Autism and social impairments
PartI Many previous case studies have been issued on the issue of social impairments and autism, but the March 2004 edition of Developmental Psychology, volume 40 is one of the first to study social impairments such as Social Orienting, Joint Attention and Attention distress in children as young as 12 months. Pre-graduate students researching developmental psychology and human development and disabilities at the University of Washington used children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) ages 3-4, youths 3-4 that are developmentally delayed and youths 12 – 46 months of typical development. The problem with previous developmental models of autism suggest that early impairments in social attention deprive the child with autism of social information input during stages of infancy and preschool development which disrupts normal neural and behavioral development PartII With the use of experimental therapies researchers suggest that the insinuation of the model is such that social attention impairments could be identified early in life and changes made in the manner in which the child attends to his or her social environment, children with autism may be aimed closer toward the path of typical development. The failure of young children with autism to spontaneously orient to naturally occurring social stimuli in their environment is what Psychologist recognize as social orienting.