🧠 What is Autism? 5 Minute Introduction 🧠 Developmental Psychology

[@NenaLavonne]

Great job addressing this!

[@PsychologyUnlocked]

Thank you :)

[@selenasophie5245]

Great content ,u deserve more recognition 😔

[@PsychologyUnlocked]

Thank you! :)

[@bibaafif4605]

Very interesting subject, loved it. Would love to learn more please

[@PsychologyUnlocked]

Thanks Biba - I will make more videos on Autism :)

[@haniabukar857]

I love to know more about autism, 3 members of my family are thought to be autistic

[@PsychologyUnlocked]

Thank you for your comment - I will make additional autism videos in the future :)

[@danielridden7174]

Can I please have more Asperger's videos

[@RJTrenbath]

Great video! Thank you for covering this important topic. Can I ask a quick question? I know you mentioned that boys are 4x more likely than girls to have ASD and are most often diagnosed before the age of two but girls quite often present differently or get better at masking their autism, causing them to slip through the net-being either misdiagnosed or undiagnosed by clinicians. Indeed, many girls don't get diagnosed until adulthood. As such there might be an issue with the classification system that hinges on a 1940s view of behaviour, with all the hidden assumptions of gender it implies. I know we're going beyond the scope of the video now, but I would be interested in your reflections on whether the classification system could indeed be updated to better include women?

[@PsychologyUnlocked]

Hi RJT, thanks for your comment! You're so right - there is a gender bias in the classification and diagnosis of ASD. The same is true with some other developmental disorders such as ADHD, which also is statistically overwhelmingly male. I think it's a cyclical issue - more boys are diagnosed, therefore people become better at identifying symptoms in boys, therefore even more boys are diagnosed. Probably one of the most effective ways of addressing the bias would be some sort of exposure campaign to introduce psychologists to more female case studies, to inform their future diagnoses of girls... What do you think?

[@RJTrenbath]

@@PsychologyUnlocked As far as I can tell there are some studies, but the main problem is that the studies start in a clinic, and so there is a circularity, as you say. If we are missing women and girls with autism because we are not good at recognising them, then studying those we do spot isn't going to tell us very much about the ones we miss. Most of the research on women with autism seems to suggests that they may be more impaired and more often have intellectual difficulties and be hit harder by autism, but I suspect that's because the subtler cases are missed by our diagnostic system because women with autism they learn to mimic the social behaviours of those around them or mask their own. An exposure campaign could be useful in getting clinicians to dig a little bit deeper (like asking why a girl is obsessed with a particular band [whereas a boy obsessed with trains is more 'obvious'], rather than viewing it as normal, or being open to comorbidities such as eating disorders or anxiety, for example). In a similar vein, more female characters with ASD in media would wake the general public to the possibility of it existing and be better placed to recognise it in family and friends, while better support services in schools would facilitate earlier diagnoses while helping prevent negative outcomes. Maybe it also means developing different diagnostic measures for testing autism in girls and boys, and further study on the gender differences in autism would help understanding of autism overall? Lots to say on the subject!

[@PsychologyUnlocked]

I think you make some really strong points! Especially on the possibility of having different diagnostic measures for boys and girls. It would be controversial in one sense, but very beneficial in another. In the same way that ASD is (or isn't) diagnosed in different cultural settings. When something is so tightly connected to the social world around us, it seems remiss of us to not include those factors in the discussion...

[@RJTrenbath]

​@@PsychologyUnlocked After looking around a bit I found the Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (CAT-Q) developed by a team from UCL and Cambridge. It's "a self-report measure of social camouflaging behaviours in adults [that] may be used to identify individuals considered at-risk for autism, but who do not currently meet diagnostic criteria." Here's the open access paper: link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-018-3792-6. I thought it was interesting that Simon Baron Cohen is one of the authors, given his previous support for the extreme male brain hypothesis. Probably reading too much into it but it might indicate a further shift in thinking from biology to socialisation regarding ASD? Although there is a difference between where it comes from and how it is experienced - then again, perhaps not. But that opens a can of worms about the social model of disability applied to mental health and clinical psychology. I'm tangentialising! Sorry!

[@sameeraali2592]

Anytreatment sir

[@Stryfe52]

More? Nope!