ABSTRACT
Specific nonadaptive behavior characteristics of severely handicapped adults from state and private institutions, group homes, and parents' homes were investigated. No significant differences were found between the total population sampled and a sample matched on the demographic variables of CA, language age, sex, and diagnosis. Results of postpriori analysis of the 6 out of 57 types of nonadaptive behavior found to be significantly different across residential categories showed that the state institution population had significantly higher amounts of nonadaptive behavior than did persons from all other residential categories. No significant nonadaptive behavior differences were found between residents of private institutions, group homes, or parents' homes. State institution subjects had more severe behavior-management problems and fewer job placements than did persons from all other residential categories.
Subject(s)
Behavior , Disabled Persons/psychology , Intellectual Disability/psychology , Residence Characteristics , Social Adjustment , Adult , Deinstitutionalization , Female , Hospitals, Psychiatric , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , Residential FacilitiesABSTRACT
Previous studies have implicated a brainstem dysfunction in the syndrome of autism. This study matched six autistic children with six normal children by age and sex to evaluate brainstem evoked response (BSER) to auditory stimuli. An evaluation of pure tone audiometric threshold showed no evidence of impairment; however, the electrophysiologic responses differed for the autistic and control groups. The BSER of the autistic children was remarkable for showing increased latency and markedly increased variability. The findings from this study add additional evidence of a brainstem dysfunction in autistic children, while the electrophysiologic variability supports the hypothesis of perceptual inconstancy.
Subject(s)
Autistic Disorder/physiopathology , Brain Stem/physiopathology , Evoked Potentials, Auditory , Adolescent , Audiometry, Evoked Response , Auditory Threshold/physiology , Child , Child, Preschool , Female , Humans , Male , Reaction Time/physiologyABSTRACT
Learning-acquisition characteristics of six autistic children were studied in order to examine programming needs. Two studies were conducted. Study 1 showed that the first step of a color-cued sequencing task required four times more trials to learn than did the remaining five steps, producing a significant learning-to-learn curve. Study 2 confirmed earlier findings that extra-stimulus prompts are comparatively ineffective with autistic children when compared to within-stimulus prompts and showed extra-stimulus prompting to be effective following the use of within-stimulus prompting on a similar task.
