Autism

Abstract

As much as normal children differ in their pace of development, the same can be said for autistic children. However, they face a great deal of difficulties due to their motor, cognitive, and communicative delays.

Abstractii

Introduction1

Discussion2

The autistic child and gross motor development2

The autistic child and fine motor, oral motor, and self-care development3

The autistic child and cognitive development3

The autistic child and communication development5

The autistic child and social and emotional development6

Conclusion7

References9

Atypical Development in Autistic Child during the Early Childhood (Preschool Period)

Introduction

A lot of theories exist that attempt to explain the stages of child development. These include the developmental milestones view, Piaget's stages of cognitive development, Erikson's stages of psychosocial development, Freud's stages of psychosocial development and Kohlberg's stages of moral development. For the specifying the context of this research, we shall focus on the developmental milestones theory only.

Children's development is marked by certain milestones that they achieve at different stages. These achievements are basically divided into four categories: physical (including fine-motor and gross-motor skills), cognitive (thinking and analyzing), social-emotional, and communication milestones (verbal as well as nonverbal cues).

Autism is a disorder in the normal neural development of a child, which can be noticed by weak socialization and difficulty in communicating. Repetitive behavior is also observed in autistic children. However, a clinical diagnosis usually requires the child to be of a minimum of 3 years old (CDC, 2009). It is categorized in the ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorders). The DSM-IV-TR code for Autistic Disorders is 299.00 (DSM-IV-TR, 2000). Genetics has its own role to play in aggravation. Signs are usually noticed during the yearly years of development.

Children typically follow the same procedure in their development, but they may differ in time they take for each step (Hooper & Umansky, 2008). However, an autistic child usually shows a great delay in some developmental domains. Thus, this research will discuss the developmental procedures in autistic children during their preschool period. For the purpose of convenience, this research paper refers to the autistic child as a 'male' - gender may vary.

Discussion

The autistic child and gross motor development

Gross Motor Skills are the ones which are Gross Motor development has been observed to be hampered due to this disorder in children. This is noticed by the difficulties autistic children face in: basic motor control, the pace at which they walk and execute, coordination, anticipation, posture, etc. A number of features are of uncommon motor development are found in subdivisions of ASD, and these are not present in the typical autistic child. Approximately all autistic children usually show a great deal of delay in normal/regular motor development, especially in areas concerning speech, but oral apraxia does not commonly occur in all autistic children. Clumsiness has been noted in children who have coordination problems in the visual-motor development, but is more commonly associated with Asperger's Syndrome rather than autism (Mottron & Burack, 2012).

The autistic child's gross-motor developmental delays and impairment has noteworthy affects on his life. He starts having trouble with proprioception and either does not have the ability to sense his ...