A comprehensive book on Autism Spectrum Disorders

NEW REFLEXIONS

A comprehensive book on Autism Spectrum Disorders

Fernanda Dreux Miranda Fernandes; Cibelle Albuquerque de La Higuera Amato

Investigation Laboratory in Autism Spectrum Disorders, Department of Physical Therapy, Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, and Occupational Therapy, School of Medicine, Universidade de São Paulo – USP – São Paulo (SP), Brazil

^{Correspondence address}

Mohammadi MR, editor. A comprehensive book on autism spectrum disorders. Rijeka, Croatia: InTech Publisher; 2011. 478p.

This is an effectively comprehensive book about Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), with 20 chapters about different issues such as language (assessment, therapy, non-linguistic behavior and prosody and reading abilities), family (maternal stress, parents' coping and quality of life), cross-cultural variations (second language, reality in places as Iran and Africa), sleeping disorders, sexual abuse, creativity, employment issues, moral issues, criminal legislation, financial aspects, experimental research, sensorial motor development, education and transition to adulthood.

Each one of these issues is discussed by a researcher of the field that has expertise in the specific area but that is not necessarily involved in a reference research center. Therefore there are American, French, Italian, Australian, Belgian, Spanish, Israeli and Brazilian authors; but there are also Chinese, Turkish, Japanese, Irish, Nigerian, Polish, Iranian and Croatian authors.

This configuration allows not only a comprehensive perspective about several aspects related to the ASD but also the identification of common problems that may have shared solutions.

A study conducted in Europe, for example, suggests several strategies to help parents increase their participation in the intervention processes directed towards their children that can be applied with Brazilian families with the need of very few adaptations.

The assessment of issues regarding the quality of life and health of parents of ASD children in Croatia led the authors to conclude about the need of a program to monitor ASD parents' health. This aspect has been neglected in most developed countries and certainly deserves consideration also in our reality.

However, what is really innovative in this book is its characteristic of Open Access. It means that any person may obtain the whole book from the publisher's website (www.intechopen.com) without any cost. There are many titles in this website about this field and many others. The publishing process is very careful, all material undergoes a scientific review and several revisions and the acquisition of a printed version is possible. But what is meaningful is the possibility available to all, students and professionals, to easily access the scientific development, with no cost.

It may transform the responsibility for the professional practice, especially in situations such as the Brazilian reality. The issue of geographic distance between reference centers has one more barrier breeched. If some years ago the open access to journals through systems such as SciELO eliminated this problem in what refer to scientific papers, it now is true also in what refer to books, the choice of a great number of speech-language pathologists and audiologists (SLP-A) to obtain information about scientific recent developments.

In what refer to the AS this process is fundamental. The increase in the number of researches in the field has been enormous in the last decades. The clearer knowledge about the characteristics of the disorders included in the spectrum has produced important changes in its prevalence, placing the ASD as a public health issue that demands objective approaches. The role of the SLP-A in the team that deals with these issues in unarguable, but it can only be assumed with some consistency along with the responsibility with continuous scientific actualization. The regions where people has less access to specialized services and research centers are exactly the ones where the responsibility with this role is more important because the intervention may have a larger impact in the child's development and family's adaptation processes.

Technology has facilitated the communication processes that contribute to the continuous education (virtual courses, groups in social networks, discussion web-lists) and to the scientific actualization (with open access to different types of publications) but its use depends on the habit that involves the consideration of the interface between the produced knowledge and its application.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  02 Mar 2012
• Date of issue
  Mar 2012