Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Some facts about Autism.

1. People with autism generally experience difficulty in three main areas:

1.1. Social interaction. This includes recognising and understanding other people’s feelings and managing their own. Not understanding how to interact with other people can make it hard to form friendships.

1.2. Social communication. This includes using and understanding verbal and non-verbal language, such as gestures, facial expressions and tone of voice.

1.3. Social imagination. This includes the ability to understand and predict other people’s intentions and behaviour and to imagine situations outside of their own routine. This may be accompanied by a narrow repetitive range of activities.

2. The exact cause of autism is still being investigated. However, research suggests that a combination of factors – genetic and environmental – may account for changes in brain development. Autism is not caused by a person’s upbringing, their social circumstances and is not the fault of the individual with the condition.

3. The first detailed description of a child we now know had autism was written in 1799.

4. People from all nationalities and cultural, religious and social backgrounds can have autism, although it appears to affect more men than women. It is a lifelong condition: children with autism grow up to become adults with autism.

5. It can be hard to create awareness of autism as people with the condition do not ‘look’ disabled: parents of children with autism often say that other people simply think their child is naughty; while adults often find that they are misunderstood.

6. At present, there is no ‘cure’ for autism. However, there is a range of interventions – methods of enabling learning and development – which people may find to be helpful.

For more details, please visit these links. Simple click on the title.