Children with Autism have certain developmental delays that define the child’s deficits and abilities. Although the CAUSE of Developmental Delay is still unknown, many of the symptoms are commonly shared . For example children with ADHD have social deficits and sensory issues and so do children with Non-verbal Learning Disorder as well as children with Dyslexia and Aspergers. These children all have Neurological Developmental Delay (NDD) Syndrome. NDD is best defined as a group or cluster of neurological problems that affect the abilities of the child to function normally.
Studies have shown that just as there are common symptoms that neurological-developmentally delayed (NDD) children share, they also share common problems that contribute to those symptoms. When these problems are resolved the child is able to function better.
A few of these problems are:
Sensory Integration problems
Retained Primitive Reflexes
Poorly developed Postural Reflexes
Right Hemisphere Delay
The result is deficits in:
Social Skills
Difficulty in Executive Thinking (theory of mind)
Poor Attention and Focus.
Clumsy, Poor Motor Skills
Repetitive Speech & Poor Tonnation
Body Posture/Awareness
Emotional Regulation
Limited Eye Contact
Low Self-Esteem
At The Dakota Center we evaluate the child for the specific problems the child has. We start with a variety of assessments to determine what deficits each child has. We use not only our own assessment instruments, but also any prior assessments by other professionals that the child has had. From these assessments we design interventions to address the specific areas that are effecting the child's ability function.
One of the common problems that NDD children have is retained primitive reflexes. Therefore, one of the things we do is to assess the child for retained primitive reflexes. The second common problem is the failure of the right hemisphere to fully function and for the left hemisphere to become hyper-dominate.
Why work on inhibiting the primitive reflexes?
Because retained primitive reflexes have an effect on the child’s ability to function and to integrate further developmental abilities. They can cause unwanted muscle reactions (fidgetiness) make them over sensitive and over reactive. It can cause increases in blood levels of adrenaline and cortisol, it can affect the child’s ability to mature socially (emotional intelligence) and can lead to a tendency to be selfish and display ego-centric behavior.
Retained primitive reflexes can affect the proper and full development of postural reflexes resulting in learning difficulties and poor coordination and balance. Children with retained primitive reflexes have trouble with their vision due to poor control of eye muscles affecting their academic abilities. Additional problems caused are the affect that it has in the connection between the two hemispheres of the brain. The retention of a specific primitive reflex, the ATNR, prevents the normal maturation of the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum is the connecting fibers between the right and left hemisphere which allows for the transfer of information from one side to the other. It is also recognized that aberrant reflexes can affect higher cortical functioning particularly in the area of education
What is the effect of right hemisphere delay?
Although the right hemisphere of children with NDD is not functioning as it should, it is not due to physical damage. Yet children with NDD have some of the same symptoms as children with right hemisphere lesions. The positive is that the right hemisphere of children with NDD can be stimulated and the symptoms reduced or eliminated.
The NDD child’s right hemisphere functions slower and results in speech that has flattened intonation. They have trouble with judging the prosody of others. They have difficulty with conceptual aspects of language communication. They are over literal and have impaired ability to grasp the essence of events and inability to experience a sense of connectedness with the outside world. These are right hemisphere functions.
What do we do to correct the primitive reflexes and the right hemisphere’s functionality?
The Dakota Center uses specific movements and stimulations to help resolve the problems of retained primitive reflexes and hemisphere dysfunction. These movements are taught to the child and to the parents. The counselors at The Dakota Center work with the child during individual sessions to teach the proper movements continue to evaluate the child’s progress and work on social and behavioral issues. As the child advances movements are added and completed ones are reduced or removed form the child’s program. This is also true of the stimulation work that is done to wake up the right hemisphere. In addition, whole body activities are implemented to get the child’s entire body in synchronization.
To reduce the cost of treatment and to increase the frequency of the movement activities The Dakota Center helps the family with their own Home Program. Parents learn the movements and become an active partner in the child’s development. This process is not only beneficial for the neurological needs but provides for a rich interaction between the child and the parent. Socialization between the parent and the child help to develop expected behaviors of listening, eye contact and interactive conversation.
