Journal of autism and childhood schizophrenia最新文献

The design, administration, and scording of the first edition of the Children's Handicaps, Behavior & Skills (HBS) structural interview schedule, intended to elicit information concerning metally retarded or psychotic children, are described. A high level of reliability was achieved with experienced interviewers and good informants. In a study of 104 such children, the levels of overall agreement between parent and professional informants on the 62 sections of the schedule were, in general, 70% or above. Agreement was better for rating absence of skills or behavioral abnormalities than for rating their presence. This tendency was particularly marked for the behavioral abnormaliteis. Parents, when compared with professional workers, tended to describe their children as having higher developmental skills, more social contact but also more repetitive and difficult behavior.

Follow-up data on 57 schizophrenic patients, including 25 boys and 32 girls between the ages of 7 and 13, is reported. Average length of follow-up was 15 years. Symptoms found in children under 10 and in prepubertal cases are described. Cases with acute, relapsing episodes occurred more often than chronic cases, but before age 11 acute cases were less frequent. Twenty percent of the patients recovered completely, 30% reached a relatively good social adjustment, and 50% had moderate or poor remission. Family incidence of psychiatric disorders had no influence on prognosis, nor did unfavorable family environment. Premorbid personality development was, however, found to be of prognostic value. Prodromal episodes occurred in 55% of the cases, and 65% of the patients were preoccupied by death. Additional follow-up findings are presented, and problems of diagnosis are discussed.

The purpose of this research project was to identify children with psychotic behavior in the Institutions for the Mentally Retarded in Denmark and to analyze psychotic behavior. The subjects for study were 392 children, partly selected as a representative sample, partly selected as a sample of children with psychotic behavior. A combined observation and interview scheme was constructed containing 17 behavioral items and 6 developmental scales. Scoring systems for psychotic behavior were constructed and their consistency analyzed by the Rasch item-analysis model. Two major behavioral dimensions, "bizarre behavior" and "psychotic withdrawal," were used for the diagnostic grouping of the subjects. The distributions of the children in regard to developmental retardation, organic brain damage, and psychiatric diagnoses were investigated. Conclusions regarding guidelines for reorganization of present services and establishment of new services are proposed.

A case of intrauterine cytomegalovirus infection with onset of autistic symptoms apparently after 6 months of age is reported. Physicians who find autistic symptoms in very young children might include cytomegalovirus in their differential to document the presence or absence of a correlation.

In an attempt to resolve the question as to whether children with autistic traits have an organic nervous system lesion, auditory nerve and brainstem evoked responses were recorded in a group of 15 children with autistic traits. The most obvious results included a longer response latency of the auditory nerve and a longer brainstem transmission time, compared to normal children. Five of the autistic children were found to be profoundly deaf. These results strengthen the theory that an organic lesion of the nervous system can give rise to autistic traits.

Mothers of four 6- and 7-year-old autistic classmates were taught to use manual signs for verbalizations to aid development of appropriate communicative behavior and to deter undesirable behavior in their children. The experimental treatment was initiated in a daily mother-child laboratory session using a multiple-baseline design across subjects. The preschool classroom program remained unchanged. Data were recorded for each child daily over a 5-week period, in the classroom and in a mother-child session, on four types of communicative behavior and four types of inappropriate behavior. Communicative behaviors increased and inappropriate behaviors decreased in relation to baseline conditions for each child. The manual sign program facilitated generalization of communicative behavior to the child's total environment. Desirable behaviors were maintained and had improved in the classroom 3 months after initiation of the program.

Two institutionalized children who exhibited high rates of severely self-injurious behaviors were punished with aromatic ammonia inhalation on a response-contingent basis. This contingency was applied throughout all aspects of each child's institutional program which focused on teaching of self-help skills. Suppression of the self-injurious responses was both rapid and general. The contingency was maintained for 2 months, although there was no responding after the first 5 days. Follow-up sessions, conducted 4 months after the punishment contingency was removed, revealed that suppression effects were highly durable. Aromatic ammonia inhalation appears to be an effective alternative for decelerating extremely maladaptive behaviors that do not yield to more conventional nonaversive forms of therapy. However, the procedure should be used with great caution, for it may involve risk to the subject.

A comparative study of nonverbal MA matched groups of five autistic, five aphasic, five normal and five retarded children was made on an auditory-visual and a visual-visual paired-associate learning task. The results showed that, although the autistic and receptive aphasic children were both unable to associate sounds with their visual counterparts at the same rate as normal children, the aphasic children overcame this deficit at a significantly faster rate than autistic children. This study pinpoints one dysfunction that could subsume the severe verbal comprehension defect in autistic and aphasic children.