Autism research

There are a number of research organisations and documents on the Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Some of them are listed here for your reference.

Autism Research Centre

Their mission is to understand the biomedical causes of autism spectrum conditions, and develop new and validated methods for assessment and intervention.

For more information visit the Autism research centre.

Follow this link to the Autism Research Centre website for research resources. — Image: Visit the Autism Research Centre website.

The cycle of tantrums

Problems related to stress and anxiety are common in children and youth with Asperger syndrome (AS), high-functioning autism (HFA), and related disabilities.

Stress and anxiety in these children is often triggered or results from environmental stressors such as:

having to face challenging social situations with inadequate social awareness, social understanding, and social problem-solving skills
a sense of loss of control
difficulty in predicting outcomes of everyday events and behaviours.

Professor Brenda Smith Myles discusses The cycle of tantrums, rage and meltdowns.

Read about Professor Brenda Smith Myles.

Cycle of tantrums graph showing how a person moves from calm to an anger peak to a post crisis depletion state before entering recovery. — Image: Cycle of tantrums

Mindmap of Autism

We always try to find out what is the antecedent or cause of a behavior. There are 4 main categories of what triggers the behaviors of people with autism. The 4 main categories are:

Attention – they want your attention
Escape – it is their way to try to get away from a situation
Tangibles – there may be a certain tangible (eg. toy, sweet, etc) that they want
Sensory – they need a sensory input.

The picture is a Mind Map of the different reason why a child with autism may exhibit difficult behaviors and how do we deal with them.