Slashdot Mirror
Scientific Brain Linked to Autism
squoozer writes "The BBC is reporting that a leading scientist in area of Developmental Psychopathology, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, is indicating that there is good chance that there is a scientific basis to the observed phenomenon that children with highly analytical parents are more likely to be autistic. He believes the genes which make someone analytical may also impair their social and communication skills. A weakness in these areas is the key characteristic of autism."
He believes the genes which make someone analytical may also impair their social and communication skills.
Genetics thrives on diversity and buckles under similarities; look at incestuous offspring and you'll see that diversity is the core requirement for better results.
Most of the geekiest people here at Slashdot lack the necessary tools to hold a decent conversation; if two slashdotters marry and produce offspring, the result would be dangerous to society!
Successful geeks have really hot wives (with possibly no intellect whatsoever) -- so perhaps science accounts for success and rewards success and punishes failure?
The point being -- if you have a really smart wife, you must be stupid or unsuccessful because that woman will own your ass.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Proof that the dork and nerd genes are linked. Shocker, that.
This certainly doesn't explain Boomer Esiason's kid.
But your child is an engineer.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
but I can't communicate my thoughts.
Is this an evolutionary restraint on nerds breeding?
we geeks don't have anything to worry about...
There used to be reports of higher rates of Autist kids in the region around silicon valley back during the dotcom boom.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
Professor Baron Cohen is also the cousin of Sascha Baron Cohen, AKA. Ali G.
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
This reminds me of a really good article in Wired from maybe 2002 or so, about how autism rates were skyrocketing in Silicon Valley, far too much to be just coinidence, better diagnosis, etc.
Anyone else remember it? It doesn't seem to be on their website (tried searching "autism" and "autistic"). It came with a quiz and everything. Anyone? Anyone?
Andrew Lenahan http://www.starblind.com/
I though it was from the mother watching the people's court during pregnancy... Gotta Watch Wapner, Gotta Watch Wapner....
Rimshot
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
Behold. Evolution in motion. Now, with a working society to compensate for the minor shortcomings autism brings with it, this genetic code can prosper in its own niche without being terminally bothered by the bare necessities of survival. Human kind branches out and optimises for certain tasks, reaching beyond the limits of the individual.
Being a Beta (was it) is good. Alphas work too hard, etc.
All rites reversed 2010
now, if I conclude that I'm not analytic enough for my chid to be autistic, is that again too analytic, so my child will become autistic? Me logic broken :-/
and why is the code today "impotent"? meh...
Yes. According to Wikipedia, Sacha "Ali G" Baron-Cohen and Simon Baron-Cohen are cousins.
"He believes the genes which make someone analytical may also impair their social and communication skills."
In an attempt to not be just like the other 11 posts so far, I'd like to talk about... aw screw it, we're all Slashdot geeks and we know it. Communication when a keyboard is not involved is our nemesis, and we'd probably have been considered autistic 500 years ago had they known what that was.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
The entire planet already knows this (and we don't "believe", we "have no doubt"), otherwise the whole "smart nerd" stereotype wouldn't exist.
Do you have ESP?
A while back, NASA conducted a fifteen year anniversary study on the savant known as Kim Peek. Peek was born with a strange brain deformity known as macrocephaly which results in the two hemispheres of the brain being linked due to a pocket of water at the base of the brain.
Now, there has been a lot of speculation about how neurons work and what makes someone autistic. I once had a lengthy conversation with James Olds of George Mason's Krasnow Institute and asked him about Peek. Olds explained to me that it's very mysterious how savants develop. I asked him if Peek had an abnormally large cortex but he dismissed this, citing that elephants are not geniuses. He also gave me an anecdotal story of a Harvard football player that injured his shoulder blade as the star quarter back. When they x-rayed him, they also found out that his head was mostly filled with water and the result was a severe lack of brain tissue. However, he was a 4.0 grade point average student. I asked Dr. Olds if Peek's neurons might be more densely populated but he also dismissed this saying that neurons are huge on nutrient consumption and if they grow too closely together, they will kill each other.
Anyone care to take a stab at this? Can anyone speculate on this?
My work here is dung.
There is a similar story in Wired about the rise of Autism in Rochester, Mn (home of a very large number of IBM employees).
Apparently, slight to mild autism is a genetic trait that is good for programmers.
Chivalry is not dead, it's just frequently misspelt. - M. Langley
2) I was about to joke about this, but it appears that the Professor actually is the cousin of Sacha "Ali G" Baron Cohen.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Doctor: I'm afraid your son has the knack.
Dilmom: The knack?
Doctor: It's a rare condition characterized by an extreme intuition about all things mechanical and electrical...and utter social ineptitude.
Dilmom (worried): Can he lead a normal life?
Doctor: No. He'll be an engineer.
Dilmom (crying): Oh No!
Doctor: there there...don't blame yourself.
Dilmom: Will it go away over time?
Doctor: It might but I pray it doesn't. If an engineer loses the knack the results can be devastating.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Because, really, I could have told them that for five quid.. It is really quite obvious..
Recently, in the UK, there was a £250,000 survey scheme to find out why people in Scotland did not ride their bikes to work as much as people in other countries. Their conclusion... "...because it's bloody freezing most of the time in Scotland..."
Now 250,000 quid would have purchased enough CDRWs to give a copy of slackware to 250,000 people (excluding jewel cases and labels)..
I think that money wasted on painfully obvious conclusions is a major problem for people who want to switch to Linux on the desktop.
This could be an Evelutionary mechanisim to maintain diversity by allowing the stupid gene to Not die out. Apparently people with the stupid gene have a purpose?
