Autism Essay
Tracy Marie Patton
Western International University
BEH/221 Introduction to Behavioral Science
April 15, 2007
According to the website Wikipedia, Autism is a developmental disability. Autism is usually diagnosed before a child reaches the age of three, but in some cases, diagnosis comes later in life well into adolescence. There are usually some signals that a child could possibly have autism or one of the autism spectrum disorders. One form of autism is Pervasive Developmental Disorder. This falls under the autism spectrum.
PDD is a neurological disorder along the autism spectrum. There are various disorders and another one is Aspberger’s Disorder. One of the indicators that a child could possibly have a form of autism is repeatedly being withdrawn, not acknowledging his or her parents, constantly playing with a certain toy that seems to catch the interest. When a child plays with certain toys and seems to always want to stack them or place them in a row, and then turn around knock it down and do it all over again, this could possibly be one of the signs.
Sometimes children with an autistic disorder are able to be in regular or mainstream classes at school. Other times, the child may have to attend either a special education program at their home school or attend an alternative school. The movie “Rain man”, featuring Dustin Hoffman as an adult man who suffers from autism portrayed what it could mean to be autistic. In the movie, he is a grown man, but he lives in a home. He has an ability to count objects just by looking at them. He looked at a box of toothpicks that a waitress dropped and said immediately how many there were. Some people with autism or one of the spectrum disorders are highly intelligent in one specific area. It could be mathematics or even art. (http://www.joblo.com/reviews.php?mode=joblo_dvds&id=272)...