What’s people with autism like?

Author: Dr. Francesc Cuxart (ASEPAC-Barcelona-ES)

“Autistic spectrum”

As we have previously stated, autism is a deeply heterogeneous syndrome, since the interindividual differences between different affected individuals could be very wide. This heterogeneity comes from three factors:

• (1) Intelligence quotient (IQ)
• (2) Intensity of core symptoms
• (3) Features of the associated symptomatology

This wide heterogeneity of the autistic syndrome, caused by the three mentioned factors, has led to describe the autistic disorder in terms of a continuity in the severity of symptoms, in order to include individuals with very intense symptoms and with a severe or deep associated mental retardation, and individuals with much slighter symptoms and with a IQ within normality. The concepts “autistic continuum” (Wing, 1988) and “autistic spectrum” arise, particularly, from all the above mentioned.

Onset versus detection

When we wonder about the onset of a behavioural syndrome, we are always facing to two basic questions (Cuxart, 1998): when and how. Regarding autism, currently we do not have a clear answer for any of these questions.

Concerning when autism appears, it is evident that it is important to specify before whether we refer to the moment in which the first unspecific symptoms of the child’s impairment appear, or whether we refer to the first prototypical symptoms of the autistic disorder. Referring to the appearance of the first unspecific symptoms, there is a wide variability, due to the deep interindividual differences. In the most affected individuals, it is not infrequent the presence of associated medical problems evidenced very early, while in less affected individuals, the detection of the first abnormalities could be delayed until the start of the second year of life...

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