Thinking about this, Asperger's Syndrome is defined as "characterized by severe and sustained impairment in social interaction, development of restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, and activities." Give the link that is being suggested by this article, could it entirely be possible that Asperger's Syndrome comes from parents who lack some degree of social sensitivity on a genetic basis? Combine both parents, and you get someone who exhibits Asperger's Syndrome-like behaviour?
Anyone interested in this topic should check out the work of Temple Gradin. She's an autistic professor of Animal Science. In addition to her main field of research, she's done a lot of study on autism and sciencey people.
She was on Science Friday last week. Podcast here.
Smarty-pants couples (of the truly sharp, science-minded variety) having kids is only recently useful (or even likely), in the primate-history scheme of things. Just shows that it takes natural selection a while to catch up with the fact that we're not very far removed from small, pack-like groups living hand to mouth in primitive, hostile circumstances and not living much past 30 years old. Wait... that sounds like my neighborhood!
That being said, a close friend is an occupational therapist with a lot of experience in helping out kids experiencing the full spectrum of autistic characteristics. She's indicated that a somewhat unscientific review of those kids' parents (hundreds of which she's met and gotten to know) would completely resonate with the findings mentioned in the article. She and her husband, both sharp, analytical people, just gave birth - and not without some trepidation. Just in case, they watched re-runs of "Pimp My Ride" before conceiving.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
This is a lot of work, but IME is well worth it. See the conference papers at my website for more on one person's experience of autism...
I remember seeing a PBS show years ago that showed that both scientists and serial killers had similar patterns of brain activity in the frontal lobe region ( the "control centers" )
Both groups, very analytical, both groups with incredible attention to details.
FWIW, as a slashpert with no real expertise in this area my uninformed opinion is that it means nothing that diverse groups of people use similar areas of their brains in similar ways.
A hobo can walk on the same path in central park as Wall Street Executive. That doesn't make him rich.
the genes which make someone analytical may also impair their social and communication skills
Trudy: "William is such a smart guy, but just couldn't carry on a good conversation."
Mel: "I know, but he really can't help it, its in his genes."
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
That explains my my code that always compiles and my breadboarded circuits that always work and my 3 ex-wives.
Let's clean that up a little:
I suspect the original article glosses the proposed genetic link, or presents it in the usual faked-up-dialectic manner, with opposite poles for analysis and social skills -- but this is the popular press, so I guess we've learned to accept it. Hardly as "analytical" as I'd like. Maybe the reporters are looking out for their kids.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Take a walk round Cambridge and you'll see the evidence. We have the highest count of sub-clinical autism in the country. Obviously the area does have a high concentration of "smart" people, and unfortunately they tend to breed. Geek love eh?
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here. As far as I can see, it's basically lying and bullshitting, which surely can't be hard for any smart person to learn? I'm sure most of us are pretty successful at bullshitting our bosses, if nothing else.
I think what really upsets the average person is not that 'geeks' don't have 'social skills', but that they just can't be bothered to bullshit with someone who has little to nothing in common with them. Why bother? What's the point in spending an evening talking about football scores when you could be doing something constructive and interesting instead? I don't get it.
There was an Infinite Mind episode on NPR a couple of months ago about Asperger's Syndrome. They mentioned several times that people with Aperger's Syndrome tend to have one or more parents and grandparents that are engineers or scientists.
I may twist orthodoxy to partly justify a tyrant. But I can easily make up a German philosophy to justify him entirely.
Genetics is a tad more complex than that.
Humans are utterly complex combinations of genetic material and surrounding circumstances which affects their development and therefore the way people think and look like.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
It almost sounds to me like the same thing that I learned about sickle-cell anemia. That is, if you have the sickle-cell trait, you have partial sickle-cell anemia, but can still function relatively normal. However if you have the full sickle-cell anemia gene then you cannot function normally without assistance of some variety. A person with just the trait can function okay, but probably shouldn't mate with another person who has the sickle-cell trait, because that will probably produce offspring with full blown sickle-cell anemia.
Analagous to this, one socially inept parent mates with another socially inept (read: analytical) and breeds a super-socially inept child. Just seems weird to me.
I read an article a year or so ago about an autistic kid who was able to speak well enough to describe his thoughts. I don't recall the intricate details of the article, but he mentioned doing math by representing numbers as colors and sounds. When he would have to add two numbers together, for example, one might be the color blue, and the other was a gust of air or something. When he "added" the color blue to the air, and got blue air, he'd have his answer, which was his representation of the correct answer.
It seems strange to me that something that *I* perceive as a learned trait (social aptitude) could be a genetic thing, let alone cause autism, but I'll leave that to the experts.
And they said zombies weren't real!
As an individual diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, I don't find this to be news. I have seen at least a few people who might have Asperger's syndrome in my computer science classes. I cannot say I am attracted to this type, though, and have not met many women who behave stereotypically autistically.
Anyway, I like being oblivious to certain elements, particularly nonverbal cues, of the social environment. It means my dealings with women frequently end up in great disaster.
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
Autism is just a more extreme form of Asperger's Syndrome. They're basically the same thing. Parents with Asperger's are more likely to have children who are autistic. Most technical professionals have Asperger's to some degree. Higher-than-normal rates of both extreme Asperger's Syndrome cases and autism have been observed in both Silicon Valley and the Rt. 128 region in Massachusetts, both heavily involved in the computer industry.
I think that people without analytical genes lack the ability to communicate and socialize effectively or even sanely--I mean hell, just look at the world around you. The only reason why we analytical types have a problem with these things is because we are in the minority.
