BakgrundI bakgrunden ges en beskrivning för forskning kring ämnet diagnosen autism. Det kommer även en forskning kring vad forskningen säger om diagnosen autism idag. En framställning av olika styrdokument som förskolan ska följa i sitt arbete för att förhindra diskriminering i arbetet med barnen. I undersökningen tas inkluderingsbegreppet upp samt specialpedagogers förhållningssätt, arbetsmetoder och likabehandlingsplanen. Den teoretiska utgångspunkt som används i undersökningen är Bengt Perssons teori som belyser det relationella och kategoriska perspektivet med barn som har särskilda behov.SyfteSyftet med undersökningen är att undersöka och analysera hur några specialpedagoger i förskolan arbetar med de barn som har fått diagnosen autism. Meningen är att förstå hur specialpedagoger bemöter och förhåller sig till dessa barn.MetodUndersökningen är kvalitativ och intervju har använts som metod. Två specialpedagoger som är verksamma på samma förskolor intervjuades samt tre specialpedagoger som arbetade på en habilitering.ResultatFörhållningsätt och bemötande var viktigt enligt specialpedagogerna oavsett om barnet hade en diagnos eller inte. Specialpedagogerna var medvetna om läroplanens riktlinjer och att de var svåra att uppnå med de barn som hade diagnosen autism. I resultatet framkom det att specialpedagogerna hade stor kunskap och erfarenhet kring olika arbetsmetoder i sitt arbete med barnen som har diagnosen autism. I undersökningen framkom det att specialpedagogerna menade att de inte var så insatta i likabehandlingsplanens innehåll och att de arbetade med värdegrundsfrågor som är en del av likabehandlingsarbetet. / Program: Lärarutbildningen

This thesis investigates the nature of atypical attention in relation to autism spectrum disorders (ASD) symptoms, as well as the mechanisms by which it may relate to social impairment. First, does atypical non-social attention predict social impairment over time in the context of ASD, suggestive of a causal relationship? Second, if atypical attention plays a role in social impairments in ASD, what is the mechanism? With regards to the first question, longitudinal data with children at familial risk for ASD demonstrated a unidirectional relationship between non-social attention and social functioning at the cognitive level: 2-year-old non-social attention predicted 3- year-old face recognition, but there was no relationship between 2-year-old face popout and 3-year-old visual search. Additionally, we examined the relationships between ASD and ADHD symptoms over three years in children at high risk for both—children with fragile X syndrome. This allowed for investigating atypical non-social attention and social impairment at the symptoms level, again revealing a unidirectional relationship with ADHD symptoms predicting ASD symptoms over time but not the reverse. These findings suggest that atypical non-social attention may contribute to social impairment. With regards to the second question, a novel eye-tracking and visual search paradigm revealed how task irrelevant social stimuli in natural scenes can lead to poorer subsequent explicit spatial contextual memory and altered memory-guided attention orienting - effects that were moderated by autistic traits and social anxiety within a neurotypical population. Further, this research found cross-sectional development, comparing 6-10-year-old children to young adults, and investigated the neural markers of social stimuli's effect on memory. These studies suggest a possible mechanism whereby a reduced social attention bias could lead autistic individuals to learn and remember less about people and the social world and result in social impairment.

