The Diagnosis

The diagnosis for the boy John to have autism was made by a clinical psychologist or a physician specialized in the area of autism. The diagnosis and assessment mainly involve a multidisciplinary team comprising of psychologists, psychiatrists, and language and speech pathologist. The psychologists administered John with assessment to find out information concerning his behavior and level of development. The Speech and language pathologist (SLP) made the assessment of the language, speech and communicative behavior of the boy. Medical assessment was also conducted to examine causes if the symptoms are like other characteristics of autism and can be seen in other disorders.

Further, the developmental and medical history of the student is with John’s parents. The information presented is a combination of the assessments so as to generate an overall picture of John’s condition (Partington, 2006).The major areas of assessment were on the study of unusual behaviors, social interaction, and communication. Other areas included cognitive deficits, attention difficulties, anxiety, and unusual responses to stimuli. The major areas that John has difficulties in are in communication and social interaction. His difficulties in communication and language use especially at his early years of growth of 1-4 years are an indication of the problem of autism.

His challenge ranges from the nonverbal to the main use of vocabularies, as well as, social use of language. This can be seen in his repeated use of imitated phrases by persons around him without having any meaning to the context. This means that Johnny has a problem with pragmatics. He has limited social interaction, which is an issue that has made him be worried on how to make friends. He suffers from the impairment of understanding social interaction and in reading. The social cognitive deficit that makes him not to realize the unique point of view of other people (Turner, Stone, Pozdol, & Coonrod, 2006, 243–265).In terms of behavioral assessments and assessment of interests, John was found to show distinctive and unusual behaviors, such as the idea that he has restricted number of interests. For example, at the age of four John had developed a keen interest in lampposts and vacuum cleaners. He was also with the same activities and could not change his routines. John is to face the difficulty of attention and this impacted on his ability for social and communication development.

This is also an aspect associated with autism. Individuals with autism normally have difficulty of attending to relevant information of the environment and cues, and can only concentrate on only a limited portion of the whole environment. John is to have islets of ability, which can be seen in his areas of interest. For John, his interest lies on numbers and lists, which make him, be good in mathematics. This is one of his main areas of interests that make him excel beyond the average population. He has rote memory in numerical calculations that enable him be an expertise and shows brilliance and ability in this filed. This is because such a person understands the rules that govern time and dates and can rapidly and automatically apply them. As a person with this ability, can make quick mathematical calculations, such as, multiplication and divisions mentally, in an astonishing speed. This assessment was done effectively to cover all areas for assessing a student with autism and exceptional abilities (Delmolino, 2006, p 959-963).

Reference

Delmolino, L (2006) Use of DQ for estimating cognitive ability in young children with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 36, 959–963.

Turner, L, Stone, W, Pozdol, S, & Coonrod E (2006) Follow-up of children with autism spectrum disorders from age 2 to age 9. Autism, 10, 243–265.

Partington, J (2006) the assessment of basic language and learning skills-Revised (ABLLS–R). Pleasant Hill: CA: Behavior Analysts, Inc.

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