Autism

Symptoms #

• Deficits in social communication and interaction
  • avoids social contact
  • does not respond to name calling
  • difficulties with engagement and following social cues such as pointing, gaze
• Restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activity

Clinical Assessment #

Diagnosing ASD is a complex process that requires multiple perspectives, including:

• Developmental approach
• Multi-informant and multi-method approaches
• Assessment from multiple disciplines (psychiatry, psychology, neurology, language specialist)
• Initial screening by pediatricians including questionnaires
• Intellectual development tests

Typically, American children are diagnosed with ASD at around 4 years of age. In high-risk populations, diagnoses have been made as early as 18 months of age, with early signs being identified at 12 months.

Health Disparities #

Individuals with ASD have a shorter life expectancy (20-36 year difference). This is due to a number of factors such as biological complications and intellectual disability.

In addition, ASD outcomes are exacerbated by disadvantages created by ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or gender identity.

Etiology #

Dawson’s (2008) Model Dawson et al. (2005): Explores the pathway connecting dopamine reward system to neural processing of social cues. Increased activation of brain regions involved with social perception results in the development of more complex social behaviors, such as joint attention and imitation.

Autism is related to impairments in three domains of social attention:

• Social orientating: ability to orient to social stimuli in the environment
• Joint attention: ability to share attention on the same subject as another individual
• Attention to distress:

Risk Factors:

• Strong evidence for genetic influence: heritability factor is .64-.91
  • Many genetic pathways (single-gene, candidate gene, rare copy number variants)
• Advanced parental age
• Complications during pregnancy or birth
• Exposure to anti-epileptic drugs during pregnancy

Treatment #

Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA): Group of therapeutic methods that aim to improve social and cognitive skills for individuals with ASD