Running head: AUTISM CASE STUDY

Autism Case Study

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Autism can be defined as a complex neurodevelopment disorder. It is a health condition

characterized by difficulties in the development of social skills, speech, repetitive behavior, and

non-verbal communication. Children suffering from this disorder have problems while

constructing a plausible speech. Some words do not come out clearly, and the child may be

unable to pronounce world entirely depending on the level of effects. Their weak social skills can

identify such kids (Carl, 2015). There is a high-level inability to socialize. As such, these

children in most cases are felt lonely and prefer to spend more of their time alone.

The use of non-verbal communication may be affected. These include expressing their

emotions through facial expressions as well as the use of gestures-complemented speech.

Additionally, there is a high tendency of repetition while speaking. Autistic children will always

show difficulties while communicating because of more repeated words (Carl, 2015). Therefore,

there is a high likelihood of having a weak communication ability.

People suffering from this disorder have unique strengths and differences. As such, there

is a wide range of autism conditions. A child can have one condition or a combination depending

on its genetic composition (Carl, 2015). A child can portray difficulties in social skills and

communication at the same time. When this happens, the child will always be alone, and when

subjected to a group of other kids, it will not create an interactive environment. In some children,

the condition may become severe especially when there is a combination of two different

conditions of autism like repetitive behaviors and lack of spoken language. The interference of

the two conditions will render one incapable.

There are different methods through which one can use to diagnose autism among

children to ensure early age solution. The following is the criteria to be used to diagnose the

conditions of autism.
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The presence of persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction. It can

be in multiple contexts like the deficiency in social-emotional reciprocity, improper nonverbal

communicative behaviors applicable in social interaction, and the deficiency in creating,

maintaining, and understanding relationships. The severity of these conditions is based on social

communication impairment.

In the restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities, the condition can

be manifested by conditions like repetitive or stereotyped motor movements and use of objects or

speech, lack of sameness, non-adherence to routines, or ritualized patterns or verbal-nonverbal

behavior such as extreme distress at small changes (Howlin, 2016). The child may also have

highly restricted or fixed interests such as strong attachment to or preoccupation with unusual

objects, hyper-reactivity or hypo-reactivity to sensory input or unusual interests in sensory

aspects of the environment like apparent indifference to pain or temperature changes. As

identified in Molly, she has a problem with the sensory motor as she does not feel pain when

slapping herself.

The symptoms are present at early developmental age but may not be fully manifested.

The condition of Molly can be identified to determine the category of the disorder and classify

the type of disorder (Howlin, 2016). This will make it easy to administer special treatment when

needed. Some of the communication problems that Molly is likely to have include inability to

maintain eye contact, communicate effectively, use facial expressions, use non-verbal

communication like gestures, and over-repeated words. The child with conditions of ASD show

self-absorbed traits and always appear to exist in a private world with limited ability to

communicate successfully and interact with other people. Language development among the

children with ASD show difficulty in language development. Further, they seem not to
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understand what others say to them. Here, the primary language has not developed fully

(Howlin, 2016). Additionally, nonverbal communication among these children in inhibited

internally. Such child cannot communicate through the use of facial expressions.

Molly will not be able to make an effective speech. Since social development has not

taken part completely, the child will show an inability to speak clearly or make audible sounds.

At first, she will appear to have low self-esteem and lack of confidence in whatever she is

saying. As such, she will opt to remain silent and fail to respond to most of the questions asked.

However, the failure to respond to these questions will not be facilitated by lack of information

or not knowing the response, but lack of confidence in the self-language.

Another communication aspect that she can be identified with is the inability to extract

meaning from simple sentences. As such, she can also not construct simple sentences. In other

instances, autism can inhibit lingual communication, but the child has rich vocabularies and can

communicate in written form. In this case, the autism will have affected speech-language, and

the child has not developed social skills for communication. Therefore, this communication

problem can be addressed through encouraging the child to read and write simple words and

sentences. In most cases, the language development may take longer, but eventually, the child

will have social skills necessary for communication (Howlin, 2016). To address the issue of

communication as identified with Molly, the teacher can use simple teaching approach (Howlin,

2016). As such, she will be exposed to a customized method of learning to ensure that she learns

using the technique she is comfortable. The tailored teaching approach will be implemented in

both classrooms and outside.

To address the behavioral aspect of autism, the teacher needs to use the powerful tools of

operant learning that will solve the symptoms of autistic spectrum disorders. Here, each social
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symptom will be addressed as a separate social entity and the approach to solving each behavior

implemented (Lord, 2016). The use of social motivators to molly will help in shifting her

attention from abnormal sounds like vacuum cleaners and fans to human sounds and concentrate

on word sounds. This will help her to develop interests in speech as well as social skills for

communication.

Molly needs to be exposed to children with proper social development to shift her

interests from a willingness to be lonely and develop a habit interacting with others. Probably,

this is slow but an effective approach of forcing her social development. In most scenarios,

failure in social development occurs among children that lack exposure in different social

settings like playing with other kids from birth (Lord, 2016). The effects will result in the kid

developing a negative attitude towards other kids and opt to seclude herself. As such, Molly

should be forced to spend more time with other kids with good social skills.

The cognitive development for Molly can be stimulated by identifying her strength to

suppress the weaknesses. For instance, the teacher can determine the method of communication

that she can efficiently use and use it to suppress other areas and develop social skills.

When slapping herself, it indicates that her sensory motor is not working effectively and

she is numb to pain. Here, special attention is required. Approaches like QST massage allows

reversal of ability to feel touches (Lord, 2016). The approach has been identified as an effective

method of improving the bonding by restoring the conditions of the sensory nerves to normal.

Additionally, it can also be used to stimulates social development and eliminates the autistic

behavior.
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References

Carl, F., & Hardan, A. Y. (2015). Autism spectrum disorders. Handbook of Developmental

Psychiatry, 463.

Howlin, P., & Moore, A. (2016). Diagnosis in autism: a survey of over 1200 patients in the

UK. autism, 1(2), 135-162.

Lord, C., Cook, E. H., Leventhal, B. L., & Amaral, D. G. (2016). Autism spectrum

disorders. Neuron, 28(2), 355-363.