Autism in Society

Autism in adolescence starts as early as age two, and early signs will become more severe as children continue into elementary school. When a child goes to a psychiatrist, they will work on social development. These adolescence struggle when attempting to sympathize with others pain. For example, my brother has Asperger's and when I have a bone graph done on my hand, he could not stop touching my hand. He needed constant reminders to not touch and remind him of when he was hurt and tell him it feels similar in that aspect.

Adolescence with special needs have a hard picking up on social cues such as someone would look at you to stop talking, or be around the bush. You have to tell them exactly how you are feeling. Following the social aspect, the therapist will then work on aggression. When children who are on the spectrum have a hard time projecting how they are feeling they tend to get aggressive or angry.

Before children reach thirty months of age according to Kanner autistic children will struggle developmentally with language and showing how they feel, this will hurt their chances to form connections with children on the same age as well as other. They will typically have obsessions over particular aspects of life. My brother who is on the spectrum has an obsession with video games, in particular ones with fighting. However, part of his autism is also repeating the same motions so he will repeat his ‘ninja moves’ multiple times every hour.

A multitude of tests were done by Rutter in 1970 whose results showed a normal one and a half percent of the individuals in his study achieved average functioning of children in their own age group. Thirty-five percent had a good functioning, but the remaining amount were marked to have severe disabilities and were placed in mental institutions. Following these statistics, a number of psychologists followed in conducting their own studies all of which were found be correlating with their results. Studies were conducted providing evidence for children of the age four and younger without a disability learn better from their everyday environment.

As years progressed testing individuals on the autism spectrum continued to be the top priority of those in the medical field at Stanford University. They continued to experiment with how the children succeeded with doing daily activities on their own. This consists of items such as hygiene, followed by speech.

While this article states that studies conducted suggested people on the autism spectrum are less intellectual than average individuals. They only tested them on daily activities while out of their natural surroundings, which we have now known to be a bad thing. They do not adjust well in different environments until it becomes one of their new social norms. As far as language goes, it suggests they are less intelligent, which once again we now know children have trouble with social aspects. While pursuing a degree to become of Pediatric Psychiatrist I have come to learn that a significant amount of people on the spectrum have come to work for major government programs such as NASA.

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