As the child progresses and becomes more aware, social skills training is added along with expected behaviors. Postural reflexes are strengthened or corrected as needed. Children become more aware of their environment, social understanding starts to develop and cognitive function becomes more acute.
The child is continually assessed for deficits and for advancement milestones. Children that have difficulty or are slow in advancing are assessed for areas of deficits that are not treated in The Dakota Center. This may mean that the child is referred to other professionals for specific treatments while they continue to work the Functional Integration Program.
Supporting Data
Many of our clients want to have additional information on the programs we offer at The Dakota Center. We are always glad to provide as much information as we can on the science, research studies and related information so you can see the benefits and the reasons we have chosen to use the specific programs we have. On this web site we could not put all the information available about our programs due to space and the complexity of doing so. Listed below are excerpts from various studies and research that will give you some of the information you need to make choices for your child. We keep full texts of these postings in The Dakota Center's office and we are always glad to share these with you. We will also provide web links when we find intersting and relevant sites.
Study: Retention of Primitive Reflexes on Children with ADHD
International Journal of Special Education , 2004,Vol 19, No.1 PRIMITIVE REFLEXES AND ATTENTION DEFICIT/HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER: DEVELOPMENTAL ORIGINS OF CLASSROOM DYSFUNCTION
Myra Taylor, Stephen Houghton and Elaine Chapman
The University of Western Australia
The present research studied the symptomatologic overlap of AD/HD behaviors and retention of four primitive reflexes (Moro, Tonic Labyrinthine Reflex [TLR], Asymmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex [ATNR], Symmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex [STNR]) in 109 boys aged 7-10 years. Of these, 54 were diagnosed with AD/HD, 34 manifested sub-syndromal coordination, learning, emotional and/or behavioral symptoms of AD/HD, and 21 had no (or near to no) symptoms of AD/HD. Measures of AD/HD symptomatology and of the boys’ academic performance were also obtained using the Conners’ rating scale and the WRAT-3, respectively. Results indicated that, in general, boys diagnosed with AD/HD had significantly higher levels of reflex retention than non-diagnosed boys. Results also indicated both direct and indirect relationships between retention of the Moro, ATNR, STNR and TLR reflexes with AD/HD symptomatology and mathematics achievement. The pattern of relationships between these variables was also consistent with the notion of the Moro acting as a gateway for the inhibition of the other three reflexes.
Proposal for a Psychological Research Experiment to examine this question:
Does inhibition and integration of the Moro reflex help children to pay attention more easily and effectively?
Michael Goldstein, Ph.D. Cornell University, May 9, 2006
Integrating the AD/HD group’s Moro reflexes should show an immediate and measurable change in their ability to consciously attend, according to research, theory and clinical experience. We would expect to see the “AD/HD NI Moro” group to exhibit the greatest degree of positive change on the TOVA; no change with the “AD/HD IN Moro” group; some positive change with the “not AD/HD NI Moro” group; and no significant change with the “not AD/HD IN Moro” group. We would expect to see no differences in the “no treatment” group. There may be some improvements in the “contact and movement” group due to the powerful effects of exercise and touch. If results were positive they would support the efficacy of Masgutova’s method. We would also expect to see a large percentage of non-integrated Moro in both groups, those diagnosed and not diagnosed with AD/HD. A percentage of the children not diagnosed will be found functioning with a retained Moro. Also expected would be a larger number of boys over girls with retained reflexes.
INFANT REFLEXES AND ADULT DEVELOPMENT Sensory Integration through Movement By Eve Kodiak, M.M.,
from the Newsletter of the Boston Institute for the Development of Infants and Parents, Fall, 2006
Various forms of trauma can inhibit the normal integration of reflexes. Factors that may inhibit the development of normal movement patterns include injuries at birth or after, drugs ingested in utero or through breast milk, allergies, physical and emotional overstimulation, an unsafe environment, blinking lights and media overload. A significant inhibitor of normal development is the simple lack of opportunity for movement. Babies carried around constantly in plastic car seats or other forms of bodily restraint do not gain the necessary practice time to develop normal movement patterns.
