Autism Basics

(Continuation of Last One)

Characteristic of Autism :

Severe delays in language development: Language develops too slowly if develops at all, and they have peculiar speech patterns like the unorganized use of words to understand its meaning or use of unusual metaphors or in a monotone voice. About 40% of children with autism do not talk at all, some have echolalia – the repeated words might be said right way or at a later time.

Severe delays in understanding social relationships: The child with autism often avoid eye contact, resists being picked up and seems to time out the world around them resulting lack of cooperative play with peers-a lack of ability to develop friendship and to understand others’ feelings.

Inconsistant pattern of sensory responses: the child with autism some time many appear to be deaf and fail to respond any word or other sounds, sometimes they are extremely distressed by the everyday sound of domestic appliances, even cry of pets. In fine, may show apparent insensitively or many overreact to the same cause.

Uneven pattern of intellectual functioning: Child with autism may do some work like drawing, music, computation in math etc quite well in relation to overall functioning. Very often the child with autism has varying degrees of mental retardation this combination of intellectual variation makes autism perplexing. 

---- taken from an article of K. S. Adhikaree, Ex Asstt. Commissioner