Autism Research Report Autism Research Project Final | Page 14

disintegrative disorder and Not otherwise specified(NOS).
Asperger’s Syndrome was used for individuals that
showed some characteristics of autism but language is
something that is not affected in this case. This is termed
as high functioning autistic individuals.
Childhood Disintegrative Disorder was used for kids that
showed late onset of symptoms. The grew like other
children during their developmental period while they start
loosing on their language and communicational skills they
acquired somewhere between the age of 2-10 years.
Not otherwise specified is a category where individuals
that show few characteristic and not all characteristics of
Autism, Asperger’s Syndrome or Childhood Disintegrative
Disorder.
The researchers found that due to different diagnosis
in different clinics and similarity in the conditions it was
hard to conclude the specific differentiation between the
conditions to the patients. That’s how in late 2013 all
these terms were replaced by Autism Spectrum Disorder,
which basically comprises of all pervasive developmental
disorder. This is a spectrum that is used as a scale to
differentiate between the two major areas.

1. Social Communication and Interaction
2. Restricted or Repetitive behaviour/ interests/
activities
Social Communication and Interaction caters to the
following signs shown by the individuals:

1. Social Reciprocity is how people respond and
reciprocate, while in this case they might not respond the
way they are supposed to and usually isolate themselves
to be alone with their thoughts.

2. Joint Attention is how one share their interests,
obsession and liking with the people around them, while
in this case one might not share their interests even with
their parents making them look secretive and hard too
understand.

3. Non Verbal Communication as the words say
is a communication where words are not the only medium
to explain things while here it is not just difficulty using
non verbal but also interpreting non verbal communication
used by others. Some kids might not spread their arms
when they want to be picked up or sometimes people
don’t get sarcasm or take idioms too literally like “Break A
Leg” which means ‘Good Luck’ is sometimes interpreted
as someone asking them to actually break their leg.

4. Social Relationships could be counted as
different relationships with parents, friends, siblings,
cousins, girlfriend/boyfriend, aunts, uncles and many
more. These people have pretty hard time maintaining
their social relationships, sometimes it’s hard for them
to get engaged in different relationships altogether but
sometimes even when they make friends or get close with
some siblings they tend to do things that could drive them
away from them.