Autism from a Developmental Perspective

In nursery schools, staff encounter a diverse range of children. Some of them are autistic. We now know that early identification of autistic behaviours and the tailored support this enables are crucial to the child’s ongoing development.

This book introduces a model for understanding autism and shows how we can identify autistic behaviours in pre-school children. The concept of automatic learning behaviours is introduced to describe behaviours that are otherwise characterised as unusual, restricted and repetitive. The author describes typical and autistic development from infancy through the entire pre-school period in parallel, highlighting the similarities and differences in their development. The book takes the preschool environment as its starting point and provides many examples of behaviours in typical and autistic children, as well as guidelines on how to observe these behaviours. One chapter deals with the diagnosis of autism and how autism can be distinguished from other conditions such as ADHD, intellectual disability and developmental language disorder.

Autism from a Developmental Perspective is aimed at trainee and practising nursery teachers, as well as staff in the health, medical and care sectors, but can also be read with benefit by parents and carers of children in nursery.