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About Autism Autism is a lifelong developmental disability that severely affects social behavior, communication and learning. The result of a neurological disorder that interferes with functioning of the brain, autism typically appears during a child's first three years. It occurs in approximately 1 out of every 500 births and is four times more common in boys than in girls. Autism has been found throughout the world and knows no racial, ethnic or social boundaries. No known factor in the psychological environment of a child has been shown to cause autism, nor do family income, lifestyle and education affect the chance of occurrence. Likewise, no single biomedical cause has been found, though a significant number of medical disorders can occur in conjunction with autism. Because the cause of autism is currently unknown, there are no medical tests that can definitively confirm or rule out the disability. Instead, autism is diagnosed by comparing an individual's behavior to a set of diagnostic criteria and determining whether or not the individual meets those criteria. Autism interferes with the normal development of the brain in verbal and nonverbal communication, social interaction and sensory development. Children and adults with autism may exhibit repeated body movements, unusual responses to people or attachments to objects and resist changes in routine. Autism is often referred to as a spectrum disorder, meaning that the symptoms and characteristics can present themselves in a variety of combinations, from mild to severe. Roughly 70% of individuals with autism also have some degree of mental retardation. It is conservatively estimated that more than 500,000 people in the U.S. today have some form of autism - a prevalence rate that places it as the third most common developmental disability.
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