If the majority of the population were like us, it would be the nonanalytical, impulsive, controled-by-their-emotions people that would be viewed as antisocial.
Generally from what I've read, Asperger's is classified in the same spectrum as Autism. Some say they're the same thing with differing severities, others say they're simply closely related. I would not be surprised at all if the same genetic behaviors found in autism are shared by Asperger's.
The laws of probability forbid it!
Actually, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen theorizes two factors of cognitive skill: systemizing and empathizing. People who are better at empathizing are social, able to read other people's emotions, etc. Systemizers are analytical, oriented towards details and routine, etc. He measures the two as a systemizing quotient (SQ) and an empathizing quotient (EQ). There are tests online to measure these.
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
I am pretty sure I have seen this research in a number of places before. Typically it usually mentions Aspberger's Syndrome. I have also seen this called High Functioning Autism. Bascially people that seem to have alot of traits typical of autism but aren't considered fully autistic themselves.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
"genes which make someone analytical may also impair their social and communication skills"
Nerds and computer geeks have known this since the creation of computers, doesn't seem like big news to me... lol
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Ladies and gentlemen, I submit to you our new Slashdot motto.
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
Here is the link to the wired article about Geeky parents and their propensity to have children with Asperger's Syndrome which is classfied by wikipedia as high-functioning Autism.
_ pr.html
Through the '90s, cases tripled in California. "Anyone who says this is due to better diagnostics has his head in the sand."
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger's_syndrome
are due to increased awareness of the disease, better screening and more money available for social programs that address it.
20 years ago it was very rare to find programs specifically designed for children with autism. 15 years ago the parents of children with autism began to organize and push for programs and funding. As parents, doctors, school administrators and legislators became more aware of autism the funding blossomed (well, as far as that can happen for social programs) and many more children were diagnosed with it. There has also been a huge increase in the number of Asberger's syndrome cases as well as the catch-all PDD-NOS: Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified, which is diagnostic speak for "well, the kid ain't right, but he don't fit none of the other molds."
The classic, Kanner's Austism as diagnosed with the childhood autism rating scale and other tools is still very rare. There is a tendancy to fit kids into whatever diagnoses are sexy and have funding at the time. I worked with plenty of kids who didn't fit the classic diagnosis of autism, but because the district had a nice chunk of money to spend, otherwise "vanilla" developmentally disabled kids would get an autism or PDD-NOS tag so they could get funded.
I hope we aren't going back to an environmental 'refridgerator parents' model of autism. It is clearly an inherited disorder (with the exception of certain febrile onsets due to sever infections of the brain).
At the edge of every disaster stands a clever fellow who points. Virginia Wolfe
Give the link that is being suggested by this article, could it entirely be possible that Asperger's Syndrome comes from parents who lack some degree of social sensitivity on a genetic basis?
No -- the opposite would be true if it holds to the logic of the article; the less diverse the genetics, the greater the chance of failure. Therefore highly socially adept (jocks) people would potentially produce someone with Ausperger's Syndrome, and two really unhappy people would potentially produce someone with Down Syndrome.
There must be a kind of balancing code in our genetic structure; balance is required and it's delivered whenever an imbalance is detected.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I knew I had seen that name before...Thanks Wikipedia. Dr. Baron-Cohen is the cousin of Sacha Baron Cohen, alias Ali G.
Autism - is it good, or is it whack?
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Austism extends beyond Asberger's, though Asberger's is far and away the most common type of autism. Austistic social deficits go much farther than simple shyness or bad conversational skills. In their extreme stage, they can cripple a person's ability to lead any semblance of a normal life.
A friend of mine has a young boy with autism. For him, the line between reality and fantasy is blurred to the point of non-existance. He refers to his parents as Mario and Peach (from the video games), and relates everything to Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, or some other SF/F film. He believes he is a part of the world of those films. It's more than losing yourself in a fantasy. He does it because he cannot make sense of the world around him otherwise. It's becoming more apparent as he grows older that he will not be able to function on his own in society, and will require constant supervision.
Doing some volunteer work a few years ago, I met a kid with a severe form of autism. At the time his condition left him unable to speak more than a few coherent words. He communicated through grunts or other noises, or the few signs in American Sign Language that his parents and doctor had managed to teach him. His temper was incredibly short and he was prone to flying off the handle about things you or I might shrug our shoulders over. He has improved a good deal over the past few years and can communicate much more effectively, but his temper still remains his major social issue.
However the previous examples are more extreme cases and people with milder cases of autism can function quite normally.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
Does this mean that if you have two dumb parrents they will produce a pro football player?
What's autism all about? Is it good or is it whack?
Hey, it's on topic this time.
It's refreshing to hear that what I have suspected now has a little more weight... that there is a connection between those who are more actively analytical and autism. That said, to be an idiot-savant is quite rare, where most autistic forms make a person mostly or completely incapable of unassisted living with nothing else that would otherwise be interesting or novel about them. (Is that too insensitive a way to put it?)
In any case, like so many other slashdotters, I suspect my analytical disconnection (my own handicap in it's own way) has always been a hinderance in terms of social skills and adaptation. I have learned, however, that I can compensate to a degree (though not completely by any stretch) by reaching out to the more emotional part of myself and allow it to do some of the thinking for me. This results in at least a mildly child-like acclimation, but I believe it's a start for most as I have found myself growing quite a bit through such exercises. As for the rest of the balance, I have found that learning how to transmit the impression of confidence, competence and wisdom, while trying not to appear arrogant and superior, makes up for anything else. I have found that most people are really very shallow and don't require much illusion to be convinced... just dress the dress, walk the walk, talk the talk and the people are believers.