The present thesis aimed to examine if children with ASD process emotions comparably to TD children or if they show emotion processing difficulties, with particular focus on the recognition- and imitation of facial emotional expressions and on processing human faces. Furthermore, the thesis sought to contrast the performance of children (both with- and without ASD) with that of neurotypical adult participants to establish the typical level of emotion processing and to investigate if emotion processing capabilities improve with age from childhood to adulthood. Experiment 1 tested the recognition of the six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise, and also neutrality) under timed conditions, when restricted stimulus presentation length- (1200ms, 200ms, no limit) and increased pressure to respond were introduced (1200ms limit, no limit), as well. In addition, the experiment compared participants’ performance from human facial expressions and from the expressions of animated characters. The Animated Characters Stimulus Set has been developed and validated before the main experiment. The overall performance of children with ASD was comparable to that of TD children, whose superiority only emerged with the introduction of additional task demands through limiting the length of stimuli presentation or applying a temporal restriction on the response window. Using animated characters to present emotions, instead of human actors, however, improved emotion recognition and alleviated the difficulty of additional task demands, especially for children with ASD, when facial expressions were only briefly presented. Experiment 2 tested the effects of face inversion and in-plane rotations (from 0° to 330°, in 30° increments) on the recognition of the six basic emotions (and neutrality). Children with ASD and TD children recognised emotions with comparable accuracy, while neurotypical adults have outperformed the two child groups. Overall, emotion recognition decreased gradually as rotations approached full inversion; although, this pattern was most prominent in typical adults, whereas the emotion recognition of TD children and especially children with ASD varied considerably across rotations. In contrast to adults and TD children, inversion effects were only found in children with ASD when they observed negative- or more complex emotions, thereby showing evidence both for the availability of configural face processing and for the use of feature-based strategies. Experiment 3 tested imitative behaviour by comparing performance on emotional facial expressions (reflecting anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise, and also neutrality), and non-emotional facial gestures and bilateral bodily actions/movements, presented in short video clips. The style of the imitation was also examined (subtle- vs strong stimulus intensity). A video stimulus set was developed and validated for the purpose of the experiment with a series of pilot studies. Results showed that the imitations of children with ASD were less intense than those of TD children and typical adults only when the participants were copying emotional facial expressions but not when they reproduced non-emotional facial and bodily actions. Moreover, children with ASD were less able to copy the style of the presented actions (only for the imitation of emotional facial expressions) than the two neurotypical groups. Overall, the present thesis demonstrated that the emotion processing of children with ASD was consistently comparable to TD children’s, when their performance was contrasted in experimental, facial emotion recognition and face processing tasks, and in a behavioural study, which assessed their imitations of emotional facial expressions. On the other hand, it was also shown that the emotion processing of children with ASD involved atypical features both when they were recognising- and reproducing emotions. Compared to TD children, they showed increased sensitivity to the negative effects of additional task difficulties and their advantage in utilising featural face processing strategies seemed to be greater, as well, while they were less able to imitate the exact style of the presented emotional facial expressions. These findings support a number of theoretical approaches; however, the notion of an early deficit in social motivation seems to be both appealing and promising in studying and developing socio-emotional functioning in ASD as its perspective could be beneficial to reflect on and possibly affect multiple underlying features.

Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is the most commonly inherited form of intellectual disability as well as a leading genetic cause of autism spectrum disorder. It is typically the result of a trinucleotide repeat expansion in the Fmr1 gene which leads to loss of the encoded protein, fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP). Animal model studies over the past twenty years, mainly focusing on the Fmr1 knockout (KO) mouse, have uncovered several cellular and behavioural phenotypes associated with the loss of FMRP. Seminal work using the Fmr1 KO mouse found that metabotropic glutamate receptor mediated long-term depression (mGluR-LTD) in the hippocampus is both exaggerated (Huber et al., 2002) and independent of new protein synthesis (Nosyreva & Huber, 2006). These findings, together with studies focusing on other brain regions including the prefrontal cortex (Zhao et al., 2005) and amygdala (Suvrathan et al., 2010), have contributed to the ‘mGluR theory of FXS’ (Bear et al., 2004) which suggests that group 1 metabotropic receptor function is exaggerated in FXS. The development of genetically modified rats allows the modelling of FXS in an animal model with more complex cognitive and social behaviours than has been previously available. It also provides an opportunity for comparison of phenotypes across mammalian species that result from FMRP deletion. While the study of Fmr1 rats can significantly contribute to our understanding of FXS, we must first confirm the assumption that cellular phenotypes are conserved across mouse and rat models. In this thesis, we first aimed to test if the key cellular and synaptic phenotypes that contribute to the ‘mGluR theory of FXS’ are conserved in both the hippocampus and amygdala of Fmr1 KO rats. In agreement with mouse studies, we found mGluR-LTD was both enhanced and independent of new protein synthesis in Fmr1 KO rats. Similarly, group 1 mGluR long-term potentiation (LTP) was significantly decreased at both cortical and thalamic inputs to the lateral amygdala. Secondly, we investigated mPFC intrinsic excitability and synaptic plasticity in Fmr1 KO rats. The mPFC plays a key role in several of the cognitive functions that are affected in fragile X patients including attention, cognitive flexibility and anxiety (Goto et al., 2010). The regulation of mPFC plasticity and intrinsic excitability has also been associated with mGluR signalling. Here we found that intralaminar LTP in the mPFC showed an age-dependent deficit in Fmr1 KO rats. The mPFC also provides top down control of several cortical and subcortical regions through long-range connectivity. One pathway of interest in the study of FXS is mPFC-amygdala connectivity which is associated with fear learning and anxiety behaviours (Burgos- Robles et al., 2009). Using retrograde tracing, we showed layer 5 pyramidal neurons that provide long-range connections to the basal amygdala were intrinsically hypoexcitable in Fmr1 KO rats. This phenotype could possibly be explained through homeostatic changes in the axon initial segment which regulates neuronal excitability. This work provides the first evidence for conservation of cellular phenotypes associated with the loss of FMRP in mice and rats which will be key in the interpretation of future studies using Fmr1 KO rats. We also provide evidence of deficits in mPFC long-range connectivity to the basal amygdala, a pathway that is associated with FXS relevant behaviours. Together this highlights how study of the rat model of FXS can complement existing studies of Fmr1 KO mice as well as provide new insights into the pathophysiology resulting from the loss of FMRP. Some of this work was published in Till et al., 2015.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairments in social interaction and the presence of stereotypic behaviors or restricted interests. To explore possible consequences of an excitatory/inhibitory (E/I) imbalance on the visual system in ASD, we investigated spatial suppression in 16 children with ASD and 16 neurotypical comparison children from 6 - 12 years of age using a visual motion processing task during high-density electroencephalography (EEG) recording in order to derive the N1 event related potential (ERP). Consistent with prior behavioral research, neurotypical participants displayed spatial suppression in conditions of large, high-contrast sinusoidal gratings as indexed by delayed N1 response latency. As predicted, children with ASD displayed weakened surround suppression, i.e. shorter N1 response latency to large, high-contrast sinusoidal gratings. However, this study also unexpectedly revealed that children with ASD showed longer N1 latencies in response to small, high-contrast sinusoidal gratings as compared to neurotypical control children. Although there were no statistically significant differences between children with ASD and NT children for N1 peak amplitude, there was a strong negative correlation between N1 amplitude represented in absolute values for large, high-contrast sinusoidal gratings and hyper-responsiveness item mean scores on the Sensory Experiences Questionnaire for children with ASD, but not for NT children. As predicted, no significant differences were found within or between groups in the low-contrast experiment. Our results are indicative of weakened spatial suppression and deficits in contrast gain in children with ASD, suggestive of an underlying E/I imbalance in ASD.

