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Autism and Asperger's Syndrome
Certainty Style Key
Hover over keys for definitions:
True
Likely
Speculative
Human Uniqueness Compared to "Great Apes":
Absolute DifferenceMOCA Domain:
Mental DiseaseAutism and Asperger syndrome are disorders of early childhood assumed to be developmental. Features include poverty of social interaction and the failure of communication, stereotypic behaviour, isolated special interests, and resistance to change. Autism by definition emerges before age 3, Asperger's syndrome has a broader definition and includes problems of non-verbal communication more prominent than the langauge disorders seen in autism.
Both conditions reflect personality characteristics that are lifelong. The major etiologic contribution is held to be genetic. Sufferers are described as having deficits in "theory of mind", the ability to empathize with, and appreciate the presence, of other people. Other theories are that there is a failure of congenital gaze reflexes that ensure that the normal infant locks into the"ebb and flow" of social interaction, and that there is a failure of the mechanism whereby normal individuals allocate incoming information to a "relevant" context in memory.
Background Information:
Autism and Asperger syndrome were described in 1943 and 1944 by Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger respectively and include many overlapping features. For example poverty of social interaction and the failure of communication, stereotypic behaviour, isolated special interests, outstanding skills and resistance to change. Kanner first described language peculiarities, such as echolalia, pronoun reversal and difficulties in generalising word meanings. Asperger described ' clever sounding ' language, invented words and adult-like speech. He also identified abnormalities of non-verbal communication, for example of eye gaze, gesture, posture, voice quality, prosody and word choice. He emphasized lack of humor and pedantry.
The boundary between the conditions is not well-defined.
With respect to etiology twin and family studies suggest a genetic component common to the two conditions.
Alan Leslie proposed a "theory of mind" hypothesis that Humans have the ability to distinguish first-order from second-order representations and that this allows them to separate representations of physical and mental states, and thus to impute the existence of "other minds". The same ability allows them to engage in play, and the pretence involved in collaborative games and story-telling.
The Human Difference:
If the phenomena of the autistic spectrum are intrinsically related to the human capacity for secondary representation, or theory of mind, which in turn may reflect the change that enabled the capacity for language, only humans will be expected to have the spectrum of personality and cognitive variation that underlies the spectrum. The occurrence of special abilities (eg with respect to memory, mental calculation, & drawing) strongly suggests that the basis of these anomalies is related to specifically human abilities, and therefore that we are dealing with genetic variation that separates H sapiens from other primate species.
Universality in Human Populations:
Accurate cross-cultural data are not available but autistiic spectrum individuals are identified in all cultures with similar features.
Mechanisms Responsible for the Difference:
Increased brain size and decreased corpus callosum area are reported in autistic spectrum disorder, compatible with a late developmental deviation.
References:
U FRITH Ed. AUTISM & ASPERGER SYNDROME, Cambridge University Press, 1991.
F HAPPE. AUTISM; AN INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY, UCL Press, London, 1994.
RP HOBSON. AUTISM & THE DEVELOPMENT OF MIND. Laurence Erlbaum, Hove, 1994.
Freitag, CM et alvTotal Brain Volume and Corpus Callosum Size in Medication-Naive Adolescents and Young Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Source: BIOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY, 66 (4): 316-319 AUG 15 2009