Easier said than done, of course -- it takes a lot of practice and a great many episodes in life where you closely identify with Data from ST:TNG.
This is just more proof that I should pick the Hot dumb Cheerleader type for a wife. Honestly, it is for the kid's benefit.
Quote from the BBC article: "Professor Baron-Cohen said the rise in autism may be linked to the fact that it has become easier for systemizers to meet each other, with the advent of international conferences, greater job opportunities and more women working in these fields."
This guy deserves zero respect. There is nothing scientific about such a statement. He presents no evidence, and his explanation fits no facts.
Anyone can teach themselves to be analytical, in the good sense of the word.
Professor Baron-Cohen is confusing the healthy analytical use of the brain with obsessive analytical behavior. People who are obsessive are that way for the reason that they have an enormous amount of inner conflict. It is the inner conflict that pushes children toward being autistic, not something healthy like being analytical.
Here's an idea: What makes people laugh has as much to do with the social situation and the overall social standing (looks included) of the person telling the joke as it has with the joke itself (and when I say "the joke itself" I mean the presentation as much as I mean the content). People are unaware of this. When people want someone who would make them laugh, they're actually wishing for someone whose company they crave, for evolutionary reasons they're not cognizant of, and whom they try to grow closer to by laughing at their jokes and otherwise showering with affection.
News for merdes. Shit that matters.
Ask me about my sig.
There's always AOLism. The severe condition where the child is unable to converse with other humans without resorting to emotional acronyms.
LOL!
Task Mangler
"He believes the genes which make someone analytical may also impair their social and communication skills."
I've heard this before and I still question why this would be anything other than obvious. I personally find situations that require what is typically considered "social skills" to be almost completely void of reason. It has taken quite a bit of effort on my part to adjust to socializing with other people and I don't believe that I have any form of autism/Asperger's. When I was young (highschool) I just didn't get it. I still don't, but I can play the game by the rules pretty well for the most part. Is it really that surprising to find that someone who is significantly more hard-wired for analytical thinking than most to have trouble adapting to such an illogical system?
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
I'm sure I first read of this joke in IEEE Spectrum in 92 - any earlier quotes?
You have. It is not news but then this is Slashdot.
0 01_Wheelwright_BC.pdf
The association between autistic children and parents with scientific / engineering backgrounds was established years ago. Even Baron-Cohen's work on this is from 1997 which was NINE years ago.
http://www.autismresearchcentre.com/docs/papers/2
Nothing to see here - move along.
We're supposed to be pretending that's it's possible to be both a scientist and a normal person at the same time so that we can attract more women into the science and tech world.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
Think it's his dad. My girlfriend was taught by him at Cambridge.
Help prevent Autism - have sex with a (Republican) (Democrat). Take your pick.
Maybe. My alternative hypothesis is that the genes that cause the brain to be wired up for better social skills (mirror neurons) either cause analytical skills to not be developed, or else there is a fundamental conflict (e.g. the social skills themselves inhibit analytical skills). With less influence by such genes, the analytical skills can develop or come out.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
In other news, the decrease in the number of pirates in the past couple centuries is shown to have a direct correlation to the global average temperature. As pirates go down, the temperature goes up. Scientific evidence...
-Da3vid-
If you have no clue about social skills then you have no clue about how to negotiate. The lack of social skills just means that you have no clue about what is going on. Your receiver is missing all the important signals. It really isn't about lying and cheating. It is about being semi-clueful.
P.S. I resemble that remark.
(Leaves to go watch Wapner)
Having been diagnosed as being in the autistic spectrum (Asperger) I can hardly say that it is surprising:
THIS IS WHAT YOU GET WHEN YOU MARRY AN APE TO AN ELECTRIC TYPEWRITER.
It's not a defect, it's evolution in action.
-- No Sig is a Good Sig
I know that everybody here is talking about Asberger's, but not me. My sister is severely autistic, to the point that she is still in a supervised group-home sstting even though she is over forty. I skipped the whole freshman calc sequence and went right into DiffEq my first semester at uni. Do my sister and I share that common gene? It's possible, I guess. My parents almost didn't have another child after my sister, fearing another severely autistic child. It may turn out that they were almost correct in their fear.
Put identity in the browser.
I believe autism is one of the disorders there is a much higher chance of having in a pregnancy when the woman is over 30 years old or so, which could have a strong correlation to "analytical" (educated) couples who were in school till they were 30.
perhaps this is the "Genetic Slashdot Effect"
From the way it's presented a lot of times, it would be a form of autism. I can really believe that analytical parents have a higher chance of having children with a form of autism, such as Asperger's Disorder (Those that have it seem to prefer the term) Both of my parents are analytical, as are their parents. So far, only one of their four children has been diagnosed, my sister with Aspergers, but it's been suggested that I am autistic myself. So 1/4 with a possibility of 2/4 isn't bad proof of this theory. I would say yes, that it does apply.
if two slashdotters marry and produce offspring
The foregoing assumes one of two pre-conditions:
a) the existance of a female slashdotter; or
b) weird science.
We use only a small portion of the full capacity of our brain. Its not size. Its in the wiring.
Perhaps the lack of social skills frees the brain from prossessing the components that one usually uses to assimilate and be accepted in society, or at least not harrassed by others. With the brain not working on this, for whatever reason, it allows more analytical thought to occupy the areas otherwise reserved for this matter.
This theory does not incorporate goths, however.
If that's what social skills are, big deal, I don't give a shit.
