tend to emboy. The second issue is determining the cause of autism, and that as well has not been an easy venture. Part of the problem with determining cause is borne from the difficulty in distinguishing autism from all other developmental disorders. Even with general agreement, however, none of the causal theories has proven to convince all those working in the field.
One model that seems to help in thinking about autism is the model developed by Morton and Frith (1994) to explore levels of explanation in developmental disorders. Morton and Frith thought that different disorders could be understood by looking at the relationship between biological, cognitive, and behavioral levels. There are at least three separate patterns within this model, including a pattern in which the biological cause is unitary, cognitive problems multiple, and behavioral expression multiple. In thinking about autism Happe (1994a) noted that the pattern that seems most appropriate is one in which the biological causes are multiple and be
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