Asperger's Disintegrative Disorder Case Study

AUTISM

Diagnostic criteria for the PDD’s RE: the DSM-IV criteria: Be familiar with behaviors you might observe: Be able to provide specific examples
Childhood Autism:
There are qualitative impairments in social interaction and communication.
1. Impaired use of eye to eye gaze, facial expressions, inability to point out objects of interest and failure to develop peer relationships
2. Inability to sustain a conversation with others
3. Repetitive motor mannerisms and delays in imaginative play

Asperger’s Syndrome: 1. Impairments with eye to eye gazing, along w/ persistent preoccupation with parts of objects
2. No clinical delay in language, cognitive development or age appropriate self-help skills
3. Failure
to develop peer relationships

Retts Disorder:
1. Normal head circumference at birth but there is a deceleration of head growth between ages 5 and 48 months 2. Loss of previously acquired purposeful hand skills by 5 to 30 months (e.g. -handwashing) 3. Severed expressive AND receptive language development

Childhood Disintegrative Disorder:
1.
Typical development for the 1st 2 years after birth in both communication and social relationships
2. Loss of acquired skills before age 10 in the areas of expressive OR receptive language; bowel or bladder control; motor skills
3. Abnormalities in sustaining conversations; repetitive patterns of behavior; pretend play

How to discriminate the PDD’s from one another
PDD and atypical autism are distinguished from autism by age of onset, presence of language or cognitive delay, presence of co-morbid factors, and specific neurological features.
Autism: onset – prior to 3. Delay – may or may not have delay. Domains affected- Communication, Social, repetitive behaviors
CDD(regressive autism): Onset- typical dev. up to 2;loss of speech and at least one other skill. Delay- associated w/ MR. Severity- same as autism. Domains affected- Abnormalities in 2 of 3 domains of autism
Asperger syndrome: Onset- before or after 3 yrs. Delay- no delay in cognition or lang. Domains affected- Social reciprocity
PDD: Onset- May fail to meet autism onset criteria. Delay- may or may not have developmental delays. Domains affected- Social and either communication or repetitive behaviors or
both.

Support the statement “Autism is an urgent public health concern”
Prevalence: 1:150 with a cost of 3 million per person

Professional qualifications for screening & diagnosis of ASD’s
Individuals who are responsible for diagnosing ASD include:
 Neurologists
 Psychologists
 SLPs (with appropriate expertise)
 Special Educators
 Pediatricians (developmental pediatricians that specialize in child development)
Qualifications include:
 Specific documented ASD experience (graduate studies on child development, psychology=emphasis on developmental disabilities)
 Emphasis on developmental disabilities
 Specific setting related to ASD (clinically)
 Documented fellowship in accredited medical setting
 Special didactic & clinical …
The social-pragmatic view of language acquisition

Social-pragmatic approach to language acquisition: the focus is on both the structured social world into which the child is born and the child’s capacities for tuning into and participating in that structured social world.
 in this view, young children are not engaged in a reflective cognitive task in which they are attempting to make correct “mappings” of word to world based on adult “input” rather,
 they engaged in social interactions in which they are attempting to understand and interpret adult communicative intentions so as to make sense of the current situation.
 Children acquire linguistic symbols as an integral part of their social interactions which adults in much the same way that they learn many other cultural conventions (called; cultural learning) (mother wishes child to eat because she is holding them up to his mouth gesturing)