Restricted interests: Interests or fixations that are abnormal in theme or intensity of focus, such as preoccupation with a single television program, toy, or game.No single repetitive or self-injurious behavior seems to be specific to autism, but autism appears to have an elevated pattern of occurrence and severity of these behaviors. Other symptoms
Autistic individuals may have symptoms that are independent of the diagnosis. An estimated 0.5% to 10% of individuals with classic autism show unusual abilities, ranging from splinter skills such as the memorization of trivia to the extraordinarily rare talents of prodigious autistic savants. Sensory abnormalities are found in over 90% of autistic people, and are considered core features by some, although there was no good evidence that sensory symptoms differentiate autism from other developmental disorders. An estimated 60–80% of autistic people have motor signs that include poor muscle tone, poor motor planning, and toe walking. Causes
It was presumed initially that there was a common cause at the genetic, cognitive, and neural levels for classic autisms characteristic triad of symptoms. However, over time, there was increasing evidence that autism was instead a complex and highly heritable disorder whose core aspects have distinct causes which often often co-occur. Although theories regarding vaccines lack convincing scientific evidence, are biologically implausible, and originated from a fraudulent study, parental concern about a potential vaccine link with autism (and subsequent concern about ASD) has led to lower rates of childhood immunizations, outbreaks of previously controlled childhood diseases in some countries, and the preventable deaths of several children.
Asperger was investigating Asperger syndrome which, for various reasons, was not widely considered a separate diagnosis until 1981, although both are now considered part of ASD. Leo Kanner of the Johns Hopkins Hospital first used autism  in English to refer to classic autism when he introduced the label early infantile autism in a 1943 report. Almost all the characteristics described in Kanners first paper on the subject, notably "autistic aloneness" and "insistence on sameness", are still regarded as typical of the autistic spectrum of disorders. Starting in the late 1960s, classic autism was established as a separate syndrome.It took until 1980 for the DSM-III to differentiate autism from childhood schizophrenia. In 1987, the DSM-III-R provided a checklist for diagnosing autism. In May 2013, the DSM-5 was released, updating the classification for pervasive developmental disorders. The grouping of disorders, including PDD-NOS, autism, Asperger syndrome, Rett syndrome, and CDD, has been removed and replaced with the general term of Autism Spectrum Disorder. References


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