Autism vs. Mannerisms

This week I was reading an article in Time magazine about autism. I found this article to be very intriguing because there have been many times when I have heard about autism and have not really had a clear understanding of what it is and the effect autism has. What I found to be the most interesting was the classic symptoms of autism "spinning, head banging, and endlessly repeating phrases.” I found this very interesting because head banging and spinning are also commonly found with blind or visually impaired children; only they are called mannerisms. I researched mannerisms for my argumentative paper; only I argued that mannerisms have a negative effect on deaf-blind children and therefore should be diminished as much as possible. I thought that it was great to be able to connect something I had done in the past and apply my knowledge of mannerisms when I was reading this article.