For individuals with autism spectrum disorders, their dynamic system is working, but it is working differently due to their central nervous system disorder. They may shift, change, and accommodate to their environmental needs, but may do it slower, faster, in unique ways, or only with outside support or accommodations.
People with autism walk even more slowly or are wobblier than usual, which suggests that problems with attention may also factor into their movement challenges.
autistic children often have difficulties with posture, coordination and motor planning. Research consistently shows that autistic children can experience both gross and fine motor delays and/or atypical motor patterns (e.g. Green et al. 2002).
People with autism often move their bodies in ways that are unfamiliar to us. Some people rock, repeatedly touch an object, jump, and finger posture while other people come to a standstill in a doorway, sit until cued to move or turn away when someone beckons.
Some of the frequent facial features of autism are a broader upper face, shorter middle face, wider eyes, bigger mouth, and the philtrum [19]. The use of facial features as a physical marker to detect autism is one of the most exciting topics in autism research.
Current evidence suggests that children with autism are able to understand and emulate goal-directed actions, but may have specific impairments in automatic mimicry of actions without goals.” Although autism and specific language impairment are two distinct problems with different etiologies, they both occur at some ...
Failing to notice or understand the unwritten social rules. Difficulty with cooperative activities/interaction skills. A lack of attention to or interest in people. A lack of or poor awareness of other people's feelings and their own.
Walk on by:
These individuals take longer to take a step or a full stride, and have shorter strides than controls do. This means that they walk more slowly overall.
Many parents of children with autism find that their kids tend to wander away, sometimes getting into dangerous situations. They may walk away from a school outing, or go to great lengths to leave even a securely locked house.
Some common physical challenges experienced may include: Decreased balance and coordination, including decreased automatic reactions to keep themselves upright when losing balance, or protect themselves when they fall, which is especially noticeable with increased task difficulty.
People with ASD have a reduced perception of their body movement or shift relative to their own postural orientation and equilibrium. At the clinic we often hear of issues such as fatigue, awkwardness, clumsiness and instability of their foot, ankle and hip joints.
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) not only have communication and social difficulties, but also exhibit poor balance and motor control ability, which frequently affect daily activities. Effective balance and motor control rely on the integration of somatosensory, visual, and vestibular inputs.
Children with ASD tend to augment their walking stability with a reduced stride length, increased step width and therefore wider base of support, and increased time in the stance phase. Children with ASD have reduced range of motion at the ankle and knee during gait, with increased hip flexion.
A tendency to walk on tiptoe, repetitive gesticulation, nail-biting or banging of the head against a wall may be signs of a hereditary autism spectrum disorder.
A dysfunctional vestibular system, a common problem in autism, may be responsible for toe walking. The vestibular system provides the brain with feedback regarding body motion and position.
Sensory Issues
Many people with autism experience sensory processing disorder. This is more commonly known as sensory overload. Noise, crowds, bright lights, strong tastes, smells, and being touched can feel unbearable to someone with HFA. This makes going to restaurants, movies, and shopping malls difficult.
Some of these investigators have proposed that perception of time is altered among many people who have autism. Interestingly, other researchers have found that time perception can be an area of strength for certain people on the spectrum. Some people affected by autism appear to excel at time reproduction.
The popular image of a person with autism is a quiet, isolated individual who prefers solitude to social interaction. This is often true, but by no means always the case. While autistic people, by definition, have challenges with social communication, many enjoy social interaction, group activities, and friendships.
Individuals with ASD level 1 may have difficulty understanding social cues and may struggle to form and maintain personal relationships. A child with level 1 autism may understand and speak in complete sentences, but have difficulty engaging in back-and-forth conversation.
What Is High-Functioning Autism? People with level 1 or high-functioning autism are often able to function far more independently than those with more severe autism. They too have challenges with social communication, but typically have strong language skills.
People with autism have difficulty making appropriate facial expressions at the right times, according to an analysis of 39 studies1. Instead, they may remain expressionless or produce looks that are difficult to interpret. The new work is the largest yet to explore this issue.
Therefore, it appears that while some individuals may be aware they are autistic, others may not fully understand why they have difficulties connecting with people socially or engaging in conversation - yet still realize they are 'different.