Let me organize this based on the students I met in England, that is, the students I met while volunteering. This is just for my own memory and record, but if by any chance you need this material for writing a report, it would be good if you just cite the source.
In the case of students at colleges of education, taking a class on 'special education' is a required part of the bachelor's curriculum. I took it too. But the range of 'autism' I actually experienced was much broader and more varied than I'd thought, and it differed greatly from what the books covered. I'd like to organize this a little through the examples of the students I met at the time. First, let's start with autistic syndrome.
1) obsessive.
The biggest characteristic of autistic syndrome (from now on I'll write autism as autistic syndrome. The expression 'autism' (japye) somehow feels a bit negative. As I felt in England, the expression 'autistic' was used relatively value-neutrally. There was no negative connotation conveyed by this word.) is that they show 'fixation' on particular objects or particular behaviors. The word for fixation in English is usually obsessive, and there are various things one becomes obsessed with. Among examples I remember, there was D's obsession with 'birthdays' and S's obsession with 'names.' There was also a friend who was obsessed with collecting model 'airplanes.' Not all autistic people have obsessions, but many tended to. In D's case, he remembered the birthdays of everyone at the institution where I was. He didn't just remember the dates of the birthdays; he even accurately figured out which day of the week a given date fell on after hearing the date. That was one of the things that was marvelous to me. Second, in S's case, he remembered everyone's 'last name.' I think their obsessions are quite a positive aspect. I don't remember the other students' obsessions well. I wasn't in every house, and the students I was mainly in charge of were 2 with autism, one with a general developmental disability, another with a developmental disability due to cerebral palsy, and another with Williams syndrome, so my explanation of the obsessive trait ends here.
2) sensitive
They are sensitive. Rather than being sensitive to everything, they are sensitive to the 'things they dislike.' Their sensitivity appears in many areas. They are very sensitive about food they dislike, so if you give them food they dislike, they break, throw, or smash the dish. From the standpoint of someone working alongside them, this was one of the things that was a little scary at first. They are also very sensitive to 'noise,' so you can observe them becoming very stressed when someone keeps shouting or threatening. For example, if one person keeps laughing too loudly at mealtime because they find something funny, an autistic student may become afraid and ask the people around whether they are safe, or be unable to properly scoop their food and just halfheartedly poke at it. Their sensitive appearance is also connected to becoming anxious. The fact that they express stress by self-harming or breaking things when they can't eat more of the food they want (when their needs aren't met) or when they're in a space they don't want to be in could be seen as a case that shows this 'sensitive' point more clearly. A point to be careful of is that when autistic people start to get angry, a trained person needs to be aware of the need to secure distance so that they don't threaten others while angry. You should know that, depending on the case, breaking a window is a common occurrence.
And, because they're very sensitive to noise, it's very hard to take them to places like shopping centers. They get very stressed. I understand there are videos online of shopping in a shopping center from the perspective of 'a person with autism,' and it would be good to watch one. Their sensitivity to noise differs to a degree that ordinary people couldn't imagine.
3) The need for observation and attentive focus, keeping the timetable
For autistic people to grow and change, they require continuous observation and attentive focus. The students I met rarely got motivated. Even if you presented the 'target behavior to be done' in advance, they would rarely show the target behavior if no one was watching. What they needed was dozens, hundreds of instances of praise and encouragement, and once this motivation took hold, you could confirm that, true to 'their nature of valuing habit,' they carried out the behaviors right on time. In particular, keeping the 'timetable' and respecting their 'routine' can be seen as very important. Once a routine starts to go off track, it becomes fixed again in its off-track form, so the observation and attentive focus to adjust this appropriately were needed.
(2) William syndrome - Williams syndrome
K, who had Williams syndrome, looked like an ordinary person. His conversational ability and thinking ability were also very strong. But I think the biggest point where K couldn't be similar to us is that he 'tired easily, and his level of thinking, which differs from how it looks, was not at an adult's level but at the level of a 12- to 15-year-old.
1) Conversational ability
At the level of ordinary conversation he shows no problem. But he can't keep up to the adult level, the higher-level thinking that we think of. This is probably related to development, but I don't have accurate information about this syndrome to that extent. In K's case, he liked to talk about his favorite topics, 'football' and 'Gardening.' But he couldn't take an interest in other topics. (It wasn't that he didn't, but that he couldn't.) And he had a hard time taking an interest in new fields, and you could see that he tired quickly in doing physical labor (cooking, digging, and so on). It was also true that his muscular development was rather lacking overall, but the characteristic was that, at least in conversational ability, he showed the conversational level of about a 12-year-old.
2) Physical ability
I wrote earlier that he tires easily, and it's exactly as it sounds. He does like doing things, but he can't do them for 'a long time.' Taking this into account, the institution where I was had him do things he could do 'continuously.' If he was cooking, rather than having him do high-difficulty work, they guided him toward simple labor like 'peeling potatoes.' Even when we say it's at a 12-year-old level, he too was very happy about 'contributing' to some task. I felt that he showed the levels of ordinary achievement motivation, and I could feel that the institution had taken this into good account.
3) Asthma (not certain)
In K's case, he had asthma. I'm not sure whether this asthma is related to Williams syndrome or not. But the fact that he, who could do his laundry alone, his dishes alone, and his cleaning alone, couldn't run because of asthma was a rather regrettable part. Having asthma made it very hard for him to even approach exercise.
That's the end of my notes.
If there's anything you're curious about, I'd like you to leave it in the comments. I'll answer within the limits of what I know.
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