A Report on Autism

Within this assignment I am going to look at the disorder Autism. I will look at the disability itself, how it is assessed and how those in education are affected by it. I will look at how the disorder affects one person in particular and the how the person with the condition feels themselves.

According to Howlin “Autism is a life long, often devastating disorder that profoundly affects almost every aspect of an individuals functioning” (Howlin, 2003, pg 1). Those who have Autism are seen as displaying fixed patterns of routine behaviour by grouping things together, they may also have poor social interaction and communication skills. Along the side of autism is Aspergers Syndrome, there is no direct difference from aspergers and autism, Aspergers is seen to be the milder of the two conditions. Because autism is not a physical disablement it makes the disorder harder to create an understanding of the condition and therefore create awareness, yet it affects over 500,000 families within the UK (). According to the National Autistic Society, Aspergers Syndrome is “a condition that affects the way a person communicates and relates to others” (). Those with Autism also tend to have other learning difficulties, but most tend share a problem of making sense of the world that they live in, they tend to take things literally and at face value, and have to be told and explained constantly about what things are and what they mean. There are three main areas that children with autism are affected by:

. Social interaction: have problems with strangers and gaining eye contact with these people.

. Social Communication: they have problems in understanding peoples facial expressions when explaining things, and the tone of voice used in explanations. They also have problems with non-verbal and verbal communication in that they have difficulty in distinguishing between the meanings behind them and gestures which maybe used in non-verbal communication.

. Imagination: have problems in imagining the ideas that are made to them and making things for themselves, and the imaginative ideas that they do have is often used repeatedly over and over again, this usually constitutes to three for which they are prone to do.

There are no direct causes for autism but it has been found that genetic factors play a part in abnormalities in brain development, which may occur during pregnancy, birth or shortly after. The earlier a child is diagnosed as having autism the better as they can get the help and the support that they need. According Michele Zapella the earlier a child is diagnosis and there is some kind of intervention as it can help the child and the family, and also help any services which the child is in contact or may come into contact with. Zapella also says that early intervention also proves to have a better outcome on the Childs life. Most children are diagnosed by the age of two or three. As there is no direct cure for the disorder there are many different types of intervention. No one approach is found to help children, as there are varying different approaches, some are totally rigid and some are reasonably flexible. Which approach is used can be seen as how the child is diagnosed this can have major affects on the child and the family setting in which they live. The professional giving the diagnosis has to be careful as a wrong diagnosis can have detrimental affects on all those concerned. The professional will collect together an understanding from the child and the family in which they live to before a child is ‘labelled’. Once a child has been diagnosed treatments may be given, pharmalogical methods such as steroids have been in used in treating certain aspects of autism. Bishop (1985) (cited in Richer & Coates, pg102, 2001) says that it can successfully remove the autistic behaviours that a child may have and can also remove any language defects which they may have.

Bowlby and Ainsworth developed the theory of Attachment and they say that a bond is formed between mother and baby and that it can have affects later on in life social and cognitively, if a bond is not strong in an infants life then it can have affects off forming relationships in later life, yet children with autism form strong attachment bonds with parents when they are infants and have problems with social and cognitive problems in forming relationships as they become toddlers and young children and abilities with cognition such as maths and language.

According to Richer and Coates ...