An Encumbering Emotional Dilemma in Adulthood - Essay Example

? Autism: An encumbering emotional dilemma in adulthood Autism is an intricate performance defined, stationary condition of undeveloped brain, which is emerging as a subject of great concern due to augmentation in number of cases with time. Pediatricians across the world find prevalence of autism greater than other conditions namely spina bifida, and genetic anomaly, trisomy of 21st chromosome, Down Syndrome. Autism, a non-disease condition displays genetic and non-genetic basis, encompassing a wide range of developmental disorders called autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs). An extensive variety of behavioral provinces involving- lack of social interaction by the child; inappropriate language and communication skills; diminished activities. Autism is a subtle yet very devastating neurobiological abnormality which can be either high-functioning or low-functioning. The condition can be noticed in childhood but it is not confined to development phase rather it has lifelong implications. Considering the epidemiology of autism, various environmental factors encompassing exposure to teratogens, responsible for causing developmental abnormalities, perinatal abuse, infections during prenatal phase involving rubella and cytomegalovirus, epilepsy are some probable reasons that are known to be responsible for causing autism and therefore considered as a disorder of development. Indicating that symptoms do not change with age of autistics. Moreover, studies reveal that characteristics become more apparent in later stages of developmental phase while some of the features tend to disappear with time. A few of the non-clinical symptoms observed in autistic individuals can be a cause of concern in early developmental phase when the baby does not respond or turn around when called by name or does not react to teasing and even does not look towards the object being pointed during the infancy phase. Autism can emerge after a period of seemingly normal development. Emotional/social responsiveness can, however, accelerate in later stages of development, thereby unresponsiveness at these stages cannot be a perfect determinant of autism, because those who seem socially/emotionally responsive can display severe impairments in social interaction at later stages or vice-a -versa. Individuals with autism find obscurity in socializing, display emotional predicament and thereby inflict challenge for themselves as well as for the family and those who are associated with them. Autistic individuals struggle to understand their emotions and exhibit poor emotional recognition for others as well. They find social emotions confusing and require a detailed explanation (Capps et al., 1993) resulting in social exclusion as emotional recognition facilitates interpersonal connections early in and throughout life. Research reveals that as early as 3-4 months, babies can potentially differentiate static images of sadness, happiness and surprise and by the age of 7 months can differentiate dynamic happy and angry facial expressions (Young-Browne, Rosenfield & Horowitz, 1977; Soken & Pick, 1992). These abilities typically improve with age and children by the age of 4 years can discriminate emotions of happiness, sadness and anger with nearly perfect accuracy together with increasing capability to distinguish fear and surprise (Widen & Russell, 2003). According to Klucharev & Sams (2004), recognition of emotions usually requires multi-sensory processing as they are often conveyed from speech prosody, facial and body gestures requiring skills to divide attention and focus on relevant information in processes which are often carried out subconsciously (Kuusikko et al., 2009). Ability to recognize emotions on faces is important as faces convey a lot of information about the internal state of mind; ability to understand information will determine their aptitude to appropriately adapt to social environment and thus is a crucial part of social interactions (Thomas et al., 2007). Opposite effect, emotional dysfunction, is characterized by lack of visual contact and attention to human facial expression which otherwise is considered to be a communicative tool through to express emotional states and attitudes (Balconi & Carrera, 2008). Social incongruity in such individuals may be due to abnormal eye-to-eye contact as ASD children tend to avoid eye-to-eye gaze (Kuusikko et al., 2009). Research suggests such individuals focus on the lower part (mouth) rather than the upper part (eyes) in making conclusions about facial emotion (Gross, 2004; Klin et al., 2002). Study of emotions in people with autism hasn’t been particularly fast or straight-forward but has been improved upon through the use of reliable and systematic interview and observation schedules in the diagnosis of autism worldwide. Nevertheless over 35 studies have examined ability of children and adults with autism to recognize common facial expressions, however, not many studies have determined whether these individuals have similar difficulties in older adulthood as they do in younger childhood (Rump et al, 2009). Opinion varies to establish the cause. Whilst some argue that ability remains intact throughout the development process, others argue that the reason could be impaired relative controls. Other studies have shown that even by adolescence individuals may still find difficulty in recognizing more subtle emotions (Herba et al., 2006; Thomas et al., 2007). This skill along with the speed to process emotions is thought to develop through adolescence before reaching its peak in adulthood (Thomas et al., 2007). The present article aims to determine this through discussion and opinions expressed in relation to the diverse methodologies