Todd Cardin Writes Social Scripts for Aspergers

King Of Prussia, PA (PRWEB) July 14, 2006

Todd Cardin of ETC Theater http://www.etctheater.com is an accomplished playwright in the Philadelphia area. ETC Theater is a local professional theater group that performs original plays that are written by Cardin. He is best known for his musical comedies, although he made a splash earlier this year with a drama, Pictures of Lily http://www.picsoflily.com. Cardin, however, uses his writing ability to help teach social behavior to children with Aspergers or mild forms of autism. Todd Cardin http://www.toddcardin.net stated that these children often must learn social skills differently. Since memory is a strength that is often found is Asperger children, learning lines and acting out a script is easy to do.

Asperger's Disorder is one of five Pervasive Development Disorders (PDDs), which also includes Autism, Rett's Syndrome, Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, and PDD-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS). PDDs are a category of neurologically-based disorders that have a range of delays in different developmental stages.

Asperger's Disorder was first described in the 1940s by Viennese pediatrician Hans Asperger, who observed autistic-like behaviors and difficulties with social and communication skills in boys who had normal intelligence and language development. Many professionals felt Asperger's Disorder was simply a milder form of autism and used the term "high-functioning autism" to describe these individuals. Professor Uta Frith, with the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience of University College London and author of Autism and Asperger Syndrome, describes individuals with Asperger's Disorder as "having a dash of Autism." Asperger's Disorder was added to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) in 1994 as a separate disorder from autism. However, there are still many professionals who consider Asperger's Disorder a less severe form of autism.

What distinguishes Asperger's Disorder from autism is the severity of the symptoms and the absence of language delays. Children with Asperger's Disorder may be only mildly affected and frequently have good language and cognitive skills. To the untrained observer, a child with Asperger's Disorder may just seem different.

Children with autism are frequently seen as aloof and uninterested in others. This is not the case with Asperger's Disorder. Individuals with Asperger's Disorder usually want to fit in and have interaction with others; they simply don't know how to do it. They may be socially awkward, not understanding conventional social rules, or may show a lack of empathy. They may have limited eye contact, seem to be unengaged in a conversation, and not understand the use of gestures.

Interests in a particular subject may border on the obsessive. Children with Asperger's Disorder frequently like to collect categories of things, such as rocks or bottle caps. They may be proficient in knowing categories of information, such as baseball statistics or Latin names of flowers. While they may have good rote memory skills, they have difficulty with abstract concepts.

One of the major differences between Asperger's Disorder and autism is that, by definition, there is no speech delay in Asperger's. In fact, children with Asperger's Disorder frequently have good language skills; they simply use language in different ways. Speech patterns may be unusual, lacking inflection or having a rhythmic nature. Speech may be formal and too loud or high pitched. Children with Asperger's Disorder may not understand the subtleties of language, such as irony and humor, or may not understand the give and take nature of a conversation.

Another distinction between Asperger's Disorder and autism concerns cognitive ability. While some individuals with Autism experience mental retardation, by definition a person with Asperger's Disorder cannot possess a "clinically significant" cognitive delay. This does not imply that all individuals with autism have mental retardation. Some do and some do not, but a person with Asperger's Disorder possesses average to above average intelligence.

While motor difficulties are not a specific criteria for Asperger's, children with Asperger's Disorder frequently have motor skill delays and may appear clumsy or awkward.

Todd Cardin http://www.toddcardin.com stressed that you do not have to be a playwright to do this. "Any parent or teacher can write out a script of how a conversation should go," Cardin said. "Through repetition, the children learn how to behave under perfect circumstances. At that point the script should be varied, or rewritten, which helps when things don't quite go as planned." Cardin feels that the stage is a place where these children can shine and learn.

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