Professor Baron-Cohen, when asked for comment, just flapped his arms and ran around in a circle.
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
We have zero history of autism in either mine or my wife's family, my son is the only autistic kid in any of the two families as far as we know. We are also two of the very few in all of the family that work in scientific fields. The interesting thing is that he is showing the exact tendencies to destroy toys (to see how they work) that I exhibited as a kid. And now as a grownup I wonder if some of my socialization issues in high school were on par with other nerds or I was showing some mild signs of autism.
My brother on the other hand was my complete opposite, he is the kind of guy that got bad grades mostly because he did not give a crap, not because of intelligence. His daughter was very precocious, learned to talk very early, and my mom (a teacher) had her reading before she was 5.
My dad was not a scientist, he was a policeman for 32 years but he was sort of a wizard when it came to fixing machinery with no formal training, and I also remember he was really good at running long calculations in his head. Could all this be related?
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
Newsweek has a test that you can take to see if you have autistic traits. My take on it is that autism runs along a continuum with everyone having a degree of it as part of the human condition. It doesn't sound like it's really a problem if you have autistic traits unless it affects your ability to function in society. I guess if you are autistic-leaning and are planning on having children, you may want to carefully screen your partner to make sure s/he isn't similarly affected so you don't pass on a double dose of it.
Genetic Counseling Needed?
About 25 years ago, a girl turned me down for a date. She said that she didn't want an autistic child. Apparently a professor had cautioned her about dating engineers.
Now with a very analytical mate, I have a child with pervasive development disorder and Asperser traits that will probably need assisted living.
This is definitely an area that needs more research.
Interesting, I hold a masters in math - father of my austics daughter is a Sun certified network admin. I think that passes us into geekdom pretty well. My daughter is amazingly bright. Although diagnosed autistic, she has social skills, is academically advanced and socializes. Going through college the tech crowd was always a little bit different and that's fine with me. Those are the only people I can relate to. Check out the book: The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late This book subscribes to the same theory ie: the parents of autisic children being engineers, mathematicians, etc.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Used to volunteer with the mentally challenged and handicapped in high school. The more severe cases of autism are not an inability to relate, but an inability to communicate. Autistic kids (I was working with teenagers) have no sense of empathy. If you tried to say hello, they would not look you in the face. Kids with serious autism can't stand human interaction. Its not a matter of learning human interaction, its a matter of being withdrawn from the world and not being able to pull yourself to the level of the rest of society. We operated a summer camp for children, both differently and regularly abled. Part of the time his parents were there - we tried operating a boat ride with him. It took us 10 minutes to get a life preserver on him. You can't get face to face to put a life preserver on; having a face within 3 feet of him is too intimate of contact for a severe case of Autism. They get scared and withdraw. This kid was a runner too, when he did get scared he ran - he had boundless energy.
Now granted, there are intermediate cases, and I know people with slight cases who operate well enough in real life. Its not a cakewalk and certain social interactions can't just "be learned". Some can be faked well enough to get along but its not the same for the person living the life. But autism is very real, and very abstract. Its nothing like being a geek and just not being socially aware. That is not a valid comparison.
+2 INT -2 CHA
Are we talking about severe autism such as the Rainman or just a general case of autism because of that was the case, computers could be considered to cause autism because the reduction of social skills.
[%] Cingular Ringtones
I think at least some creedence or research should be given to how environment affects the developmental process. Ie, does the marriage of geeks, prevalence of escapism, and the general atmosphere of a geek marriage contribute to the development of autism? From what I read, I doubt full blown autism could be affected by environment, as the onset is at far too young of an age. However, is it possible that Asperger or milder forms of autism are at least partially the result of, for lack of better words, a really geeky upbringing. -gaines
Amish kids don't get Autism. They don't get vaccines either.
But it's silly to question "science" on slashdot - just about the same as walking into a fundamentalist church & telling them their Xian religion is all about control, and NOT about what the founder actually taught.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Here's the basic problem:
at this point, there is no reliable _physical_ test for autism.
All diagnosis of autism has to be done using behavioral analysis--and the criteria very greatly accross legal jurisdictions(i.e. what is "autistic" in california may not be in Wyoming).
The genetic line of reasoning is also rather questionable. There are clearly genetic risk factors(about 90% of autistic are type A blood type and male for example)--however the percentage of Type A kids that are autistic varies a _lot_ in various areas. Even among identical twins, raised together, about 5% of those autistics have a twin that isn't that may go down further if you change the line to explude milder lines of autism)--and there are lines of research that claim there are risk factors that aren't genetic that all twins would share.
What I think we need most urgently here:
a good, biological test that can sort out autistic from non-autistic kids reliably. The closest thing I've seen to this is the work of V.K. Singh at Utah State and Hugh Fudenberg(formerly of UCSF).
I expect we are seeing several different viral and environmental causes of autism spectrum disorders. There may genetic susceptability--just like populations differ in how much they are impacted by various infectious diseases. However claiming that stuff like assortive mating and genetics is causing autism just isn't good scientific method.
Genetic Testing For Geekiness?3 1/202207
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/
A Savant Explains His Abilities0 3&tid=99
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/19/23422
PDD, Asperger, and Geek Syndrome?2 37229
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/20/1
More Evidence of Increase in Profound Autism4 6
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/20/13142
Wired on Autism in the Valley3
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/12/17/01324
L.A. Times Columnist Says Geek-Autism is a Good Thing1 3
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/09/27/13472
Why geek geniuses may lack social graces1 3/1223215
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/09/
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
I've never been impressed with Baren-Cohen's ideas about autism. To say that autists are "systemizers" is about as utilitarian as saying that artists are "feelers." Beyond that, it's a simplification to label a broad range of behavior as all being "autism," much like labeling all disconnected thinking as schizophrenia. The brain is an incredibly arcane system of systems, all interconnected through myriad feedback loops and spurious environmental inputs. The spectrum of behavior that results has a broad range of overlap, and its interpretation is very subjective.
