Other disorders under PDD:
Asperger Syndrome
These individuals can exhibit a variety of characteristics, and the disorder can range from mild to severe. Persons with AS are often characterized by concrete and literal thinking, difficulties with transitions or changes and prefer sameness, an obsession with certain topics and routines, excellent memories, difficulty reading nonverbal cues (body language), and be overly sensitive to sounds, tastes, smells, and sights. In contrast to Autism, there are no clinically significant delays in language or cognition or self help skills or in adaptive behavior, other than social interaction.
Rett Syndrome
The child with RS usually shows apparently normal or near normal development until 6-18 months of life. A period of temporary stagnation or regression follows during which the child loses communication skills and social withdrawal . Soon, stereotyped hand movements, gait disturbances, body rocking, and slowing of the rate of head growth
Childhood Disintegrative Disorder
These children have seemingly normal development for at least the first 2 years after birth. They then often display the following characteristics: impairments in communication skills (e.g., delay or lack of spoken language, inability to initiate or sustain a conversation), impairments in social interaction,
restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behavior, activities, and play, and impairments in motor skills.
There are other disorders, though maybe not of the PDD category, are related because of autistic-like behaviors and development. These include:
Fragile X Syndrome
This is most common inherited cause of mental retardation (second only to Down syndrome as a cause of mental retardation) in which the long arm on the X chromosome is constricted. Approximately 15% of people with Fragile X Syndrome
exhibit autistic behaviors. These behaviors include: delay in speech/language, hyperactivity, poor eye contact, and hand-flapping. The majority of these individuals function at a mild to moderate level. As they grow older, their unique physical facial features may become more prominent (e.g., elongated face and ears), and they may develop heart problems.
Landau-Kleffner Syndrome
This is a rare form of childhood epilepsy which results in a severe language disorder. Some children have display autistic type behavior with symptoms such as avoidance of contact with family and friends (avoidance of eye contact is common) tantrums, aggression, insensitivity to pain, inappropriate and repetitive play. These children are sometimes referred to as having 'regressive' autism because they appear to be normal until they are somewhere between ages 3 and 7.
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