Autism Spectrum Disorder Case Study

I. Introduction

Picture this: You’re an elementary school teacher who has a 10-year old male student who presents with communication deficits in addition to having difficulties in both forming and maintaining relationships. Subsequently, this young male also shows numerous amounts of repetitive behaviors, including rocking back and forth, hand-flapping, self-injuries behaviors, and behaviors that could potentially injure another individual. Additionally, this young boy tends to have a hypersensitivity to both internal and external stimulus. This young males case study is considered a textbook diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder, also known as ASD. Thus speaking, Autism Spectrum Disorder is considered a “variety (or spectrum) of related disorders

To add onto this, within the last decade, ASD has been given increasingly more attention within the public eye while also being diagnosed on a more frequent basis.

II. Facts

Autism Spectrum Disorder was first brought to awareness in the early 1940s by Leo Kanner, who was a psychiatrist at John Hopkins University. During this time, Kanner studied a group of children who have difficulties or deficits within the following domains: relating to others, speech development, repetitive behaviors, and becoming upset by changes in their routine (Kirk, 2015). Ever since Kanner’s discovery, many individuals have followed in his footsteps by studying others who have similar struggles. This later lead to proper name for this disorder along with proper diagnostic criteria being established. Subsequently, according to the classroom textbook, 1 in 50 children are diagnosed with ASD

Therefore, a deficit that a child may have in specific area may not been identified as an area of concern for another child who’s been diagnosed with ASD. Nonetheless, there are a core set of characteristics that all children with ASD have difficulties in. These deficits are a lack of Theory of Mind, behavioral complications, and identifiable struggles within each domain of the Information Processing Model (IPM), such as input, processing, and output (Kirk 2015). In this paragraph, we will talk about the lack of Theory of Mind and behavioral outbursts observed in children with ASD, while deficits within the IPM being covered in a separate paragraph. Thus speaking, Theory of Mind is described as a child being able to “put themselves in the place of others in order to understand what they are feeling or thinking” (Kirk, 2015). Subsequently, children who have the ability to understand another individual’s thinking patterns and feelings generally allows them to develop social relationships. In addition, having a Theory of Mind is considered a necessary component in order for a person to understand, predict, and shape one’s behaviors (Kirk, 2015). However, individuals who are diagnosed or suspected of having ASD typically lack a Theory of Mind. These children typically have a troublesome time in understanding the feelings and thoughts of another individual, making it difficult to put