Thetownend.com

Just caught the end of a documentary about Autism. Can anyone explain to me what causes this illness? I am guessing that it is some kind of brain disorder?

Yep, sufferers are born with it, and cannot be cured unfortunately.

My mum used to work with autistic children, and it is a very frustrating disability for the sufferers.

Has anybody read the curious incident of the dog in the night time? It's about a boy with aspeger's syndrome. Thought it was extremely well written.

Donnie Darko, anyone?

One of my favourite books (despite the stuff about Swindon)

What's he got to do with anything?

i thoght it was a bit boring to be honest as i also thought was donnie darko too

Can I be a complete ignoramus and ask what aspeger's syndrome is? :oops:

I've bought it, but I'm saving it for (hopefully) a week in my mate's parent's new house in the South of France. 8)

It is a the syndrome that some autistic people suffer from.  They are usually very very intelligent.

He's autistic, you mong.

When are we told Donnie is Autistic?  I may have just missed it.

I thought he was schizophrenic you mong

schizoprenic paranoid I think.

Quite.

I dont know a person who hasnt read the mysterious bla bla bla. Its quality. Who would have thought a book about a spaz would be interesting

Mickey got banned for less than that

Stop stirring Dave.

There's no definitive answer to the cure. Because it can't be diagnosed until the child is around 3 or 4 it is impossible to say whether they are born with it or get it in that period between birth and diagnosis. Here's something from my revision notes:

Causes

Family and Environmental

Bettleheim: Argued that at a critical time in the child’s early life parents mistreated the child by not loving him or her. Several researchers have reported that the parents of autistic children were cold, distant, insensitive and highly intellectual. The child finds that their actions have little impact on unresponsive parents and that their own efforts to influence the world are no use.

Evaluation: Used a limited sample and based his work on the use of selective information. Overlooked families who had other non-autistic children. Raazan found that parents of children with autism were warmer and more sociable in comparison to other parents. They need support and not condemnation.

Social Learning Theory

Ferster: Claimed that behaviour was controlled by its consequences and that praise and love are powerful secondary reinforcers. The behaviour of children with autism is a result of inadequate reinforcers because the children are neglected.

Evaluation: Used a limited sample and based his work on the use of selective information. Overlooked families who had other non-autistic children.

Cognitive Approaches

Theory of Mind: All autistic children have mind-blindness. They do not understand mental states and how they govern behaviour. There is evidence to suggest that people suffering from autism cannot infer what other people are thinking this can be demonstrated by the Sally-Anne Test.

Baron-Cohen: Sally-Anne – found that most 4 year olds gave the correct answer, but only 20% of the children with autism answered correctly.

Happe: This may be due to damage to the right hemisphere of the brain.

Evaluation: It doesn’t explain all the aspects of the condition, e.g. savants. A savant is a person with unusual gifts such as playing a tune after hearing it.

Central Coherence Deficits: People with autism process information differently to other people. Central coherence is the ability to process information by getting an overall or global view. We use context to aid our understanding (Frith, 1989).

Hermelin and O’Conner: Normal people remember sentences better than unrelated strings of words but people with autism perform equally well on both tasks, suggesting that they cannot use meaning or context.

Biological Basis

Studies by Frisk, Briskman and Happe indicate that in families with autistic children, the fathers in particular were better at tasks requiring focusing on individual detail than the fathers whose sons were not suffering from autism, suggesting a possible genetic link. Also, there is a high concordance rate between monozygotic twins.