A Few Facts About Autism You May Not Know
Last updated on April 15th, 2015 at 06:06 pm
Editor’s Note: This is National Autism Awareness Month in the US and yesterday, April 2nd, was the 8th annual World Autism Awareness Day. We hope this article will help improve both awareness and understanding of this challenging and increasingly common condition.
Autism is a serious and lifelong developmental disability. On its own, autism is not a learning disability or a mental health problem.
However, some people with autism have an accompanying learning disability, learning difficulty or mental health problem.
Autism is a spectrum condition. This means that while all people with autism share certain difficulties, the condition affects each person differently.
One of the best known forms of autism is Asperger syndrome. People with the condition are often of average or above-average intelligence. They have fewer speech problems than people with other types of autism, but may find it difficult to understand and process language.
While some people with autism live independent lives, others may need a lifetime of specialist support. Autism can have a profound and sometimes devastating effect on individuals and families. However, getting the right support makes a substantial difference to the person who is diagnosed and their loved ones.
What Causes Autism?
There are over half a million people with autism in the UK – around 1 in every 100 people (In the US, more than 3.5 million people have autism, with 1 in 68 children being diagnosed*). If you include their families, autism touches the lives of over two million people each day.
The causes of autism are still being investigated. According to the National Autistic Society (NAS), there is strong evidence to suggest that autism can be caused by a variety of environmental or neurological factors, all of which affect brain development. There is also evidence to suggest that genetic factors are responsible for some forms of autism.
Read more about what may cause autism.
What we do know is that autism is not caused by a person’s upbringing and is not the fault of those with the condition.
There is no cure for autism. However, there are numerous interventions (learning and development techniques) that can help.
How Does Autism Affect People?
Autism affects the way a person communicates with, and relates to, other people. It also affects how they make sense of the world around them.
Everyday life for people with autism can be confusing, frightening and lack meaning. They often find understanding and communicating with others particularly difficult, which can leave them feeling isolated.
People with autism may also experience some form of sensory sensitivity or a lack of sensitivity – for example, to sound, touch, taste, smell, lights or colour.
The Triad of Impairments
Those with the condition share three main areas of difficulty, which are sometimes called the triad of impairments.
Difficulty with Social Communication
People with autism have difficulty using and understanding verbal and non-verbal language, such as gestures, facial expressions and tone of voice, as well as jokes and sarcasm. Some might not speak, or have fairly limited speech. They may understand what people say to them but prefer to use alternative forms of communication, such as sign language.
Difficulty with Social Interaction
Those with the condition have difficulty recognising and understanding people’s feelings and managing their own, They may, for example, stand too close to another person, prefer to be alone, behave inappropriately and may not seek comfort from another person. This can make it hard for those with the condition to make friends.
Difficulty with Social Imagination
People with autism have difficulty understanding and predicting other people’s intentions and behaviour, and imagining situations that are outside their own routine. This can mean they carry out a narrow, repetitive range of activities. A lack of social imagination should not be confused with lack of imagination. Many people with autism are very creative.
Other Related Characteristics of Autism
Love of Routines
The world can seem an unpredictable and confusing place to people with autism, which is why they often feel more comfortable with a fixed daily routine, so that they know what’s going to happen each day.
Sensory Sensitivity
People with autism may experience sensory sensitivity in one or more of the five senses – including sounds, sights and smells – which they can find stressful. A person’s senses are either intensified (hypersensitive) or lack sensitivity (hyposensitive). For more information on sensory sensitivity in autism, visit the NAS website.
Special Interests
Many people with autism have intense special interests, often from a young age. These can be anything, from art or music to trains and computers.
Learning Disabilities
People with autism may have learning disabilities that can affect all aspects of their life, from studying in school to learning how to wash themselves or make a meal.
Where Can I Get More Information?
In 2012, the NAS commissioned the largest ever survey into autism, to show what life is like in the UK for people affected by the condition. The survey looked at a wide variety of areas, from diagnosis and school life to employment and independent living. The results can be downloaded here, alongside personal stories from those living with autism.
For more information on autism, including getting a diagnosis and stories from people affected by the condition, read our advice on Living with autism.
You can also search for sources of autism help and support in your area.
Editor’s Note: * US statistics from the Autism Society.
Autism information and resources for the US can be found from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Autism Society, and Autism Speaks.
From www.nhs.uk
Be Sensory Friendly at Home (the Movie) This Saturday
Last updated on April 1st, 2015 at 10:28 am
Once a month, AMC Entertainment (AMC) and the Autism Society have teamed up to bring families affected by autism and with other special needs “Sensory Friendly Movie Screenings” – a wonderful opportunity to enjoy their favorite “family-friendly” films in a safe and accepting environment.
