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Set Your Location. There is no one type of autism, but many. Early intervention can change a life. First Concern to Action.
But some people need support to help them with certain things. Like everyone, autistic people have things they're good at as well as things they struggle with. Being autistic does not mean you can never make friends, have relationships or get a job. But you might need extra help with these things. Some autistic people need little or no support.
Others may need help from a parent or carer every day. Unlike some people with autism, people with Asperger's do not have a learning disability. But if you were diagnosed with it before, this will stay as your diagnosis.
It can affect people in the same family. How is ASD diagnosed? What causes ASD? What role do genes play? Do symptoms of autism change over time? How is autism treated? What research is being done? Where can I get more information?
Autism spectrum disorder ASD refers to a group of complex neurodevelopment disorders characterized by repetitive and characteristic patterns of behavior and difficulties with social communication and interaction. The symptoms are present from early childhood and affect daily functioning.
Some children and adults with ASD are fully able to perform all activities of daily living while others require substantial support to perform basic activities. A diagnosis of ASD includes an assessment of intellectual disability and language impairment.
ASD occurs in every racial and ethnic group, and across all socioeconomic levels. However, boys are significantly more likely to develop ASD than girls. Even as infants, children with ASD may seem different, especially when compared to other children their own age. They may become overly focused on certain objects, rarely make eye contact, and fail to engage in typical babbling with their parents.
In other cases, children may develop normally until the second or even third year of life, but then start to withdraw and become indifferent to social engagement. The severity of ASD can vary greatly and is based on the degree to which social communication, insistence of sameness of activities and surroundings, and repetitive patterns of behavior affect the daily functioning of the individual.
Social impairment and communication difficulties Many people with ASD find social interactions difficult. The mutual give-and-take nature of typical communication and interaction is often particularly challenging. Children with ASD may fail to respond to their names, avoid eye contact with other people, and only interact with others to achieve specific goals. Often children with ASD do not understand how to play or engage with other children and may prefer to be alone.
People with ASD may have very different verbal abilities ranging from no speech at all to speech that is fluent, but awkward and inappropriate. Some children with ASD may have delayed speech and language skills, may repeat phrases, and give unrelated answers to questions. In addition, people with ASD can have a hard time using and understanding non-verbal cues such as gestures, body language, or tone of voice.
For example, young children with ASD might not understand what it means to wave goodbye. People with ASD may also speak in flat, robot-like or a sing-song voice about a narrow range of favorite topics, with little regard for the interests of the person to whom they are speaking. Repetitive and characteristic behaviors Many children with ASD engage in repetitive movements or unusual behaviors such as flapping their arms, rocking from side to side, or twirling.
They may become preoccupied with parts of objects like the wheels on a toy truck. Children may also become obsessively interested in a particular topic such as airplanes or memorizing train schedules. Many people with ASD seem to thrive so much on routine that changes to the daily patterns of life — like an unexpected stop on the way home from school — can be very challenging. Some children may even get angry or have emotional outbursts, especially when placed in a new or overly stimulating environment.
Certain known genetic disorders are associated with an increased risk for autism, including Fragile X syndrome which causes intellectual disability and tuberous sclerosis which causes benign tumors to grow in the brain and other vital organs — each of which results from a mutation in a single, but different, gene.
Recently, researchers have discovered other genetic mutations in children diagnosed with autism, including some that have not yet been designated as named syndromes. While each of these disorders is rare, in aggregate, they may account for 20 percent or more of all autism cases. People with ASD also have a higher than average risk of having epilepsy. Children whose language skills regress early in life — before age 3 — appear to have a risk of developing epilepsy or seizure-like brain activity.
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