utilized to illustrate the abilities of autism cases and to recognize impaired emotions in adulthood as compared to childhood, thereby presentation the fact that no emotional development occurred in these individuals. This paper also highlights neurological developmental properties/pathways of autism condition which may be important to understand in order to ameliorate the effects of the condition to build up intervention tools to deal with this ‘isolating’ condition. This is so as typically developing children are exposed to these emotions and learn about them instinctively without any training while, children with autism are required to learn such emotions, a process which is slow and difficult for them and perhaps can be improved upon. Previous literature has indicated that children with autism, more-so high-functioning autism, may have good comprehension of simple emotional correlates while having poor correlates for complex emotions such as pride, surprise etc (Bormann-Kischkel, Vilsmeier & Baude, 1995; Yirmiya et al., 1992). This is important as similar difficulties in recognizing emotions have been suggested to occur in adults with ASD also more so with negative emotions such as fear and sadness in photos or pictures. London-based Psychiatrist Peter Hobson made pioneering observations that led him to deduce that children with autism have a hindered ability to interpret emotions in actions and voice (Frith, 2003). This suggestion would be a valid explanation of their inability to integrate socially with others. Hobson, in his ingenious experiments, found that 2/3 children of the same verbal mental age (VMA) of 10 years (though in their teens) with autism were poor at emotion- matching in experiments whereby he presented emotions of happiness, sadness, anger and fear by means of video and each child had to match them up across different modes of presentation (Frith, 2003). They did so with many errors whilst children without autism or those which were mildly retarded and of the same nonverbal mental age performed without errors (Frith, 2003). Also those of higher VMA had better recognition of emotions as they also had better understanding of mental states (Frith, 2003). This suggests implications for brain development, and James Blair postulated that regions of brain responsible for instinctive empathy, like those responsible for mentalizing, could be a subject for error development and probably results in the inability to feel instinctive sympathy (Frith, 2003). This was based on evidence that certain emotional expressions trigger innate brain mechanisms, located in circuits involving the amygdala (Frith, 2003). These circuits are activated in both subtle and less subtle situations but, however, when these regions are impaired, instinctive species-specific stimuli are poorly recognized and emotional development is devastated. Children in this study, though they were found to be able to bear a correct and appropriate representation of an emotion, may still be impaired in producing a specific label for the emotion (Balconi et al, 2011). A case for this will be made further in the essay. Studies by Rump et al. (2009) agreed with Balconi et al. (2011), to demonstrate the findings and explain that people with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) display divergent behaviours in the processing and understanding emotional states. This is typically found to be the case in recognizing emotion in the face or voice. However the description of these studies, concerning the recognition of emotions in a voice is beyond the scope of this essay. The poor accuracy increases as the emotions to be recognized become more complex and various studies have suggested that both adults and children with ASC tend to be less perfect in identifying emotions from faces as compared to typically developed individuals (Humphreys et al., 2007; Capps, Yirmiya & Sigman, 1992). However, the divergence in emotional decoding in individuals with ASC is not consistent as children and adolescents with ASC did not differ from their comparison groups in their capability to recognize facial expressions when the faces were paired with matching words as indicated in studies by Grossman et al. (2002). A concern is raised over the legitimacy and uniformity of findings in this part of research, specifically with the differences identified between children with autism and their age-matched controls. Findings by Grossman et al. (2002) were reiterated by studies carried out by Lindner & Rosen (2006) which found that children and adolescents with autism did not perform worse than their typically developing counterparts in deciding the emotions expressed in an acted out scene when the emotion was expressed in the semantic content of the actor’s verbalization. When this verbal semantic cue was absent, the AS participants encountered difficulties in identifying the intended emotion. These findings indicate that individuals with ASC rely on linguistics semantics, where their emotion decoding ability is spared (Rump et al., 2009). The fact was confirmed by the studies conducted by Lindner & Rosen (2006), suggesting that by the age of 10 years, both low and high functioning children with autism are worse than their typically developing counterparts (controls) at labeling basic, prototypic expressions. These differences are minimal by the age of 12 years of age when compared with their typically developing counterparts and was further affirmed by Capps et al. (1992) and Grossman et al. (2000). This is further supported by an examination of upper facial basic emotion recognition in children and adolescents by Kuusikko et al. (2009), their findings highlight that older ASD group (> 12 years) performed better than the younger ASD group (1 sec) and holistic ( Read More