The movie auditoriums will have their lights turned up and the sound turned down. Families will be able to bring in snacks to match their child’s dietary needs (i.e. gluten-free, casein-free, etc.), there are no advertisements or previews before the movie and it’s totally acceptable to get up and dance, walk, shout, talk to each other…and even sing – in other words, AMC’s “Silence is Golden®” policy will not be enforced during movie screenings unless the safety of the audience is questioned.
Does it make a difference? Absolutely! Imagine …no need to shhhhh your child. No angry stares from other movie goers. Many parents think twice before bringing a child to a movie theater. Add to that your child’s special needs and it can easily become cause for parental panic. But on this one day a month, for this one screening, everyone is there to relax and have a good time, everyone expects to be surrounded by kids – with and without special needs – and the movie theater policy becomes “Tolerance is Golden“.
This Saturday March 28th, at 10am local time, the Autism Society’s “Sensory Friendly Movie Screenings” program will be showing Home. Tickets are $4 to $6 depending on the location. To find a theatre near you, here is a list of AMC theatres nationwide participating in this fabulous program (note: to access full list, please scroll to the bottom of the page).
Coming April 18th: Underdogs
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Editor’s note: Although Home has been chosen by the Autism Society as this month’s Sensory Friendly screening, we do want parents to know that it is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America for mild action and some rude humor. As always, please check the IMDB Parents Guide for a more detailed description of this film to determine if it is right for you and your child.
The SpongeBob Movie is Sensory Friendly this Saturday!
Last updated on March 24th, 2015 at 10:26 pm
Once a month, AMC Entertainment (AMC) and the Autism Society have teamed up to bring families affected by autism and with other special needs “Sensory Friendly Movie Screenings” – a wonderful opportunity to enjoy their favorite “family-friendly” films in a safe and accepting environment.
The movie auditoriums will have their lights turned up and the sound turned down. Families will be able to bring in snacks to match their child’s dietary needs (i.e. gluten-free, casein-free, etc.), there are no advertisements or previews before the movie and it’s totally acceptable to get up and dance, walk, shout, talk to each other…and even sing – in other words, AMC’s “Silence is Golden®” policy will not be enforced during movie screenings unless the safety of the audience is questioned.
Does it make a difference? Absolutely! Imagine …no need to shhhhh your child. No angry stares from other movie goers. Many parents think twice before bringing a child to a movie theater. Add to that your child’s special needs and it can easily become cause for parental panic. But on this one day a month, for this one screening, everyone is there to relax and have a good time, everyone expects to be surrounded by kids – with and without special needs – and the movie theater policy becomes “Tolerance is Golden“.
On Valentine’s Day, Saturday February 14th, at 10am local time, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water will be screened as part of the Autism Society “Sensory Friendly Movie Screenings” program. Tickets are $4 to $6 depending on the location. To find a theatre near you, here is a list of AMC theatres nationwide participating in this fabulous program (note: to access full list, please scroll to the bottom of the page).
Coming March 28th: Home
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Editor’s note: Although The SpongeBob Movie has been chosen by the Autism Society as this month’s Sensory Friendly screening, we do want parents to know that it is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America for mild action and rude humor. As always, please check the IMDB Parents Guide for a more detailed description of this film to determine if it is right for you and your child.
Saturday, AMC Sensory Friendly Films is Showing Paddington
Last updated on January 28th, 2015 at 11:40 am
Once a month, AMC Entertainment (AMC) and the Autism Society have teamed up to bring families affected by autism and with other special needs “Sensory Friendly Movie Screenings” – a wonderful opportunity to enjoy their favorite “family-friendly” films in a safe and accepting environment.
The movie auditoriums will have their lights turned up and the sound turned down. Families will be able to bring in snacks to match their child’s dietary needs (i.e. gluten-free, casein-free, etc.), there are no advertisements or previews before the movie and it’s totally acceptable to get up and dance, walk, shout, talk to each other…and even sing – in other words, AMC’s “Silence is Golden®” policy will not be enforced during movie screenings unless the safety of the audience is questioned.
Does it make a difference? Absolutely! Imagine …no need to shhhhh your child. No angry stares from other movie goers. Many parents think twice before bringing a child to a movie theater. Add to that your child’s special needs and it can easily become cause for parental panic. But on this one day a month, for this one screening, everyone is there to relax and have a good time, everyone expects to be surrounded by kids – with and without special needs – and the movie theater policy becomes “Tolerance is Golden“.
