ‘and’ Central Coherence, believes that sufferers of autism do not understand the world from the point of view of others and that they lack a ‘Theory of Mind’. Also it is suggested they lack central coherence, central coherence is the tendency to process information for its general meaning rather than rather for the specific meaning of each element.

Concordance studies are often used to determine the extent to which a condition is inherited and involve calculating the percentage likelihood of someone suffering form a disorder if they have a relative who is also a sufferer. Folstein and Piven (1991) reported a concordance rate for autism of between 2 and 3% for siblings, which is much higher than the frequency of autism in the general population. This indicates a substantial genetic component. However the strongest evidence for genetic factors in autism come from twin studies by Folstein and Piven (1991), some of which indicate the concordance rate for monozygotic (identical) twins is as high as 96%, with a concordance rate for dizygotic (fraternal or non identical) twins similar to that of ordinary siblings. Although concordance rates vary from study to study, Rutter (1999) is convinced that autism has a strong genetic component and that several different genes may be involved.

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Therefore genetics have a strong link between itself and the cause of autism.

The ‘cold parenting’ hypothesis was originally proposed by Kanner (1943), suggested that what might be an innate disorder in the child would be aggravated by the behaviour of a cold unresponsive mother or refrigerator mother. In 1967 Bettleheim was partially successfully I treating some cases of autism as the Orthogenic School of the University of Chicago. Since the treatment, which seemed to alleviate some of the problems in autistic children revolved around a programme of warm acceptance and reinforcement, it seemed possible that the mother’s cold ...

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