Kanner Syndrome – Information You Need if You Suspect Your Child Has This Disorder
July 2, 2009
Kanner syndrome studies began in the early 1940s when a strange coincidence of research was taking place in America and Austria at the very same time. Two scientists were researching unusual behaviors in children. They were both not only coming to the same conclusions but they were using the same word, unbeknownst to the other, to describe this disorder. Both used the word autism, though oddly they were seeing different degrees of a similar disorder.
Kanner called the disorder he was researching Kanner syndrome or autism disorder. It is known as both though more people refer to it simply as autism. In the early 1940s Dr. Leo Kanner was researching this with a group of children who seemed to be exhibiting the symptoms of schizophrenia. But his research led him to believe that it was not actually childhood schizophrenia he was seeing but something else, something quite different. He first used the term infantile autism to name this new disorder he’d found.
Many researchers have seen his early identification of autism as a breakthrough and his early conclusions still hold true to this day. Interestingly, as his work was written in English it was becoming widely known throughout the world. In the 1950s and 1960s more children were being diagnosed with the condition he had discovered. Further to that his research paper on Kanner syndrome was being published in the United Kingdom.
At the same time Asperger’s work was largely ignored in the countries where English was spoken because it was written in German at the time. His work continued, but relatively unnoticed. The bulk of his work was not translated before the early 1990s. No one knows if Dr. Kanner was aware of Dr. Asperger’s work. They do know that Dr. Asperger eventually became aware of Dr. Kanner’s work and later argued that they had each discovered slightly differently disorders that seemed to overlap the other in their symptoms. Researchers and medical professional argued back that they were the same disorder just with different functioning abilities. Asperger’s sufferers seemed to be higher functioning.
No matter the levels of functioning, both are neurodevelopmental disorders. Both have symptoms that deal with inept social interplay, difficulties with the spoken language as a means to communicate as well as non-verbal communication and the inability to partake in imaginative play instead of repetitive play. In the end both Asperger’s syndrome and Kanner syndrome became lumped in with three other disorders that are similar and now they are all refereed to as pervasive developmental disorders.
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