Older children may manifest unintegrated reflexes in the use of their bodies. For example, children who flop to one side at their desks, reading or doing their work with their heads resting on an arm, are manifesting an unintegrated Asymmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex. They place themselves in this physical position in order to concentrate. On occasion these children may actually fall sideways out of their chairs. The movements are reflexive, and thus the children lack the choice of “sitting up straight.” As they attempt to process information sitting appropriately they must assume a compensatory mode that creates tensions and other difficulties. When tired or anxious adults and children may return to unconscious movement patterns. An example of the Asymmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex may be seen when observing a driver turning his or her head to the left and then automaticallymoving the steering wheel in that direction.
I have found that working with reflex movements can be astonishingly effective. The client is guided to revisit the original movement program of infant reflexes, stimulating the brain/body system to remember and return to its natural developmental progression. Simply by moving through the reflex patterns, an individual can work through all kinds of residual developmental issues thatmay continue to have an influence in adult life.
Semantic-pragmatic disorder: A right hemisphere syndrome? British Journal of Disorders of Communication, 26, 383-392 (1991) The College of Speech and Language Therapists, London
Jane Shields Department of Speech and Language Therapy, Pontefract Health Authority
Autistic children show deficits in the areas of prosody, the social use of language and the ability to read emotional expression in language. To the extent to which these functions are lateralised in normal adults, it is the right hemisphere, and not the left, that is involved (Prior & Bradshaw, 1979; Springer & Deutsch, 1989). Fein, Humes, Kaplan, Lucci and Waterhouse (1984) argued that language deficits are not primary in autism, and that many of the characteristic social-affective abnormalities can more plausibly be linked with right hemisphere deficits. Goodman (1989) considered the relative contribution of the two cerebral hemispheres to the features of autism and Asperger's syndrome, noting that language in such individuals is deviant in the domains of pragmatics and prosody. He suggests that innate deficits in the expression and comprehension of non-verbal communication could underpin social/play impairment, and that this 'blindness to the subjective' could correspond, from a cognitive point of view, to lack of a 'theory of mind' (Frith, 1989).
Autistic Spectrum Disorders as Functional Disconnection Syndrome Robert Melillo and Gerry Leisman
Abstract
We outline in this paper the basis of how functional disconnection with reduced activity and coherence in the right hemisphere would explain all of the symptoms of autistic spectrum disorder as well as the observed increases in sympathetic activation. If the problem of autistic spectrum disorder is primarily one of desynchronization and ineffective interhemispheric communication, then the best way to address the symptoms is to improve coordination between areas of the brain. To do that the best approach would include multimodal therapeusis that would include a combination of somatosensory, cognitive, behavioral, and biochemical interventions all directed at improving overall health, reducing inflammation and increasing right hemisphere activity to the level that it becomes temporally coherent with the left hemisphere. We hypothesize that the unilateral increased hemispheric stimulation has the effect of increasing the temporal oscillations within the thalamocortical pathways bringing it closer to the oscillation rate of the adequately functioning hemisphere. We propose that increasing the baseline oscillation speed of one entire hemisphere will enhance the coordination and coherence between the two hemispheres allowing for enhanced motor and cognitive binding. 2
One of the common problems that NDD children have is retained primitive reflexes. Therefore, one of the things we do is to assess the child for retained primitive reflexes. The second common problem is the failure of the right hemisphere to fully function and for the left hemisphere to become hyper-dominate. 
Retained primitive reflexes can affect the proper and full development of postural reflexes resulting in learning difficulties and poor coordination and balance. Children with retained primitive reflexes have trouble with their vision due to poor control of eye muscles affecting their academic abilities. Additional problems caused are the affect that it has in the connection between the two hemispheres of the brain. The retention of a specific primitive reflex, the ATNR, prevents the normal maturation of the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum is the connecting fibers between the right and left hemisphere which allows for the transfer of information from one side to the other. It is also recognized that aberrant reflexes can affect higher cortical functioning particularly in the area of education
What is the effect of right hemisphere delay?