On Saturday January 24th, at 10am local time, Paddington will be screened as part of the Autism Society “Sensory Friendly Movie Screenings” program. Tickets are $4 to $6 depending on the location. To find a theatre near you, here is a list of AMC theatres nationwide participating in this fabulous program (note: to access full list, please scroll to the bottom of the page). The movie is getting great reviews and my son and I really enjoyed it!
Coming February 14th: Spongebob Square Pants: Sponge Out of Water
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Editor’s note: Although Paddington has been chosen by the Autism Society as this month’s Sensory Friendly screening, we do want parents to know that it is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America for mild action and rude humor. As always, please check the IMDB Parent’s Guide for a more detailed description of this film to determine if it is right for you and your child.
Study Suggests it May be Harder to Detect Autism in Girls
Last updated on December 31st, 2014 at 10:23 am
“Thousands of girls may have autism that has never been diagnosed because they cover-up the signs so well,” the Mail Online reports.
The headline is prompted by a study focusing on one of the key symptoms of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD): a failure to recognise the emotional states of others.
Researchers wanted to see if there was a gender difference associated with this symptom.
Children were assessed as having ASD-like traits if they scored highly on a well-validated checklist assessing social reciprocity (responding to others’ emotional states) and other verbal and nonverbal social traits.
The children were also given two tests to assess how well they could recognise emotion. The first was a test of how well they could distinguish emotions from photos of faces of other children expressing emotion such as happiness of fear.
The second test was more subtle. They were shown an animation of a triangle and a circle animated in such a way as to convey emotions; such as a jaunty bouncing to convey happiness or a slow slouching movement to convey sadness.
This test, known as the Emotional Triangles Task, is designed to assess the ability to detect recognise emotion from movement (a real-world equivalent would be trying to judge somebody’s likely mood by the way they are walking).
Researchers found that girls with ASD-like traits could recognise emotion from photos of faces as well as girls without ASD-like traits. However boys with ASD-like traits performed worse than boys without ASD-like traits on this test.
But both girls and boys with ASD-like traits struggled with the Emotional Triangles Task.
The concern now is that girls with ASD may be going misdiagnosed and are not receiving the support they need. This finding may have implications on how ASD is diagnosed in girls.
Where did the story come from?
The study was carried out by researchers from University College London and was funded by the National Institute of Health research and Wellchild, a UK charity for sick children.
The study was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
This story was covered by the Mail Online. The majority of the research was well-reported. Although it should be noted that the assertion that untreated girls with autism may be prone to eating disorders and depression in later life was based on a quote from the National Autistic Society.
Long-term outcomes of the participants were not assessed by the study.
What kind of research was this?
This was a cross-sectional study that aimed to investigate the potential association between autistic-type traits and emotion recognition, and whether this differs in boys and girls. This is the ideal study design to investigate this question.
What did the research involve?
The researchers used data from 3,666 children participating in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC); an on-going cohort study of children and parents.
The children were assessed using the Diagnostic Analysis of Non-Verbal Accuracy (DANVA) – the facial recognition test at 8.5 years of age and by the Emotional Triangles Task at 13.5 years.
The parents had also returned the results of the Social Communication Disorders Checklist (SCDC), a well-validated tool designed to detect for autistic-like social communication deficits at 13.5 years of age.
The SCDC measures social reciprocity, for example responding positively to positive actions such as kindness, and other verbal/nonverbal social traits.
A higher SCDC score is an indication of more deficits in social communication, and a score of nine or above is predictive of ASD. DANVA included a test assessing facial emotion recognition, by showing photographs of children expressing happiness, sadness, anger, or fear.
The Emotional Triangles Task assessed emotion recognition from the movement of objects, in this case a triangle and a circle moving around a screen during five-second animations.
The researchers compared performance on the DANVA and the Emotional Triangles task between children who scored higher or lower on the social communication disorders checklist. They then analysed boys and girls separately.
What were the basic results?
Children who scored nine or more on the SCDC had higher odds of:
- Making at least seven errors in facial emotion recognition (all faces)
- Making at least three errors in facial emotion recognition when shown ‘high-intensity’ faces
- Making at least five errors in facial emotion recognition when shown ‘low-intensity’ faces
- Making at least three errors in facial emotion recognition when shown fearful faces
- Making a least two errors in facial emotion recognition when shown sad faces
- Misattributing faces as happy at least four times
However, when boys and girls were analysed separately, it was found that girls scoring nine or more on the SCDC were not at increased odds of making any type of error in facial emotion recognition than girls who scored less than nine.
However, boys who scored nine or more on the SCDC had higher odds of making errors in the recognition of emotion in all types of faces compared to boys who had scores of less than nine. They also had higher odds of misattributing faces as happy.
Children with high SCDC scores performed worse on the Emotional Triangles Task, where they had to recognise emotions from the movement of objects.
