A Sense of self

Self-satisfied, self-absorbed, egocentric. It is sometimes disturbing to hear these adjectives being used to describe a child with autism, as they are used in Leo Kanner's groundbreaking paper, published in 1943. Kanner surmised that because children with autism show little interest in other people, they must be overly concerned with themselves.

In fact, individuals with autism struggle with their sense of self, according to a review published in January in Neurocase.

Adults with autism are less likely to remember autobiographical details about their childhood compared with typical controls, according to a 2009 study summarised in the review.

Biologically, this could be the result of less activity in the brain's default network i.e. connections that are active when people are at rest, and believed to be involved in daydreaming and self-reflection. Individuals with autism show weaker connections between regions of the default network.

In another study, people with autism show less activity in one of these regions, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, when replying 'true' or 'false' to statements about both themselves and others. They also show fewer connections between this region and others in the default network.

By contrast, they are able to grasp the concept of their physical selves, and have no problem recognising their own faces or describing their involvement in various activities.

Still, some studies have suggested that children with autism are only able to recognise themselves in mirrors, later in their lives. To put it another way, they are older than typically developing controls before they can identify themselves in mirrors.

Studies have shown that people with autism are just as interested in objects as they are in people. These and other findings suggest that people with autism have a unique way of viewing the world and themselves, one that doesn't fit neatly into the usual labels.

As we understand more about this worldview, we hope judgments like those made by Kanner will become a rarity.

Research Study: Children's songs, clapping games improve motor and cognitive skills

Study: Children's songs, clapping games improve motor and cognitive skills

Children's songs and clapping games can develop a person's motor and cognitive skills even long after childhood, a recent Israeli study suggests.

The study, by Dr. Idit Solkin of Ben-Gurion University's arts faculty, found a direct link between children's songs and clapping games and the development of important skills, both in children and in young adults, including university students.

Study Period
Solkin conducted the study over a period of five years by interviewing school and kindergarten teachers and visiting their classrooms, where she joined the children in singing. Her original goal was to figure out why children are fascinated by singing and clapping up until the end of third grade, when these pastimes are abruptly abandoned and replaced with sport.

"This fact explains a natural evolutionary process the children are going through," she said. "The clapping and singing games appear naturally in children's lives around the age of seven, and disappear around the age of 10. In this narrow window, these activities serve as a developmental tool that reflects many of the children's needs - emotional, sociological, physiological and cognitive. It's a transition stage that leads them to the next phases of growing up."

Motor and Cognitive Skills
Though the relationship between music and intellectual development in children has been studied extensively - prompting countless parents to obtain a Mozart record or two for their young, just in case - Solkin said that no in-depth study had previously been made of the effect that singing and clapping games have on children's motor and cognitive skills.

"We found that about 20 percent of children in the first, second and third grade take up these songs and demonstrate skills absent in children who don't take part in such activities," she said. "We found that children who clap and sing write better, with fewer spelling errors and nicer handwriting. Their teachers also believe their social integration is better than that of children who don't take part in these games."

School Study
As part of the study, Solkin went to several elementary school classrooms and engaged the children in singing and clapping activities over a period of 10 weeks. "Within a very short period of time, the children who until then hadn't taken part in such activities caught up in their cognitive abilities to those who did," she said.

This finding led Solkin to conclude that singing and clapping games should be made an integral part of education for children aged six to 10, for the purpose of motor and cognitive training.

University Students
She also found that singing and clapping games have a clear effect on adults: University students who filled out her questionnaires reported that after taking up such games, they became more focused and less tense.

"These techniques are associated with childhood, and many adults treat them as a joke," she said. "But once they take them up, they report feeling more alert and in a better mood."