There is a significant difference in the incidence of the disease between men and women, and the ratio of male and female prevalence in China is 6-9: 1.
Basic characteristics of autism
Generally speaking, children with autism will have the following three basic characteristics before they are three years old:
(1) Social development:
Not interested in external things, unaware of the existence of others;
Lack of eye contact with people, unable to actively communicate, share or participate in activities;
In terms of groups, imitation ability is weak, social skills are not mastered, and cooperation is lacking;
Imagination is weak, and symbolic game activities are rarely carried out through toys.
(2) communication:
Language development is slow and has obstacles, and the content, speed and tone of speech are abnormal;
There are different degrees of difficulties in language understanding and nonverbal communication;
May lack the ability of oral communication.
(3) behavior:
In daily life, adhere to certain methods and procedures, refuse to change habits and routines, and constantly repeat some actions;
Narrow interest, will be extremely involved in some objects, or be particularly interested in some parts of objects or some shapes of objects.
In addition, autistic children may also have the following related characteristics:
(1) perception mode:
Be restless or react strongly to certain sounds, colors, food or light;
The response to cold, heat and pain is very weak, so there is a lack of vigilance and appropriate response to dangerous behavior;
I will constantly turn my body or explore things in unusual ways and indulge myself in some kind of sensory stimulation.
(2) development:
About 30% have normal mental development, and 70% have mental retardation or IQ below 70.
The development of abilities in all aspects is uneven, and the development process is different from that of ordinary children.
(3) Emotion and behavior:
Because of communication difficulties, they can't adapt to changes, so they are more likely to be stimulated by emotional or environmental factors and show impulsive or harmful behaviors.
(4) Living habits:
Will resist a certain taste, color or food that has never been eaten, thus forming a serious partial eclipse behavior;
It will be difficult to sleep.
(5) Advantages and interests:
Some patients may have abnormal memory;
There may be particularly outstanding performance in personal interests and skills.
(6) Social aspects:
I seldom make eye contact with others, and I don't pay attention to other people's expressions and emotional changes. It is even more difficult to infer others' thoughts, wishes and intentions from their words and deeds or to understand others' feelings.
Sometimes there are inappropriate emotional expressions and social behaviors, such as laughing when others are unhappy, saying inappropriate things on some occasions, or not sharing happiness with others.
The main symptoms of autism
1. Social barriers are generally characterized by lack of communication or communication skills with others and lack of safe attachment to parents.
2. Language communication barriers Language development is backward, or language retrogression occurs after normal language development, or language lacks communication.
3. Repeat rigid behavior.
4. About 70% autistic children are mentally retarded, but these children may have strong abilities in some aspects, of which 20% are in the normal range and about 10% are extraordinary. Most of them have a good memory, especially in mechanical memory.
5. Sensory disorders are manifested as insensitivity to pain, special fear or preference for certain sounds or images.
6. Other common behaviors include hyperactivity, distraction, tantrums, attacks and self-injuries. This behavior may be related to parents' more use of beating, scolding or punishment in education.
Types of autism
1. No language: usually considered as hearing problems or aphasia.
2. Instant parody: The changeable parody is considered as the communication intention of autistic children, while the rigid parody mostly has no communication intention.
3. Procrastination: It is also communicative or non-communicative to repeat certain words, idioms, sentences, whole poems or songs endlessly after a period of time, which is usually related to situations and pressures.
4. Speak without emotion: I'm just talking to you, not talking to you, and I don't have the characteristics of asking and answering questions and coming and going freely when ordinary people talk.
5. Unable to master the tone and volume: When speaking, it is very mechanized like a puppet, and it is impossible to express emotions or feelings through the tone, rhythm and cadence of the voice. Different volumes cannot be used for different situations.
6. The meaning of a word can't be changed: for example, school and correction can't distinguish its pronunciation.
7. Pronoun inversion: pronouns such as "you", "I" and "he" are confused.
8. Unclear concepts of affirmation and negation: "No" is often used and "Yes" or "Good" is rarely used.
9. Immature grammatical structure: He can use his own language, and usually only people who have frequent contact with him understand the hidden meaning in his language.
10. Seldom ask questions: They seldom ask questions except compulsion.
1 1. fixity: repeat a sentence no matter how the situation changes.
12. You can't use causal language: words such as because, so, therefore, if, etc.
Detailed manifestations of autism
(1) Lonely and withdrawn, unable to establish normal contact with people.
Is the lack of communication with people. The tendency of communication, some children show this characteristic from infancy, such as not being close to their parents since childhood and not liking being held by others. When others want to pick him up, they don't reach out and look forward to picking him up. They don't take the initiative to find children to play with. When others find him to play, they show avoidance and don't respond when they call. They always like to act alone and play by themselves. Some children don't refuse others, but they don't communicate with their children, that is, they lack social skills. For example, when looking for a child, you either suddenly slap someone in the face, suddenly rob someone, or suddenly hug someone, and then leave by yourself. It seems that patting people is not to find someone to contact, but just an action, or only the form of contact, without the content and purpose of contact. Their loneliness also shows that they don't care about things around them. They seem to turn a deaf ear and turn a blind eye. They do whatever they want, have no scruples, and no one cares. What happened around them seems to have nothing to do with him, and it is difficult to arouse his interest and attention. Their eyes often change, and it is not easy to stay on what others let him pay attention to. They seem to live in their own land in Xiaotian. In addition, their eyes don't look at each other or even avoid each other's eyes, and their eyes will wander during normal activities. They often squint at people, squint or look out of the corner of their eyes, rarely look people in the eye and never say hello.