Higher SCDC scores were associated with poorer emotion recognition in the happy and sad conditions. When boys and girls were analysed separately it was found that girls with high SCDC scores had poorer emotion recognition in the happy and sad conditions than girls with low scores. Boys with high SCDC scores had poor emotion recognition in the happy condition.
How did the researchers interpret the results?
The researchers conclude that “autistic-like social communication difficulties were associated with poorer recognition of emotion from social motion cures in both genders, but were associated with poorer facial emotion recognition in boys only”.
They speculate that this might be because girls learn to compensate for facial emotion recognition difficulties and it is this speculation that caught the media’s attention.
They go on to say that “the implications of this are far reaching with regard to the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders in females, suggesting that more subtle assessment may be required to identify those individuals with difficulties”.
Conclusion
This was a large, interesting and useful study. It suggests that both boys and girls with defects in social communication skills suggestive of ASD have difficulties in emotion recognition from social motion, tested using the Emotional Triangles Task.
However, only boys with ASD-like social communication deficits have difficulties in recognising emotion from faces – girls with ASD-like traits perform as well as girls without ASD-like traits on this task.
This suggests that there may be differences in the characteristic traits associated with ASD between boys and girls, and implies that the criteria used to diagnose ASD may need to be gender-specific.
This study has one main strength in that it used data from a large number of children. However, the authors point out that it also has limitations, including that the group of children studied (from Avon, England) have been found not to be representative of the UK child population as whole.
So it is not known whether the findings are applicable to other groups across the country. Unfortunately, the study doesn’t specify how the children living in Avon were different from the general UK population but one might speculate there may be differences in ethnic diversity or socioeconomic background in this area, compared to the UK average.
They also point out that fewer girls than boys scored above the threshold of nine on the SCDC.
This may mean that the numbers of girls with scores above nine wasn’t big enough to detect a significant difference in facial emotion recognition, rather than there not being one.
It should also be noted that this study looked at autistic-type traits, but did not confirm a diagnosis of ASD.
Further research will be required to confirm the findings of the study, and to investigate if, how or why, girls might be able to compensate for facial emotion recognition difficulties.
Analysis by Bazian. Edited NHS Choices. Follow Behind the Headlines on Twitter.
Summary
“Thousands of girls may have autism that has never been diagnosed because they cover-up the signs so well,” the Mail Online reports. The headline is prompted by a study focusing on one of the key symptoms of autistic spectrum disorder.
Links to Headlines
- Thousands of girls may have undiagnosed autism because they can hide the signs better than boys. Mail Online, November 14 2013
Links to Science
- Kothari R, Skuse D, Wakefield J, Micali N. Gender Differences in the Relationship Between Social Communication and Emotion Recognition. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. Published online August 22 2013
From www.nhs.uk
Saturday, AMC Sensory Friendly Films is Showing BIG HERO 6
Last updated on November 19th, 2014 at 10:45 am
Once a month, AMC Entertainment (AMC) and the Autism Society have teamed up to bring families affected by autism and with other special needs ”Sensory Friendly Movie Screenings“ – a wonderful opportunity to enjoy their favorite “family-friendly” films in a safe and accepting environment.
The movie auditoriums will have their lights turned up and the sound turned down. Families will be able to bring in snacks to match their child’s dietary needs (i.e. gluten-free, casein-free, etc.), there are no advertisements or previews before the movie and it’s totally acceptable to get up and dance, walk, shout, talk to each other…and even sing – in other words, AMC’s “Silence is Golden®” policy will not be enforced during movie screenings unless the safety of the audience is questioned.
Does it make a difference? Absolutely! Imagine …no need to shhhhh your child. No angry stares from other movie goers. Many parents think twice before bringing a child to a movie theater. Add to that your child’s special needs and it can easily become cause for parental
panic. But on this one day a month, for this one screening, everyone is there to relax and have a good time, everyone expects to be surrounded by kids – with and without special needs – and the movie theater policy becomes “Tolerance is Golden“.
On Saturday November 15th at 10am local time, Big Hero 6 will be screened as part of the Autism Society “Sensory Friendly Movie Screenings” program. Tickets are $4 to $6 depending on the location. To find a theatre near you, here is a list of AMC theatres nationwide participating in this fabulous program (note: to access full list, please scroll to the bottom of the page).
Coming December 5th: Penguins of Madagascar
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Editor’s note: Although Big Hero 6 has been chosen by the Autism Society as this month’s Sensory Friendly screening, we do want parents to know that it is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America for action and peril, some rude humor, and thematic elements. As always, please check the IMDB Parent’s Guide for a more detailed description of this film to determine if it is right for you and your child.