O manejo clínico das instâncias constitutivas da subjetividade por meio da música tem encontrado na identidade sonora um de seus eixos centrais. Ao mesmo tempo, diversas aplicações terapêuticas têm fundamentado sua justificativa na teoria da musicalidade comunicativa, que considera a capacidade de produzir e reconhecer as formas e qualidades expressivas no tempo que caracterizam e imprimem sentido aos sons como o fundamento das interações sociais, mesmo nas etapas iniciais do desenvolvimento. Apoiando-se na ideia de que crianças com autismo conservam tal capacidade, não obstante os problemas comportamentais, sociais e de linguagem, dispositivos que empregam a música com finalidades terapêuticas vêm apresentando resultados benéficos a essa população. Esta pesquisa pretendeu avaliar se a musicalidade da criança com autismo pode ser abordada com fins terapêuticos pelo uso de canções que se relacionem com sua identidade sonora e instaurem um campo possível para o surgimento de movimentos expressivos e de interação social. Para tanto, realizou-se uma oficina terapêutica com a participação de cinco crianças entre quatro e nove anos, durante um ano, com frequência semanal e duração de uma hora, em um total de 20 sessões. Os procedimentos empregados foram a improvisação musical, o jogo musical e recriação de canções. As sessões foram registradas com câmera de vídeo e segmentos foram selecionados e microanalisados, sendo posteriormente descritos em linguagem verbal, partituras musicais e gráficos de análise acústica, incorporados a estudos de caso individuais que utilizaram as categorias da Avaliação Psicanalítica aos 3 anos como indicadores clínicos. Simultaneamente, realizou-se um levantamento bibliográfico sobre livros, artigos de periódicos, teses e dissertações acadêmicas que incluíssem os temas pesquisados, resultando em uma revisão narrativa de estudos em um amplo escopo de disciplinas. A pesquisa indica que a música e as canções produzem efeitos terapêuticos em crianças com autismo, que os mesmos podem ser compreendidos em suas dimensões intrapsíquica, intersubjetiva e sociocultural. A oficina de música contribui também para o desenvolvimento da função psíquica da voz e a flexibilização do desenvolvimento de células musicais em motivos e figuras mais complexos. Também gera possibilidades de imitação, sincronização e coordenação de movimentos, facilitando a interação social entre seus participantes. Uma das dinâmicas que produziram engajamentos sociais mais intensos foi a construção em grupo de narrativas a partir de ideias musicais e temáticas trazidas pelas crianças. Além disso, a música teve um efeito mais eficiente que ordens, pedidos e reprimendas verbais na contenção dos movimentos agitados e agressivos de algumas crianças. Assim, a hipótese foi parcialmente comprovada, tendo em vista os diversos movimentos expressivos e de interação social evidenciados. Por outro lado, a noção teórica de que esses processos se orientam em torno do conceito de identidade não foi sustentada pela presente pesquisa, já que os movimentos de constituição subjetiva mais importantes verificados na parte empírica poderiam ser traduzidos como processos de identificação, e não de expressão de identidades. / The clinical management of the constitutive instances of subjectivity through music has found in sound identity its central axis. At the same time, a number of therapeutic applications have based their justification upon the theory of communicative musicality, which considers the ability to produce and recognize the shapes and expressive qualities in time that characterize and provide sense to sounds as the foundation of social interactions, even in the early stages of development. Relying on the idea that children with autism retain this ability, despite the behavioral, social, and language problems, devices that use music for therapeutic purposes have shown beneficial outcomes for this population. This research aimed to evaluate whether the musicality of children with autism can be approached with therapeutic purposes by using songs that relate to their sound identity and introduce a possible field for the emergence of expressive movements and social interactions. To this end, a therapeutic atelier was organized with the participation of five children aged between four and nine years, during one year, with a weekly frequency and duration of an hour, for a total of 20 sessions. The procedures employed were musical improvisation, musical play and recreation of songs. The sessions were recorded with a video camera and segments were selected and microanalyzed, being later described in verbal language, musical scores and acoustic analysis graphics, embedded in individual case studies using the categories of the Psychoanalytic Evaluation After 3 years as clinical indicators. Simultaneously, a bibliographic survey of books, journal articles, theses and academic dissertations that include the investigated subjects was performed, resulting in a narrative review of studies on a broad range of disciplines. The research indicates that music and songs produce therapeutic effects in children with autism, which can be understood in their intra-psychic, inter-subjective and socio-cultural dimensions. The music atelier also contributes to the development of the psychic function of the voice and the flexibility of the development of musical cells into motifs and more complex figures. It also generates possibilities for imitation, synchronization and coordination of movements, facilitating social interaction among its participants. One of the dynamics that produced more intense social engagements was the group construction of narratives from musical and thematic ideas brought by the children. In addition, music had a more efficient effect than orders, requests and verbal reprimands in containing the agitated and aggressive movements of some children. Thus, the hypothesis was partially proven, in view of the many expressive movements and social interactions. On the other hand, the theoretical notion that these processes are oriented by the concept of identity was not supported by this research, since the most important movements of subjective constitution evidenced in the empirical part might be translated as identification processes, not of identity expression

The purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate general education teachers’ perceptions of being prepared to work with students identified with autism, grade level assignments, time concerns, and the presence of an ancillary attendant in their classrooms. Participants in this study were located in one city school system in North East Tennessee. All data were collected through an online survey distributed to 230 teachers, of whom 79 responded. Four research questions were analyzed, 3 with single sample t tests and 1 with a one-way ANOVA. Results indicated no statistical significance regarding grade level assignments and general education teachers’ perceptions of inclusion of students identified with autism. General education teachers who participated in this research indicated significant negative perceptions of feeling prepared to manage social issues, communication issues, and aggressive behaviors associated with autism as well as having adequate time to work with students identified with autism. Significant positive perceptions were indicated for the presence of an ancillary attendant in their classroom to assist with students identified with autism.

