Autism - Description & Background

What is Autism? ››

What Causes Autism? ››

The History of Autism ››

The Triad of Impairments ››

The Continuum ››

Sensory Issues ››

Approaches

Approaches
General Approach
Good Rote Memory Skills
People with autism have excellent rote memory skills (the ability to remember things without giving any thought to the meaning). Examples of behaviour which show good rote memory skills include; recalling the dialogue of videos, books and films; echoing complete conversations perfectly; playing a tape recorder backwards and learning to sing all the songs both forward and backwards; reciting the number plates of all visitors cars; reciting the definition of every word beginning with ‘A’ from the Oxford Dictionary even though the person was unable to use any these words in sentences when communicating with others.

Attention Problems “Switching on” attention
People with autism have difficulty “switching on” their attention. This is more obvious when they are required to attend to things other than their natural interests. They may require more time to focus their attention.

Orienting attention
When people with autism take in information through one or more of their senses they may have difficulty working out where the information originated (eg. where the sound they hear is coming from).

Selecting what to attend to
People with autism have difficulty selectively attending to relevant details in their environment. Instead of scanning the whole environment to identify and focus on important details, the person with autism may focus on small details and be unaware of other things happening in the environment. Studies have shown that people with autism tend to be overselective and attend to small, minute details (referred to as “spotlight attending”, OR take in all the information present in one chunk without editing for relevance, (referred to as “chunk” style learning) OR take in nothing at all.

Shifting attention
People with autism take longer to shift attention ie. to disengage attention from what they are currently attending to, shift, then re-engage attention. They have more difficulty shifting attention from an auditory to a visual stimulus.

Sustaining attention
People with autism have trouble keeping their attention on something long enough to take in the necessary information, unless they are attending to their “narrow interest area”.

Sharing a focus of attention with others (Joint attention)
People with autism have difficulty sharing a focus of attention with other people.

Difficulty Learning Concepts, Categories and Classifications
The “spotlight” style of attending makes it difficult for people with autism to learn categories and classifications. To learn how and why things are grouped in categories, it is important to be able to work out how two or more things are similar or different. To do this a person must attend to the critical features of objects, events, or whatever is being compared. If a person with autism is attending to minute, insignificant details, it is difficult to notice overall similarities and differences.

Compartmentalised Chunk Learning
People with autism tend to learn information in chunks. They take information that occurs close in time in one go (simultaneously, as a whole) without editing the information for relevance and meaning. Often irrelevant information is ‘pulled’ into the learned chunk. This is because they are unable to sort out what are important versus irrelevant details. People with autism may expect the whole chunk that has occurred in the past to occur the same way again and again. This is related to the need for sameness that was first talked about by Kanner in 1943. If things do not happen the way they are supposed to (ie. according to the chunked sequence), people with autism may become confused and anxious.

Many children with autism do not learn language through the usual gradually expanding system of categories and rules. It appears that language may be learnt using the chunk learning style (echolalia). Echolalia, (the repetition or echoing of words said by others), is common in autism. Research and practical experience suggests that echolalia is used by children with autism to communicate, make sense of what others say, and learn functional language.

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