Qianjiang Evening News Hourly News reporter Chen Suping
There are such a group of children in the world, they are not deaf, but they are deaf to sounds; they are not blind, but they are blind to the things around them; they are not dumb, but they do not know how to speak... Like the stars, they twinkle alone in the night sky, and they have a common name "autistic" children, also known as "children of the stars".
Today, it is the 15th World Autism Day. Statistics show that the prevalence of autism in China is similar to that of other countries in the world, about 1%, and there are more than 10 million people with autism, of which more than 2 million are autistic children.
What is autism? What abnormalities in children need attention? What misconceptions do people have about "children of the stars"? Xu Yun, professor of the Department of Psychology of the Academy of Education and Sciences of Zhejiang University of Technology and executive director of the "Rehabilitation Education Research Center for Autistic Children" of the All-China Women's Federation, was invited to give a lecture to the students.
What is autism?
Definitions are constantly changing
In life, some people like to joke that they are "lonely", but the real autism is not as simple as a joke. To understand the disease, you must first recognize the definition of autism.
Autism spectrum disorder, known in English as Autism Spectrum Disorder, abbreviated ASD, generally referred to as autism, also known as autism.
The word "Autism" originated from the Greek word "autor", which denotes self. In 1911, the Swiss psychiatrist E. Bleuler used the term "Autism" to describe the social avoidance and detachment from reality that is often exhibited in children with schizophrenia.
In 1925, the former Soviet psychiatrist Sukhaleva discovered a particular boy in the clinic, whom she described as "an introverted type with a tendency to be lonely." Later, she saw similar manifestations in more and more children and decided to redefine the word "autism": "These children are alienated from their peers, speak in a rigid way, narrow and have strong interests." ”
It was not until 1943 that the American physician Leo Kanner discovered and reported on 11 children with autism, and autism officially entered the dictionary of the American psychiatric community and entered the eyes of the public around the world. The report describes it this way: "They are quite indifferent to those around them, making a parrot-like sound, and monotonous repetitive behavior leads to limited ongoing sexual activity." ”
The American Manual for the Diagnosis and Statistics of Mental Disorders (Fifth Edition), published in 2013, argues that autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that occurs in early childhood development, mainly including two core symptoms: persistent social communication and social communication disorders, specifically manifested as social and emotional interactivity defects, nonverbal behavioral communication defects, developmental maintenance and understanding of interpersonal relationship defects; narrow interests and repetitive stereotyped behavior patterns, specifically manifested as repetitive stereotyped language and behavior, rigid adherence to conventions, Fixed limited interest activities, abnormal perceptual responses.
It can be seen that with the advancement of medicine and people's understanding of diseases, the definition of autism has been constantly changing.
Why are they different
Like guests from other planets
Unlike other birth defect diseases, which show obvious symptoms at birth, autism does not appear until 8 to 12 months at the earliest. So, what abnormal manifestations of children need attention?
First of all, the ability to imitate is the basis for infant learning, and the vast majority of social skills are slowly learned through imitation. Babies aged 3 to 6 months generally gradually highlight this ability to imitate, such as the father pointing to his nose and smiling at the child, the child will imitate the father's movements and point to his nose. This is not the case for children with autism, who do not imitate simple facial movements by 8 to 9 months.
When the baby is 9 to 12 months old, he can exchange eyes with people and things according to the eyes of the mother. This coordination of attention between the infant, the other, and the thing, the ability to focus on something with the other person and share interest in that thing is called common attention. Children with autism have little common attention.
Social communication and communication disorders are the core symptoms of autism. From the time of illness, signs of language delay in children with autism become more prominent. In the group of children with autism, about 75% of children have language delay, but many parents also believe that this is "noble late speech", and the low awareness rate of parents makes it difficult to detect autism early. At the same time, autistic children speak like parrots, the tone of voice is not up and down, sometimes muttering to themselves, sometimes mechanically repeating the same sentence, such as a child hearing the phrase "three o'clock out of class", it will be repeated more than a dozen times in an hour, and the interval between each time is not more than 5 minutes.
Repetitive, stereotyped behavior is another prominent problem for autistic children, which is embodied in the following three characteristics: stereotypes, such as some autistic children need specific tableware before eating, lack of these steps, will refuse to eat; refuse to change, some seemingly insignificant things can affect the mood and behavior of autistic children; persistence, such as a child's obsession with coloring, and repeatedly apply locally, using half a box of watercolor pens in an hour.
At present, the cause of autism is still an unsolved problem in world medicine, and it is also a disease that has not yet been known and understood by the whole society. The American magazine "Science" has twice characterized it as one of the "120 Mysteries of World Science". The mainland has listed it as the "China Brain Program", investing 46 billion yuan in scientific research funds. The golden age of autism intervention is 2 to 5 years old, and in the absence of medical instruments to directly detect and diagnose autism, early screening and detection is the first step in diagnosing autism.
Autism, not what you think
In 1989, scientists used sonic detectors to discover a special whale, unlike ordinary whales, this whale's AC frequency is 52Hz, which means that its song will never get a response, and can only move forward in the sea alone.
This is true of whales, and so are people, and every child with autism is a lonely wandering "52Hz whale". Unfortunately, there is currently a misconception about the disease, with surveys showing that less than 40% of the population is aware of it.
Myth 1: Autism is a mental illness
Solution: Taken literally, it may be felt that autism is a person who closes himself off in his own world, but in fact, this is a misunderstanding. Autism is a congenital dysfunction of brain function, which is innate, unrelated to psychological disorders, and is not induced by educational or living circumstances.
Myth 2: Autism is caused by inappropriate parenting
Solution: Decades ago, some people believed that the cause of autism in children came from cold, alienated family relationships, and proposed the "refrigerator mother" theory. Later scientific studies overturned this theory and proposed that autism was not caused by a lack of family warmth and parental love, but rather a condition with genetic and brain structure abnormalities as the main causative factors.
Myth 3: Autistic people have very low intelligence
Solution: The study found that about 75% of children with autism have intellectual disabilities, about 25% of children with autism develop normally, and 10% of children with autism have "islets of ability", which varies greatly between individuals. Islanding ability refers to the ability of an individual with autism with cognitive impairment to show abilities that are inconsistent with or beyond their abilities in numerical calculations, date calculations, etc., or in some field of art. For example, some autistic people have "camera-like memories" that can be painted on a helicopter after looking at the whole city. The movie blockbuster "Autism" is the true story of The American Academy of Sciences academician Temple Graentin from a severely autistic patient to a well-known livestock scientist.
Myth 4: Children with autism do not form friendships with others
Solution: For children to a more severe degree, it is difficult to build friendships with others. But the vast majority of children with autism are able to establish good relationships with other people. More often, it's not that they don't want to have an emotional relationship, they just don't know how to build an emotional relationship, or how to express their feelings, and they also crave the approval and acceptance of others.
This article is the original work of Qianjiang Evening News, without permission, it is forbidden to reprint, copy, excerpt, rewrite and carry out network dissemination of all works of copyright use, otherwise this newspaper will follow judicial channels to pursue the legal responsibility of the infringer.