Autism is a developmental disability which
may occur
concurrently with other disabilities. Onset
appears
during infancy of childhood and is
behaviorally defined to
to include disturbances in: (1)
developmental rates
and/or sequences; (2) responses to sensory
stimuli; (3)
speech, language, and cognitive capacities;
and, (4)
capacities to relate to people, events,
objects, and which
adversely affects educational performance.
Educational
performance shall be interpreted as not only
classroom
applications of academic skils and concepts,
but also as
generalization of skills and behaviors such
as social
interaction, functional communication, and
prevocational
skills and behaviors to other
environments.
Essential Features Include:
1) Disturbances of developmental rates and
sequences:
Normal coordination of the developmental area
(cognition/adaptive behavior, speech,
language fine motor,
gross motor, and social/emotional/behavioral)
is
disrupted. Delays, arrests, and/or
regressions occur
among or within one (1) or more of the area.
- Within area: For example, witin the
social/emotional/behavioral area, the student
may respond
to attempts by others to interact but not
initiate
interactions with others; or within the
cognitive/adaptive
area nonverbal intelligence scores may be
markedly higher
than verbal cores yet signifificantly lower
than adaptive
abilities.
- Between area: For example, excellent gross
motor and
balance skils may be present while social
interaction
skills are delayed; or speech may be present
but not used
for social communication purposes.
- Arrests, delays, and reqressions: For
example,
development may be normal up to a point at
which there is
an arrest, such as walking stops; or some
cognitive skills
may develop at expected times while others
are delayed or
absent; or imitative behavior and/or speech
may be delayed
in onset followed by rapid acquision of some
skills in
these areas.
2) Disturbances of responses to sensory stimuil: These may be generalized hyperactivity or hypoactivity and/or alternation of these two states over periods ranging from hours to months.
- Visual symptoms (seeing): there may be
close scrutiny of
visual details; apparent nonuse of eye
contact; staring,
prolonged regrarding of hands or objects;
attention to
changing levels of illumination.
- Auditor symptoms (hearing): there may be
close attention
to self-induced sounds; nonresponse or
overresponse to
varying levels of sound.
- Tactile symptoms (touch): there may be
over-or-under-response to touch, pain, and
temperatures;
prolonged rubbing of surfaces; sensitivity to
food
textures.
- Vestibular symptoms (balance): there may be
over-or-under-reactions to gravity stimuli,
whirling
without dizziness and preoccupation with
spinning
objects.
- Olfactory and gustatory symptoms (smelling
and tasting):
there may be repetitive sniffing, specific
food
prefernces, and licking of inedible
objects.
- Proprioceptive stmptoms (movement): there
may be
posturing, darting/lungig movements, hand
flapping,
gesticulations and grimaces.
3) Disturbances of speech, language-cognitve, and nonverbal communication:
- Speech symptoms: elective mutism, delayed
onset,
immature articulation, and modulated but but
immature
inflections.
- Language- cognition symptoms: specific
capacitive such
as rote memory and visual-spatial relations
may be intact
with failure to develop the us of abstract
terms,
concepts, and reasoning; immediate or delayed
echoalia
with or witout communicative intent;
nonlogical use of
concets; neologisms.
- Nonverbal communication: absent or delayed
development
of appropriate gestures, disassociation of
gestures from
language, and failture to assign symbolic
meaning to
gestures.
