Abstract
‘Please explain, in just a few words, exactly what is autism’. This request, made by journalists or radio or television interviewers, inevitably produces a sinking of the heart in the hapless informant. Autism is the name given to a behaviour pattern, produced in a complicated way, as the end result of a long chain of causation and there is no way of explaining it in a few words. But, given the luxury of a whole chapter devoted to the task, justice can be done to the strange story of the nature and causes of autism and how it fits into the wide range of disorders of development of psychological functions.
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Further Reading
Cohen, D.J., Donnellan, A. and Paul, R. (eds) (1987) Handbook of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorders, Winston-Wiley, New York.
Coleman, M. and Gillberg, C. (1985) The Biology of the Autistic Syndromes, Praeger, New York.
DeMyer, M. (1979) Parents and Children in Autism, Winston-Wiley, Washington.
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders,issued quarterly by Plenum Press, New York and London.
Kanner, L. (1973) Childhood Psychosis: Initial Studies and New Insights, Winston-Wiley, New York.
Schopler, E. and Mesibov, G. (eds) (1988) Diagnosis and Assessment in Autism, Plenum, New York.
Wing, L. (ed.) (1988) Aspects of Autism: Biological Research, Gaskell, London.
Wing, L. (ed.) (1976) Early Childhood Autism, 2nd edn, Pergamon Press, Oxford.
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© 1990 Kathryn Ellis
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Wing, L. (1990). What is autism?. In: Ellis, K. (eds) Autism. Therapy in Practice Series. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6924-8_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-6924-8_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-412-61450-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-6924-8
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