ASD Diagnosis With Cardio Information

¶ … social skills, internalizing and externalizing symptoms, and Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia in Autism." It was authored by Neuhaus et al. In 2014. This journal article conducts original research to determine the relationship between Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA) in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) to discern if there were any significant effects for social functioning and either internalizing or externalizing psychopathology symptoms.

Significantly, the authors were able to ascertain that children with ASD had less parasympathetic cardiac control than those without this condition, which correlates to more difficulty in social situations for the former. The crux of understanding the research and the findings in this study pertains to the concept of RSA. RSA is widely understood as a means of assessing "lowered heart rate variability" (Neuhaus et al., 2014, p. 730).

This fact is important in terms of social skills and the social development of children with ASD because it provides tangible evidence of the difficulty that they experience in social settings. In most social settings, children without ASD have higher rates of RSA which help to reflect their engagement in social interactions.

The fact that children with ASD generate consistently lower rates of RSA -- both during social settings and even while at rest -- is indicative of the fact that there are definite physical components of this condition which play substantial roles in their ability to socialize and relate to others. The authors (2014) denoted that "RSA correlates with a variety of social skills and behaviors, including social responsiveness, emotion recognition, peer engagement, spontaneous eye gazes, and receptive language" (p. 730).

The method deployed by the authors to determine the fact that those with ASD had lower rates of RSA than those without it was fairly simple. The parents of 18 children with ASD and 18 children without ASD were given a number of questionnaire instruments to evaluate their social capabilities. Additionally, these children were brought into a neutral site in which electrocardiographs were tested to determine their rates of RSA.

The findings indicated that the rates of RSA were consistently lower for children with Autism, and that they also had more pronounced difficulty in social interactions than their counterparts (who functioned as controls) did. These data were processed through a regression model in order to determine these findings and their relationship to internalizing and externalizing psychopathology symptoms. The authors (2014) ascertained that "externalizing symptoms had a positive associate with RSA in our regression model" (p.

733).Thus, the methods of the authors were definitely solid and the article contained a brief yet informative literature. This article provides a viable means for individuals to learn about some of the physiological aspects of social issues plaguing children with ASD, and should be commended for that reason. This article, then, expands my knowledge of social skills for children or adolescents with ASD and their families in a number of different ways. It truly helps to explicate the difficulty that such children have in terms of emotional expression.

Whether or not a child understands emotions and feels them, if he or she has ASD the feeling of those emotions will be expressed differently for the simple fact that these children are not as engaged in social interactivity as they would be without ASD. Quite simply, their heart rates (RSA) is not reflecting emotional engagement in social interaction, thus it will be difficult for them to express these emotions the way that other people might.

The findings for this study help to provide a physiological basis for what I had previously believed was a purely cognitive phenomenon, the perceived dullness of children with ASD in social settings. Additionally, the article expands my knowledge of the issues pertaining to emotional understanding that seem intrinsically linked to emotional expression. It helps to validate the viewpoint that children with ASD are not unable to understand emotions -- particularly those that are verbal. Instead, they are able to do so in a way that is not always expressed well.

Moreover, their ability to understand emotions may be hampered by their general dearth of engagement in social situations. What I believe the data about RSA suggests is that in certain situations that might be socially engaging for some, such situations are not as engaging for individuals with ASD. The implications, of course, are that there are alternative ways to engage such children. These ramifications help to expand my knowledge of the social skills for children with ASD pertaining to play and recreation as well. One of the more interesting.