by Rosemary Letson

Created on: August 23, 2010   Last Updated: August 24, 2010

What is autism?

According to the Center for Autism & Related Disabilities (CARD), autism is a lifelong neurological disability that affects a person's ability to communicate, understand language, play and socially interact with others.  The first signs of autism usually appear as developmental delays before age three.   It is classified as a developmental disability because it interferes with the typical rate and patterns of childhood development.  There are diagnosis related to autism such as PDD-NOS (pervasive development disorder not otherwise specified), Asperger’s syndrome, and Rett’s syndrome that are included in the category of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). 

Furthermore, according to the Center of Disease Control (CDC), ASD is defined as a group of developmental disabilities that can cause significant social, communication and behavioral challenges and the CDC estimates that an average of one in 110 children in the United States have an ASD. For further information and statistics please click on http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html

What’s the difference between mild and severe?

Based on the book, Autism, the facts by Dr. Simon Baron –Cohen and Dr. Patrick Bolton, (2001), abnormal behavior in autism can vary from severe to mild.  They base the variance on three key factors:

Learning Disabilities

A child's development may be slower to emerge, their overall level of functioning may be quite limited, and their interests may be restricted while another child in the same spectrum may not be as severe.

Language Level

The severity of language problems in autism can also vary significantly.  While one child may be mute another child may have quite a lot of speech.

Age

As children with autism grow older, so the pattern of autism changes.  With age, some become more outgoing, and others develop speech, while others seem to make little progress.  However, according to Baron-Cohen and Bolton, substantial gains are usually seen in those children who do not have additional learning disabilities and/or possess well-developed speech. .

What are the signs and symptom'sof ASD?

CARD provides nine common characteristics of ASD.  However, it is imperative to remember that even though these are common characteristics of autism, no two persons with autism experience the world or behave in the same way.

Difficulty in using and understanding language

 Poorly developed social

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