Le dispositif institutionnel s’avère particulièrement pertinent pour le traitement d’enfants psychotiques et autistes, comme le démontrent les expériences des premiers pédagogues et psychanalystes d’enfants en Europe à partir des années 1920. Nous allons situer les modalités d’intervention institutionnelle nous permettant de vérifier cette hypothèse,à partir de l’analyse de quatre expériences institutionnelles orientées par la psychanalyse. En effet, la doctrine freudienne et lacanienne permettent au clinicien d’inventer et de renouveler sans cesse les moyens d’accueillir les productions du sujet psychotique, en leur accordant toute sa dignité. Une clinique des psychoses s’élabore de cette manière et donne lieu à la transmission de ses résultats. Cela permet d’envisager une application de la psychanalyse en Équateur, à travers l’étude des paramètres permettant la mise en place d’un dispositif inédit d’élaboration clinique en institution pour enfants atteints de troubles psychiques. / The institutional device turns out to be particularly relevant for the treatment of psychotic and autistic children, as demonstrated by the experiences of early childhood educators and psychoanalysts in Europe from the 1920s onwards. We are going to place the modalities of institutional intervention, which allows us to verify this hypothesis, based on the analysis of four different institutional experiences oriented by psychoanalysis. The Freudian and Lacanian doctrine gives the clinician the opportunity to invent and to constantly renew the means to admit and encourage the productions of the psychotic subject, giving them all their place and dignity. A clinical approche of psychosis develops in this way, and results in the transmission of its effects. This allows to consider an application of psychoanalysis in Ecuador, through the study of the parameters for the implementation of an unprecedented clinical device, in order to treat on an institutionnal level children suffering from psychic disorders.

The purpose of this thesis is to determine assistive technology-based instructions in the area of Living for postsecondary education students with autism spectrum disorder and/ or intellectual and developmental disabilities for investigating the types of AT support in improving independent living skills. An electronic search was conducted using the following databases: ERIC (Education Source version), ERIC (EBSCO host version), ERIC (ProQuest version), PsycINFO, and Google Scholar. Seven peer-reviewed journals were searched between 2008 and 2018. The references identified and relevant articles were scanned to find additional relevant literature. Papers referring to an assistive-technology based intervention that targets the area of independent living and be taught within the postsecondary program were included. Participants were diagnosed with ASD and/ or IDD and were enrolled in a postsecondary program designed for individuals with developmental disabilities. Only single-case studies or experimental/quasi- experimental designed studies were included. A total of 155 articles were found. The references and abstracts were saved in Endnote reference manager software for the selection process. First, 19 duplicates were found and excluded. A selection process was then carried out with the remaining 136 articles. The articles were screened by title and abstract, and 32 articles were excluded. Subsequently, full-text screening was conducted, and eight peer-reviewed articles and two dissertations were left. To conclude, the types of assistive technology while teaching independent living skills to postsecondary students with disabilities were reported. The skills were taught by using assistive technology were diverse. Results indicated the positive effectiveness of using assistive technology-based instructional practices in teaching independent living skills.

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