What is Autism?

Autism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. Autism affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their synapses connect and organize; how this occurs is not well understood.
Autism is a general term used to describe a group of complex developmental brain disorders known as Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD). The other pervasive developmental disorders are PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder – Not Otherwise Specified), Asperger's Syndrome, Rett Syndrome and Childhood Disintegrative Disorder. Many parents and professionals refer to this group as Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Autism is how you relate to the world when your brain develops differently than other brains. Children with autism have brains that are developing differently from those of typical children. A different brain means you experience the world differently, and so interact with the world in a different way than people with the more common brain type.

The behaviors of people with autism, including how they relate to people and objects, make sense once we appreciate the neural hardware with which they are working. Commonly autism is defined in terms of what people with the diagnosis find challenging. This one-sided view misses the other side of this characteristic way of relating to the world.

Many people with autism are superior at what is known as systemizing, that is, “the drive to analyze objects and events, to understand their structure and predict their future behavior” (Baron-Cohen, 2005). This may be exhibited as an intense interest in train timetables, for example, or an almost intuitive sense of how to program a computer.

Some people with autism tend to show an above average awareness of details and ability to segment pictures, others may have superior abilities in discrete areas such as mathematics, music or art (often referred to as islets of ability).

Characteristics of Autism

Autism is considered a “Spectrum Disorder”. This means that the diagnosis covers a very wide range of degrees of each of the three key characteristics.

Social Interaction

People with autism are challenged by social interaction. At one end of the spectrum are individuals who choose to avoid social interaction most of the time and prefer to spend most time alone. At the other end of the spectrum are people with autism who like to engage in social interaction but often do so in a unique way, that may miss much of the non-verbal aspects of interactions or that feels one-sided or lacking in emotional reciprocity. Often people with autism do not have significant peer relationships because of these challenges.

Communication

People with autism are challenged by verbal communication. Some people with autism do not use any spoken language. Others use conversational levels of language but may find it hard to initiate or sustain fluid conversations or only participate in a restricted range of topics. Other people with autism may use language repetitively or differently to others.

Repetitive behaviors or restricted range of interest.

Again this manifests differently in different individuals. Some people may engage in repetitious movements (e.g. rocking, spinning, hand flapping) others may use language repetitiously (e.g. repeating movie scripts over and over). Some may show intensive interest in the parts of objects (e.g. spinning wheels on the toy car) while others are insistent about sticking to rigid routines and rituals.

(Definition from "Relate to Autism")