People read articles like this and walk away with the idea that "nerds" are autistic, and that there is an inverse relationship between intelligence and "social skills". Perhaps there is an association, but who's to say that people who don't perform as expected in a conversation aren't more accurately constrained by ADD or dyslexia or subclinical epilepsy or a dozen other syndromes that affect the ability to maintain and mirror appropriate social responses? You find what you're looking for, and assuming that these tidy relationships describe broad traits will assuredly result in identifying those traits in people, like someone seeing "his father's eyes" in the baby of a cuckold son.
Science works best when the topic uder review posseses discrete qualities, which can be measured and compared on a uniform basis. Presently, there are few such methods for studying behavior. Perhaps in the future better brain imaging scans, neurotransmitter assays, and more unbiased, involuntary behavioral tests will ferret out usable associations and predictions about brain disorders.
Let's clean that up a bit more:
da telly is reportin dat a leadin skientist in area of developmental psychopathology, professa simon baron-cohen, is indicatin dat there is wicked chance dat there is a scientific basis to da observed phenomenon dat childrun wiv ighly analytical parents is more likely to be autistic.
I am fully aware of how valuable social skills are in the modern world.
However...
They amount to little more than mutual stroking. Stroking of the lymbic system via words and body language, but nonetheless just stroking.
The reason they are "so important" is simple: the world is run by people who have them, use them, and judge you by them. They, however, have little intrinsic value.
I am not saying that the would would be a better place if we had no emotions. However, I am suggesting that we live in a great emotion-orgy, and that we would be far better off if there were a lot more mild autistics in the world.
Usually, the people who disagree with me the most strongly are people who are quite stupid, have no genuinely productive capabilities, but talk well. Go figure.
--AC
[karma whore]
Wikipedia Entry
IMDb Entry
[/karma whore]
"Gratuitous complexity is akin to chaos" - True Vox
I grew up before the main clinical description of autism was published, roughly 1984. This was lucky, since instead of being pigeonholed I just baffled the psychiatrists who the school had evaluate me. One example from sixth grade, the psychiatrist said I got the question wrong when asked why oil floated on top of water: I answered with a fairly complex explaination of the molecular make up (including diagrams) and why they can't mix. The answer written in the book was because oil is lighter. So I got it wrong.
My mother was baffled by me, too, but never quit on me. She worked hard to socialize me. She'd wake me up to watch SNL and Monty Python. I learned to tell jokes and understand humor. She exposed me to history, art and religion.
As I grew older I worked to socialize myself. I studied literature and learned how to read and write. I worked with animals and competed in sports (geek sports that required routine, discipline and long times spent alone training).
Still this didn't fully prepare me for the big world and I fell into the geek downward spiral... long periods of coding and disregard for personal hygine...
I could see it wasn't working and went into a concerted effort to break the cycle. I studied how people dressed and made an effort to be more social by going to a coffee shop regularly where the staff began to know me since I always ordered the same drink. But I also worked on learning to talk to people by studying interviews on the radio by Michael Enright, Terry Gross... My computer science teachers taught me a great deal too, one of the focuses of the course work was preparing geeks to interact with the public and the teachers were brilliant at bring us out of our shells. I am forever indebted.
Right now, a good friend of mine is hating his cube life and I am encouraging him to pursue work with autistic children since he enjoys his volunteer work much more than his job. I tell him that it can be done, people can be socialized. It just takes work.
And yes, there are people who are beyond hope, but most of these kids being diagnosed are within range of treatment. It just takes time and dedication to set them on the route. Once taught how to work at it, their innate need for repetition will carry them along.
Sure, anything to an extreme is bad, but imagine a world full of autistic-y people. What are people with good social skills good at? Organizing mobs and armies and holy wars. Or building statues of people that did that. What are geeky people good for? Oh, I dunno, maybe ignoring mundane superficial issues and heeping busy advancing the human race?
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
There have a number of attempts to substantiate an autism-vaccination connection this by case-control studies or examining whether diagnosis of developmental disorders changes when vaccination rates or the use of mercury preservatives changes. In general, these studies have found little association, so it looks like this is not a major factor in autism. It may be just that the time when early symptoms of autism appear is close to the time at which vaccinations are normally given.
I have indeed been diagnosed with Aspergers, and I fit this profile (being really good at math, chemistry, physics [haven't taken biology yet] but exceptionally poor in most social settings).
I never really noticed this, because I grew up in the AcTal (Academically Talented) program in this city, and most of my friends probably had, and still do, have some form of autism.
When you contrast the 25 AcTal students with the "normal" students (one class of AcTal and one normal in the same school), you suddenly notice: a) the difference in overall math/science aptitude b) the difference in overall sociability.
The normal class had a lot fewer people wearing glasses and was also much more socially active (parties, etc.) but also performed poorly on math contests compared to our AcTal class.
So there you have it: a real life "experiment" done for about the last 15 years, proving exactly what this article has.
(BTW: Math contest results for our class are here (grade 6), here (grade 7) and here (grade 8). We are Greystone Heights School, I'm Bobby Xiao (and all of our team members are from AcTal).
