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Hanah International Foundation directly supports initiatives on demand of parents of children with special communication needs to join them in optimizing the family situation.

For that purpose we offer the experience of an international network of regional independent experts and experienced parents that exist meanwhile from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

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Thursday, 03 June 2010 14:23

Myths of the month May 2010

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Myths of the month May 2010

About how people with autism function.

Myth 1:
High-functioning and low-functioning autism are completely different things

Truth:
Many children with problems in the autistic spectrum start quite severe and non-verbal, but "move along the spectrum". A very recent study shows that there is no really difference between Asperger Syndrome and autism other than IQ. The core deficits are the same; it's only the presentation that is different.

Myth 2:
All autistics are the same

Truth:
Sometimes people know about one or more autistic people and believe that everything they say applies to all of them. Aside from the fact that they share common features like problems in the perception, and some characteristics of behaviou related to those traits, children with auristic problems as individual as anyone else. From the assumption that they are all the same come a number of other myths:

All autistics think in pictures.
- While visual thinking may be more common in autistics than in the general population, it is certainly neither universal nor exclusive. It also is found that it is very common among dyslexics and others. There are autistic people that do not think in pictures.
All sensory issues are hypersensitivities to touch or sound.
- Sensory issues can also be hyposensitivities, where nothing gets in unless it is very loud or painful; synaesthesia, where one sense is perceived as another; or sometimes extreme fluctuations. They can affect any sense including proprioceptive (sense of one's body in space), and vestibular (movement
All autistics have "special skills" or savant abilities.
- Savant skills appear in about 10% of autistic people. This is thousands of times higher than the general population, but still the exception rather than the rule. Somretimes there are some savant abilities when children are young, but they faded as they learn to communicate. Savant skills are not "useless" as they are sometimes made out to be. There are various autistics who have used their savant abilities in employment situations.