Autistic Child Development Paper

From sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, other relatives, or friends, people know of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Perhaps it is because according to the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (2013), about 1% of the world population has been diagnosed with ASD. Though there are several impairments that affect both children and adults, the younger individuals tend to have a very difficult time with several new concepts. One of those concepts is Theory of Mind (ToM). While it may seem like a confusing topic, it is very crucial to the development of Autistic children. More than anything, this notion plays a role in emotions and social interactions. Significant research has been done to show the relationship between these concepts, with several techniques found to improve Theory of Mind skills. Though the Essentials of Learning and Cognition book was very informative, it was surprising how little information it had about Theory of Mind. Included in the sixth chapter on social learning, it was connected to imitation in babies and children, focusing on facial expressions. It was discussed in the book that the imitation of facial expressions of basic emotions, such as anger and happiness, can happen as early as two weeks of birth. Not …show more content…
Once an Autistic child reaches a certain mental age, they began to perform better on ToM tasks (Chevallier, 2014). Different strategies and techniques can be given to improve Theory of Mind. This is important because several of the problems that individuals have at a young age tend to carry over to their adult years. Though it may remain difficult for individuals to do things such as identifying emotions of themselves or others, working on these concepts early on can help these individuals have an easier time when in social situations and in future relationships (Samson et al, 2010; Pellicano,