Question: how do learning difficultys eg autism develop

Matt Bawn answered on 8 Mar 2018:

There are of course many types of learning difficaulties each of which may have different causes and mechanism. The UK departement of health defines a learning dissability as: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/250877/5086.pdf

“significant reduced ability to understand new or complex information, to learn new skills (impaired intelligence), with a reduced ability to cope independently (impaired social functioning), which started before adulthood”.

So you can see its quite a broad definition.

but for Autism the answer is simply that we don’t know at the moment (https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/autism/causes/). Certain risk factors are known to be associated with it though eg. advanced parental age, parents who allready have one autistic child, oe exposure to pesticides https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/conditions/autism/index.cfm

I think the best website for finding about Autism and its causes is:

About Spectrum

I know this isn’t a very concrete answer but I hope it was useful.