The age of detection of autism varies and may be linked to differences in the severity of disturbance and any associated retardation. Symptom intensity, overall language level, age of recognition of first disturbances and level of psychological development were examined in 222 children with pervasive developmental disorder with a mean age of 5 years. Results showed a positive correlation between language level and psychological development as well as between language level and intensity of symptoms. The central position of language in psychological development is discussed.
Clinical work and prediction of development are closely linked in the practice of early detection, diagnosis and choice of modes of intervention in young children with autism. Variables are often defined in terms of risk factors or of development, and may refer to general or specific phenomena. The purpose of this paper was, using a generalized mixed model, to test ways of measuring development and its prediction regarding joint attention (that is to say, response to and initiation of joint attention) in children with autism. Over a period of one year, seventy-seven children were followed from the age of four and a half years upwards. The results show that it is possible to identify general risk factors, but much more difficult to pinpoint specific factors. In our current state of knowledge, prediction can only be of a global nature and therefore requires the use of general markers.
Debates about the crisis of school teaching in the Western world have focused more on education as a state of the art and on psychological problems of either teachers or pupils than on situational features which are of importance for teaching and learning situations. In applying K. R. Popper's propensity theory and his idea of situational logic, a preliminary analysis of problem situations is attempted with the aim of identifying biopsychological situational elements in children's preschool life-conditions that could be simulated at school in their first years thereby enabling them to draw upon already acquired knowledge and skills. Two principal ways of acquiring experience --one instructive, the other selective --are described and discussed in relation to learning, exploration and play. It is argued that, while selection procedures are found in exploration, play and the like, instruction procedures are most often used in teaching situations despite growing evidence that instruction learning is less motivating than learning by action and selection, as various experiences with situational teaching indicate.
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