Autism Research Paper

Autism has come a long way to be recognize as a mental condition. People nowadays see autism as a mental condition that is common in today’s world. However, most of the people tend to misinterpret what the truly definition of autism is. A numerous amount of people tends to believe that it is only a single condition. When in reality it is a spectrum.  They call it a “spectrum”, because autism tends to displays a wide range in challenges and strengths by the person that has this mental condition and spectrum defines the meaning of what autism is. A great amount of people leans to ask themselves what is an autism spectrum disorder? Autism is referred as “a range of conditions characterize by challenges with social repetitive behaviors, speech and nonverbal communication, as well as by unique strengths and differences.” (www.autismspeaks.org, 2012). With autism being such a common mental condition. There has been a numerous amount of research methods that have been develop and are developing today. There are also a various of amount of psychological theories that believe they know what caused autism and what it is.

Going back to the psychological theories about autism here are someone. Let’s start with what the world knows. Such as that every psychologist has a different perspective on the meaning of autism. Some are more advance on this topic and some are not. However,  the true is that there are very different theories. Yet, most of agree on something, that every single human being in this world tends to socializes differently, nevertheless when it comes to an autistic child their social world is completely different from a child who does not have autism. For an autistic child their world flips around when they try to socialize with others. The view of their social world can be complicated and hard to deal with because they tend to have a very troubled time understanding why people act a certain way. Sometimes they are viewed as “highly unpredictable and uninterpretable” (Tager, 1999).  One of the many theories that some psychologist believe is that most of the autistic children tend to “experience situations in which they need to give answers but do not know how to respond” (Halabi, 2017). This is caused because of the mental condition they have.

There various types of research methods that are now used to research autism. Such as the following five: single subject research, correlational research, longitudinal studies, experimental studies, and lastly clinical trial studies. This fives types of research studies are used to study different methods to help autistic children have an easier life while dealing with this condition. However, the two main research methods that are going to be discuss are the single subject and the correlation research. The single subject research is used for “therapeutic setting where there is a one to one relationship” (www.researchautism.org, 2017). The advantage of this research is to behavioral analysis the person who has autism. Another type of research known to date is the correlation research, this research advantage is that “a lot of information can be collected about a large number of people at one time” (www.researchautism.org, 2017). Using these two types of research they have developed different ways to help autistic children.

Like everything else in this world there will always be negative aspects with this mental condition. However, they are not wrong on some part of it because autistic kids do have a higher risk of having these different types of medical issues such as “seizures, gastrointestinal disorder, hearing loss, mental retardation, metabolic disorder and ADHD.” (McLaughlin, 2004). However, this is one of the negative aspects of having autism. Nevertheless, at the same time there are good aspects of having autism. Recent studies indicate “that alleles for autism overlap broadly with alleles for high intelligence” (Journal.frontiersin.org, 2016). This is actually truly amazing because overall autism is seen as below-average IQ. Yet, in this recent studies that have proven the world wrong and have been seen as more intelligent people. Overall, everything in this world has good and bad aspects and the people will listen to what they want to hear.

With good and bad aspects comes controversy. The controversy is between vaccines and autism has been a public debate for a while now. The debate is about health versus medicine. A lot of people believe that the root of autism is caused through vaccines. However, this analysis poses “an alternative way of understanding the vaccines-autism controversy, suggesting that it is partly fueled by differing perceptions of the boundary between science and non-science.” (Scott, 2016). However, everyone has a different perspective of vaccines. For example, Wendy Chung did a  TED talk about “Autism- what we know (and what we don’t know yet)”, in her TED talk she discusses that autism is not cause from vaccines. She mentions that “in fact the original research study suggested that was the case was completely fraudulent.” (www.ted.com/talks/wendy_chung, 2014). However, there are many things that can cause autism but the controversy here is about how vaccines can cause autism. Till this day it is a common misconception but the world is still researching for what caused autism to happen.

In conclusion, autism can be defined as many different things and various people can say otherwise. But overall a lot of people “are more positive towards interacting with individuals with autism” (Jensen, 2016). This is a huge deal because there is a various amount of humans’ beings that are not very positive towards mental conditions but it is amazing of how autistic people are viewed. Like any other mental condition autism will always have different theories of how it originated. And because it is a mental condition there will be always be different researches on how to better the mental condition. At the same time there will always be positive and negative components on this topic. Lastly controversies will always exist on how autism started and what caused it.

Autism has come a long way to be recognize as a mental condition. People nowadays see autism as a mental condition that is common in today’s world. However, most of the people tend to misinterpret what the truly definition of autism is. A numerous amount of people tends to believe that it is only a single condition. When in reality it is a spectrum.  They call it a “spectrum”, because autism tends to displays a wide range in challenges and strengths by the person that has this mental condition and spectrum defines the meaning of what autism is. A great amount of people leans to ask themselves what is an autism spectrum disorder? Autism is referred as “a range of conditions characterize by challenges with social repetitive behaviors, speech and nonverbal communication, as well as by unique strengths and differences.” (www.autismspeaks.org, 2012). With autism being such a common mental condition. There has been a numerous amount of research methods that have been develop and are developing today. There are also a various of amount of psychological theories that believe they know what caused autism and what it is.