Symptoms of autism may occur in the child’s 1st year, but they must be severe enough and more intense than expected in relation to the child’s stage of development and culture to allow a diagnosis. This notion of intensity and permanence of symptoms makes it difficult to detect ASD before school age.
Different Symptoms of Autism
- Altered social interaction and communication
- Difficulty in developing, maintaining and understanding social relationships
- Deficit in non-verbal communication
- Social or emotional reciprocity deficit
- Restricted and repetitive behaviour or interest
- Repetitive or stereotyped movements or language
- Intolerance to change, adamant adherence to routines
- Restricted interests, abnormal in intensity or purpose
- Hyper or hypo invasive responsiveness to sensory stimuli
Signs of autism are present in early childhood, but are not necessarily evident until social demands exceed the individual’s capacity. This may lead to later diagnosis.
But signs of autism never appear in adolescence or adulthood unless they are present.
For a diagnosis to be made, the signs must have an impact on the person’s functioning.
ASD manifests itself in signs in two broad dimensions:
- Social interaction and communication
- Behaviours and interests
- Altered social interaction and communication
- Difficulty in developing, maintaining and understanding social relationships
- Deficit in non-verbal communication
- Social or emotional reciprocity deficit
- Restricted and repetitive behaviour or interest
- Repetitive or stereotyped movements or language
- Intolerance to change, adamant adherence to routines
- Restricted interests, abnormal in intensity or purpose
- Hyper or hypo invasive responsiveness to sensory stimuli
At Paris Brain Institute
The team co-led by Inserm researcher Mathias PESSIGLIONE, in collaboration with a Canadian team, studied the mimetic desire in autistic people that could explain the altered interactions and social motivation in them.
Mimetic desire corresponds to the spontaneous tendency to desire the same things as others, for example for children the same toy as their peers.
People with ASD are often confused by changes in their environment, such as furniture at home or a change of teacher at school. They often display repetitive behaviours such as swaying or clapping in their hands. Repetition patterns such as eating the same food at each meal or watching the same video every day can also be observed.
Children and adults with autism may have very specific, very restricted and sometimes strange interests, such as electric motors, garbage bags and traffic signs.
Symptoms related to the 5 senses may manifest as hyper or hypo reactivity to an odour, cold or pain.
People with autism frequently have one or more associated disorders (mental or other disorders, e.g. cardiac, neurological, etc.)
About one-third of people with autism have an intellectual developmental disorder (i.e., with an IQ <70).
It is estimated that 1 in 5 people with autism have epilepsy.
Some patients have very focused and specialized extreme abilities, such as strong mental calculation skills or absolute ear. But these abilities are rare and are not part of the diagnostic criteria.
