Autism Case Study

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Autism Spectrum Disorder is a developmental disorder that effects many children during early childhood development. It impairs a child’s social and motor skills. Children with Autism do not usually acknowledge others and instead remain in their own world. In an effort to help parents interact better with their autistic child a research study was done linking child imitation to developing social skills in autistic children. An early sign of ASD is the lack of development of nonverbal joint attention skills which refers to socially sharing attention with others for an object or event. The following case study was conducted to test whether or not maternal imitation of a child with ASD would improve the child’s joint attention skills and produce any changes in mother-child interaction. Case Study In this case study a 21 month old child is taken by his parents to a local health center for a consultation. A child psychologist, a clinical psychologist, and a public health nurse observed the child. He did not make eye contact when his name was called. He put toys in his mouth and climbed on things and did not interact socially with anyone. His mother expressed that she felt frustration and negative emotions when she tried to play with him and he wouldn’t respond to her. The nurse and psychologists assessed the child developmental skills can concluded that the child’s developmental age was 19.5 and 15; for locomotion was and motor ability; 15 and 15 for self-help and motor ability; and 10 and 10 for linguistics and comprehension. The child’s joint attention behaviors were measured to be at an 8 month old level at intake (21 months) while the mother’s negative emotions were measured to be at level 12 at intake. The mother was instructed to take the child home and play with him for five minutes every day. For the first two months the mother was advised to
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