Elad Alon (835764) wrote:
Actually, my dealings with women typically crash and burn within minutes of beginning discussion. I really find it hard to know what other people are interested in or even what they might find relevant. In another case, I met a woman who ended up taking advantage of me (not sexually) for her own amusement; I didn't suspect her intentions could be bad.
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
Byrna Seigal at UCSF said the same thing years ago. Neither one had any real data to back up their claim-because there isn't any. Autism rose in places like Silicon Valley rather rapidly. Changes in mating patterns tend to be more gradual. Also, the changes in mating patterns that were going on in the hotspots were places where there was more stuff going on like marriage of folks from rather different parts of the world(i.e. a big chunk of white male Silicon Valley engineers are married to Asian or Hispanic women).
This theory belongs right up there with the "refrigerator mother" hypothesis.
and while autisim is misunderstood, it it certainly does not impair my communication abi .. ... .... .....
The article states that Autism is a lifelong developmental disorder which requires specialist support.
And from what I think I have heard about Autism, people with this condition (perhaps just the most extreme
forms?) need special care throughout their lives.
So this is what I don't understand - two successful (in their analytical based fields) have an offspring
and that child can't get by in the world. Doesn't it seem like the child would be progressively less
social, and more analytical. How come the sudden collapse?
Basically, if something isn't said, it doesn't exist to them. That is a crippling disadvantage in social situations.
It's not always a problem. I have been in several situations with my wife where another female - e.g. a waitress, a cashier, a friend's sister - flirted with me and I had zero clue re: the flirtation. My better half explained it to me later (with some amusement). Had I recognized what was happening I could have been rather uncomfortable, but since everything went right over my head I was as happy as a happy thing. Sometimes (ignorance == bliss).
For you single
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Really neat! Just when our species needs asocial individuals who will spend years in solitude playing with really geeky kit while they pilot starships away from a broken planet, evolution once again begins to provide the variation that fits the niche...
And in her husband's case, not without some unique anatomical features.
sigs, as if you care.
Seriously, most of the people I work with think that "a decent conversation" is the way all the women whom Harmony wanted to be friends with were talking about in the angel series episode called "In Harms Way".
In other words, useless gossip & rumors. Which totally explains why I seldom talk with them. Rumormongering is complete waste of time... But discussing how to lay waste to their silly boastings about how much smarter they are for buying the latest I-pod bobble, NOW THAT'S a decent conversation! (grins evilly)
[Now, I'm off to lift my le... Um, visit... at another place.]
This could really change how you pick a mate if you plan on reproducing that is. I guess if we slashdotters want kids that aren't "off" we should start dating bumb women instead of geek girls. What on earth will the geek girls do for dates now? They already had hard enough with geek guys being completely inept at dating. If geek guys do start looking for dumb women to reproduce, where does that leave all the geek girls? They should have taken into consideration all the geeks out there who's lives this will change forever or at least until the next /. article posts.
WTF?
It's been pretty fricken' obvious to ME for quite a while, that there was a link! I was diagnosed in college, while trying to adapt to civilian life after military service (a nicely regimented/regulated lifestyle). Asperger's and Autism appear to be extreme forms of Dyslexia. I thought I was the lucky one growing up as all my brothers and sisters had dyslexia and I didn't (oops)! The other side of this "luck", was that they were very social and had lots of friends, and I was your basic "ghost", much like the character "Grisom" on CSI.
:), that also happened to be a degreed electronics tech like me.
I decided that I wanted to have fun and be a somewhat "popular" guy after college, so I observed "Alpha Males" and their behaviour and started to emulate certain behaviours. Low and Behold! I wound up with a very attractive wife (my assessment isn't biased, of course
Our son was diagnosed with Autism at 2 years of age. He's now 7 yrs old, unable to communicate with speech effectively, and has issues with agression, environmental over-stimulation (sounds), foods (textures), lack of normal sleep patterns (sleeps only 2 hrs a night), and enhanced strength and endurance (normal limits are a learned safty limit, he hasn't learned them). An extensive program of therapy and medication has helped our son live closer to a normal life, but there will always be issues. We have very little doubt that he will eventually live in a structured assisted-living environment.
Other little tid-bits of information: Over 90% of people with Autism are male. Of the less than 10% female population, many have a degenerative form that results in death by their teens. Autism is a spectrum disorder ranging from mild (most engineers/programmers), to severe (much worse than my son, real vegetative states). High intelligence alone doesn't seem to be a factor. It's more high intelligence AND Analytical ability. A very creative and intelligent artist or designer is at low risk, but a data analyst is at higher risk. The cause is entirely genetic/hereditary. Many people think it's an allergy to glutens/immunization/trauma/etc... These can have Autism-like symptoms, but are not Autism and can possibly be reversed through treatment. There is no treatment for Autism at this time. Maybe with gene-therapy and computer-brain implants in the future, but not now.
When you want something built, come see me. If you want correct grammar and spelling, get a F*ing liberal arts student.
It is an interesting idea, and suspect that there is some truth to it, but IMHO the problem goes deeper than genes. From personal experience, thinking analytically for extended period of times impairs you social skills (a bit like drinking and driving I suppose). Hence, It's not how only how your brain is wired that determine your social skill, but how you use it on a daily basis.
I was never singled out as someone with low social skill (or if I was, it was behind my back), but when I started a B. Sc. in physics and math, I quickly came to realize that I had trouble dealing with my peers and more dramatically in my intimate relationships. I first thought it was because I was overworked, but I don't think this explanation does justice to the problem. I was starting to approach my relations with a binary attitude: they were either good or bad, right or wrong, etc. I lost patience, if things weren't going the way I wanted them. I was missing all the subtleties of bounding and I was no longer an understanding companion, not particularly good.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I eventually went into law after finishing my B. Sc. Low and behold, the above problems slowly receeded and it felt much easier to bound with people (not only law students, but my old science friends too).
