Slade A.

Sifuentes

EDU 205

Disability Paper

Dr. Brent Daigle

Autism

Autism is a disability that effects the learning of a person socially, as well as many other

learning difficulties. The proper and cited definition is defined as a developmental disorder of

variable severity that is characterized by difficulty in social interaction and communication and

by restricted or repetitive patterns of thought and behavior. People can be very smart even with

the label of having autism and I know a person that is incredibly smart and even a better athlete. I

will be going more in to depth about that later as right now I want to focus on the history of

autism.

Part of the background of autism is kind of interesting in the part of how they approach or

determined if a person had autism or not. For starters from the article of The development of a

brief screener for autism using item response theory which had multiple authors that they came

up with a test called Classical theory test which was widely used to determine scale reliability by

analyzing the scale as a whole with little to no regard to underlying distribution or item specific

characteristics. So from this they basically had this test ultimately determine or connect

correlations between all items or characteristics from the scale that they created.
 Now from the same article it really focusses on the IRT (Item Response Theory) that

offers an opportunity to examine each individual item in a scale and enhance reliability by

identifying items with maximum precision. So in now big words it comes from the individual’s

response to be unaccustomed by the underlying trait and the ability to guide scale reduction with

retained reliability and measurement precision. The IRT did a screening instrument for ASD

which is the Autism Spectrum Disorder and which they had over 21,000 participate and less than

50% had some sort of registered diagnosis. From this they saw that primarily generated

information about the sensitivity but very little was specific hence enduring the usage of the

instrument limited as a screener in primary care where they could properly point out any autistic

traits were presented.

According to the website autism spectrum, autism has many characteristics to the

disability. The first is the social communication issues and how they have the difficulty

understanding non-verbal communication and body language. To add to this it also includes the

difficulty of understanding when and how to appropriately respond in social interactions. The

second characteristic is repetitive patterns of behavior meaning that repetitive use of movement,

speech, or objects. This can include students with autism easily get upset by changes to routine,

environment. They also add very narrow and intense focus on limited areas of interest.

Now with me being a wrestler and somewhat of an athlete I love looking into sports at all

times. In sports you always see a student with a disability either getting a touchdown run, or a

wrestling match having their opponent let them win and make them feel the most amazing

feeling ever. Now with this case this is a little different in the fact that Austin Desanto has a little

bit of autism and this has been confirmed. Austin is a wrestler at the University of Iowa and is

now currently ranked number one in the country at 133 lbs.’, after knocking off Seth Gross of
Wisconsin who is a returning national champ from 2017. Austin and his coaches that he benefits

from it because he is treated just like everyone else and his teammates will say how he doesn’t

stop and that he doesn’t get tired. This is just something that I think is very remarkable in the fact

that Austin Desanto isn’t known for his disability but the fact that he could win a national title or

even multiple titles with the label of having a disability.

This paper I went over autism and the history, characteristics, and how they determine

how someone has autism. This disability I have been around for quite some time and love to be

around students with autism. This really opens up me as an individual and helps me grow as a

person because I feel I learn almost more from them than they learn from me. I am excited to

continue learning about disabilities and growing as an educator and future teacher.
 Sources

Marland , C. (2019, November). The development of a brief screener for autism using item

response theory. Retrieved December 2019, from

https://go-gale-com.ezproxy.loras.edu/ps/retrieve.do?

tabID=T002&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchResultsType=SingleTab&searchType=Ad

vancedSearchForm¤tPosition=3&docId=GALE|

A607349966&docType=Article&sort=Relevance&contentSegment=ZONE-

MOD1&prodId=AONE&contentSet=GALE|

A607349966&searchId=R4&userGroupName=lorascoll&inPS=true.

What is Autism. (n.d.). Retrieved December 2019, from

https://www.autismspectrum.org.au/about-autism/what-is-autism.