Question

7. What are the typical symptoms seen in ASD?

8. Discuss if there is evidence to support the notion that genetic factors play a role in ADHD.

9. Discuss the current thinking regarding the "paradoxical effect" of psychostimulant medication on children with ADHD.

Answer 1

1. Autism is a developmental disorder that involves a wide range of problematic behaviors including deficits in language and perceptual and motor development; defective reality testing; and an inability to function in social situations. Children with autism show varying degrees of impairments and capabilities.Typically, children with autism do not show any need for affection or contact with anyone, and they usually do not even seem to know or care who their parents are. Several studies, however, have questioned the traditional view that autistic children are emotionally flat. Instead, Sigman (1996) has characterized the seeming inability of children with autism to respond to others as a lack of social understanding—a deficit in the ability to attend to social cues from others. The child with autism is thought to have a “mind blindness,” an inability to take the attitude of others or to “see” things as others do. For example, a child with autism appears limited in the ability to understand where another person is pointing. Additionally, children with autism show deficits in attention and in locating and orienting to sounds in their environment.

Children with autism do not effectively learn by imitation. This dysfunction might explain their characteristic absence or severely limited use of speech. If speech is present, it is almost never used to communicate except in the most rudimentary fashion, such as by saying “yes” in answer to a question or by the use of echolalia—the parrot-like repetition of a few words. Self-stimulation is often characteristic of children with autism. It usually takes the form of such repetitive movements as head banging, spinning, and rocking, which may continue by the hour. Other bizarre repetitive behaviors are typical. Children with autism seem to actively arrange the environment on their own terms in an effort to exclude or limit variety and intervention from other people, preferring instead a limited and solitary routine. These children often show an active aversion to auditory stimuli, crying even at the sound of a parent’s voice. The pattern is not always consistent, however; children with autism may at one moment be severely agitated or panicked by a very soft sound and at another time be totally oblivious to a loud noise.

Compared with the performance of other groups of children on cognitive or intellectual tasks, children with autism often show marked impairment. For example, children with autism are significantly impaired on memory tasks when compared with both normal children and children with mental retardation. They show a particular deficit in representing mental states—that is, they appear to have deficits in social reasoning but can manipulate objects. Many children with autism become preoccupied with and form strong attachments to unusual objects such as rocks, light switches, or keys. In some instances, the object is so large or bizarre that merely carrying it around interferes with other activities. When their preoccupation with the object is disturbed—for example, by its removal or by attempts to substitute something in its place— or when anything familiar in the environment is altered even slightly, these children may have a violent temper tantrum or a crying spell that continues until the familiar situation is restored. Thus children with autism are often said to be “obsessed with the maintenance of sameness.