Autism - Description & Background

What is Autism? ››

What Causes Autism? ››

The History of Autism ››

The Triad of Impairments ››

The Continuum

Sensory Issues ››

Approaches ››

The Continuum
Autism is of described as a continuum. The symptoms and characteristics of autism can present themselves in a wide variety of combinations, from mild to severe. Although autism is defined by a certain set of behaviours, children and adults can exhibit any combination of the behaviours in any degree of severity. Two people, both with the same diagnosis, can act very differently from one another and have varying skills.

 
The diagram above, as developed by Daniel Rosenn, M.D. (1997), shows autism as a spectrum disorder with different levels of severity and presentation. Considering autism as a continuum of its own may help solve the problems of defining and classifying people who are within the autism spectrum.

The cluster of circles at the Severe-Kanner’s end of the graphic depicts the relative ease of diagnosing autism in a person when she is at this end of the spectrum.

Towards the moderate area, the presentation of autism becomes more varied as indicated by the introduction of different shapes such as the square and the triangle. The high-functioning-Asperger (HFA/AS) portion of this syndrome has the greatest diversity in shapes because the variation in presentation along with the number of people with autism in this area is the greatest.

At the extreme right, those with autism blend into the general population. This autism spectrum severity wedge diagram shows that it is impossible to state unequivocally that a person with autism must have a particular trait or cannot have another trait.

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