(2) Speech disorder is very prominent.
Most children seldom talk. In severe cases, they are almost silent for life and have limited vocabulary. Even if some children can talk, they often don't want to talk, preferring to use gestures instead. Some people can talk, but their voices are very small, very low or repeat monotonous words to themselves. Some children can only imitate what others have said and can't speak in their own language. Many children don't ask or answer questions, but just repeat other people's questions. Language communication is often manifested in the confusion and inversion of pronouns, such as "you" and "he" replacing themselves. There are also many autistic children who often scream, sometimes until they are 5-6 years old or even longer.
(3) Narrow interests and rigid and repetitive behaviors strongly demand that the environment remain unchanged.
Children with autism often focus on one or more games or activities for a long time, such as being fascinated by rotating the pot cover and monotonous placing of building blocks, keen on watching TV advertisements and weather forecasts, and have no interest in cartoons, children's TV and movies that children usually like. Some children eat the same food every day, go out the same route, and defecate in the same toilet. If anything changes, they will cry and make a scene, showing obvious anxiety. They refuse to change their old habits and behaviors, and it is difficult for them to adapt to the new environment. Most children also show aimless activities, excessive activities, monotonous repetition of jumping, clapping, waving, running, spinning, and some even self-injury, such as repeatedly picking their nostrils, picking their mouths, biting their lips, sucking and so on.
(4) Most of them are backward and their intellectual development is unbalanced.
Most children's intelligence development is slower than their peers, and a few children's intelligence is normal or close to normal. However, some of them are surprisingly good at some aspects of intellectual activities, which is incredible. Many children have strong mechanical memory, especially for words and symbols. For example, a 3-or 4-year-old child especially likes to read. When he saw the words, he took the initiative to ask what to read and only remembered it once. Because of this, he can read children's story books fluently without difficulty, which shows that he has mastered a large number of vocabulary, but when he wants to express himself in words, he has obvious difficulties, which shows that they are damaged in understanding and using language.
Treatment of autism
Generally speaking, the prognosis of children with autism is related to many factors, such as the early signs of the disease, the severity of the disease, the early speech development, cognitive function, whether they are accompanied by other diseases, whether they take drugs, whether they receive training, etc.
Psychological research has found that the essential damage of autism is cognitive impairment, which is manifested in early attention sharing and acting behavior. Sharing attention refers to sharing interest in something with others. Autism faces an object, not sharing interests with others, but getting it. This disorder is one of the early symptoms of autism. The first part mentioned that not being able to play role-playing games is also one of the early manifestations of autism. If early symptoms can be found, early diagnosis and treatment will undoubtedly have a positive and effective impact on the prognosis.
Autistic children do not have the ability to communicate independently and will not change their behavior to adapt to the environment according to environmental requirements. This obstacle becomes more prominent with age. Severe mental retardation, such as screaming and self-injury without speech function, is uncontrollable and difficult to treat, which directly threatens their survival and brings obstacles to education and intervention. As parents, it is easy to identify these abnormalities in children.
After puberty, some children's symptoms can be improved, eccentric and rigid behaviors are reduced, and their ability to communicate with others and adapt to society is more or less improved. But it is still difficult to communicate with others, withdrawn and avoiding others; When social skills are not involved, you can do some simple and mechanical things well.
Those who have good language or speech function at an early stage or before being diagnosed with autism have a better prognosis. Although the disease itself limits their language development potential, he has this potential or foundation after all, and the effect of using drugs is better.
It is observed that the prognosis of autistic patients with high functional level is better than that of autistic patients with low functional level. It is reported that half of 16 autistic children under the age of 6 with IQ greater than 65 can complete their college studies and live independently. Even for autistic children with high functional level, their extracurricular activities or activities are limited, and they will not make constructive decisions or make constructive suggestions.
Patients with other diseases, such as severe congenital heart disease, epilepsy, liver and kidney damage, tuberous sclerosis, etc., have poor prognosis, while patients with hearing impairment and special life skills problems have poor prognosis.
Why is the effect of simple training on autism not obvious?
At present, many people at home and abroad believe that the only effective way to treat autism is training. It comes down to education. Behavioral training of autism is only conducted by educators, hoping to reach the standard of normal behavior and return to society. Although a large number of social educators are committed to this, the results are often very disappointing. The key reason is that they haven't really understood autism. What is even more ridiculous is to ask: "Even cats and dogs can train, why can't people train?" The theory of. Under the guidance of this theory, strengthen physical exercise for sick children. Instead of achieving the expected results, it has produced many negative effects. There is a China idiom that best describes this practice, and that is "pulling out seedlings to help fuel the fire".