Over the past several years, however, autistic people have described a wide variety of functions that their repetitive behaviors serve.
Others hold that the behaviors serve no function and simply reflect a disorganized nervous system. Some researchers have suggested that repetitive behaviors offer autistic people a way to shut out the outside world. There is little concrete research available to answer this question. If the behaviors are seen as merely self-stimulatory, he says, autistic people may face pressure to suppress them.ĭo repetitive behaviors have a function beyond self-stimulation? “As soon as you call it that, you cease to entertain alternative conceptualizations about why might be doing this,” says Matthew Goodwin, associate professor of health sciences and computer science at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. However, some researchers criticize the term ‘stimming,’ saying it could in fact hamper the acceptance of repetitive behaviors. They have also spoken out about the importance of their ‘stims.’ How does ‘stimming’ relate to repetitive behaviors ?Ī subset of repetitive movements such as twirling, hand-flapping or vocalizations are sometimes called ‘stimming.’ This is short for self-stimulatory behavior, a clinical term that some autistic people have adopted. Over the past decade, scientists have come to see these behaviors as central to autism’s definition.
ANOTHER WORD FOR REPEATING ACTIONS MANUAL
Repetitive behaviors were not a required part of the criteria for an autism diagnosis as defined in the previous edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. As a result, repetitive behaviors were not well studied or understood. However, for many decades autism research focused on the other major group of autism traits: social difficulties and communication problems. Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger noted repetitive movements and insistence on sameness in the first children they described, as did Grunya Sukhareva, an early autism researcher. Repetitive behaviors have been recognized as part of autism since the condition was first described. They tend to be more pronounced in those with lower cognitive ability, however. They are seen in people across the autism spectrum. Repetitive behaviors are among the first signs of autism to emerge in toddlerhood.
How did repetitive behaviors come to be understood as an important part of autism? They may also have an intense interest in a particular band or sports team, much like autistic people do in train schedules or butterfly taxonomy. That said, even typical adults may exhibit repetitive movements, such as jiggling a leg, drumming fingers on a table or chewing on the cap of a pen in concentration.
These early repetitive movements may be more intense in autistic people and persist well beyond childhood. These movements are increasingly thought to be important for helping children understand how their bodies work and to develop coordinated voluntary movements. Typical infants and toddlers may kick their legs repeatedly, rock back and forth while playing or flap their hands in excitement. They are also part of typical development. Repetitive behaviors are also characteristic of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and schizophrenia. For example, many girls with Rett syndrome constantly wring or clasp their hands. Repetitive motor behaviors are also seen in other conditions of the developing brain. ‘Higher-order’ repetitive behaviors include autism traits such as routines and rituals, insistence on sameness and intense interests. So-called ‘lower-order’ repetitive behaviors are movements such as hand-flapping, fidgeting with objects or body rocking, and vocalizations such as grunting or repeating certain phrases. Scientists categorize repetitive behaviors into two groups. Here, we describe the changing understanding of the importance of repetitive behaviors in autism, and the movement for their acceptance. Restricted interests and repetitive behaviors constitute one of two criteria that define autism in the diagnostic manual for psychiatry.īut this domain encompasses a wide range of traits that may appear in a variety of combinations, and with different severity, among people with autism.
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