Magyar - Developing and evaluating educational programs for students with autism spectrum disorders

Department of Pediatrics School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Rochester, 601 Elmwood Ave, 671, Rochester, NY 14642, USA

Caroline I. Magyar

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Autistic Disorder (AD) is one of the most researched of all childhood developmental disorders. It is one of five Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD) described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-Fourth Edition-Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR; APA, ). Separate disorders are listed when information provided is disorder specific.

ASDs are estimated to affect about 1 in 110 (CDC, ).

While the specific cause of autism is unknown, its neurobiological nature is well-established (Gillberg & Coleman, shows a visual representation of the downstream effects of the hypothesized genetic abnormalities on brain development and functioning and the resultant behavioral symptoms comprising the autism spectrum and related features.

Autism spectrum disorders are a group of complex neurodevelopmental disorders that share a core set of clinical symptoms, in addition to a range of related and associated features and conditions. This results in the wide variability in symptom profile within and across affected individuals with ASD. Yet, despite the chronic nature of ASD, the functioning of any one student is not necessarily static (Volkmar, Paul, Klin, & Cohen, ). Rather, students with ASD grow and develop like other youth, although the rate and patterns of development may differ across students. Some developmental aspects may remain stable, such as intelligence, but changes often occur in social communication and adaptive behavior over time. For example, a young child with AD and significant language delays may show improved communication skills during his early childhood years. A high school student with AsD may show dramatic improvements in his socialization and self-sufficiency skills during his later adolescent and young adult years. Other students, however, may show little progress, despite intensive intervention. Therefore, developing a more complete understanding of the core and related symptoms of ASD and the behavioral changes that can occur throughout a students development, school personnel can be in a better position to identify appropriate educational and behavioral programs and services.

There are three core diagnostic symptom categories for the ASDs. These include impairments in reciprocal social interaction, communication and language, and the presence of restrictive, repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests and activities. Symptom categories and other clinical criteria such as age of onset apply to each of the ASDs in different ways to distinguish an individual among the three disorders. Table provides a description of each of the core features and the variables that distinguish AD, AsD, and PDD-NOS.