The story doesn't stop there... there is only so much law "mumbo jumbo" a mathematician can take (the only three mathematicians in our faculty left in a period 2 years). After a year and a half of law, I am now back in math. Unsurprisingly, my social problems are surfacing again. It's causing havoc in my relation with my girlfriend (she only knew me as a law student), and I still hope it won't spread to my friendships.
I can't speak for everyone, but to me it feels like social skills and analytical skills have hard to co-habiting. So far my only solution have found is to allow for a "buffer period" between meeting people and finishing my work.
I would be curious to know if any one else has experience somehing similar.
One factor that I think reduces the occurence of the smart-beautiful-charasmatic individuals is the fact that to excel at any of these requires effort. Being born with a high IQ does not necessarily mean that anyone will consider you smart at age 30. If you spend your life watching reality-TV and reading up on Brad and Angelina's baby in order to be able to "fit in", it is much less likely that you will fall into the "smart" category. On the other hand, if you are born physically attractive, and spend your life in flourescent lit rooms, eating junk food and caffeine as you study molecular biology, you most likely won't be high up on anyone "beautiful people" list.
I'm not saying that these qualities are necessarily mutually exclusive, just that a person's interests will generally develop one, often at the detriment of another.
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA
Autism is basically an arbitrary, subjective cut-off of the social skills spectrum. That's why its prevalence changes so much from one generation to the next, and why today 'geeks' are being referred to as autistic. There's no evidence of any single objective characteristic which can be attributed to all autistics and which cannot be attributed to any non-autistic.
'When my wife asked if it had mercury, the doctor said, "Yes, we're trying to get rid of our old stock." We declined.'
Rather odd (and probably wrong), as flu vaccines are changed every year to address whatever strain is predicted to be prevalent that year. They should not have "old stock" that has mercury. "old" would be measured in months, rather than years, so would not contain mercury that was banned several years ago. If they have stock that old (extremely unlikely after last year's shortages) someone needs to report the situation to the proper authorities.
I HIGHLY doubt this is the case. Even if they did do something that unethical, they would have definitely dumped it last year when it was a hot commodity.
The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon - Douglas William Jerrold
For an alternate explanation of his statistics, I'd say that perhaps the families that are members of this Autism society are more likely to be in technical fields as mentioned in the article becuase people who work in these technical fields are likely more wealthy and well educated than average, and thus more likely to have had their child diagnosed by a doctor, treated, and joined the society.
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
my 18-month old son was in the ER for a respiratory infection when the doctor offered to give him a flu shot.
The odd thing is, the correlation between mercury and autism is essentially zero. Your son is more likely to die of influenza than to suffer from autism as a result of some vaccination.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
Any relation to Sascha ? (Ali-G)
Nick...
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Baron-Cohen's evidence is called "ecological correlation". As another poster has pointed out already, ecological correlations are subject to the "ecological fallacy". However, ecological correlations are a good way to do preliminary investigations into unknown sources of new pathologies. As anyone who has had to dignose a complex system knows, you start by gathering gross phenomenology about the system which is rather inexpensive, and then start teasing apart the various potential confounding variables as you find promising (but possibly deceptive) lines of research validated by the preliminary data.
We're at such a primitive state of understanding of the phenomenon of autism that there is intense disagreement as to whether there as actually been an explosive epidemic in autism over the last 20 years or whether there is simply an explosion in the number of social workers who are prone to make the diagnosis given the same kinds of problems they've always faced.
Without getting into the nuances of this debate we can simply say this:
If we behave as though there is a real explosion in the number of cases, we are acting wisely since the cost of being wrong is far less than is the cost of being wrong about there being no explosive epidemic.
Having said that, we have the first reason to discount Baron-Cohen's research:
While Baron-Cohen provides no data to back up the plausible sounding argument for why there might have been increased assortive mating among "nerds". Byrna Siegel makes the same argument. There are just as plausible arguments that assortive mating among "nerds" has decreased over the same time period -- not the least of which is the simple fact that nerds are working in male saturated environments where availability of mates is low, the cost of living is high and job stability is low. In other words, nerds are reproducing at a much lower aggregate rate than they used to, when they were living in more scattered, more gender balanced, more affordable and more inbred rural towns.
The second reason to discount Baron-Cohen's research is that he doesn't use the technique of "strong inference" which you really have to do when you're dealing with such a tenuously supported preliminary investigation. Strong inference means taking at least 2, preferably more, hypotheses and subjecting them to similar tests to see which of them wins in a rational comparison. There are lots of suspected ecological correlations out there -- mercury to autism, vaccination to autism, etc. and he doesn't compare the degree of his ecological correlation to the degree of these other ecological correlations. Note that what I'm not saying here that the ecological fallacy isn't in play here, nor am I saying that there might be better data supporting or refuting a given hypothesis (say, statistical case studies of individuals). What I am saying is that if you're going to use strong inference you need to apply similar tests to the different hypotheses and see which of them comes out on top so you can prioritize your subsequent research rationally.
The third reason to discount Baron-Cohen's research is that he doesn't even provide hard numbers for the nerd-autism ecological correlation (this is giving him the benefit of the doubt that nerds aren't having their effective fertility destroyed by other ecological factors).
So what would happen if you tried to do a real, strong inference ecological study of autism comparing the various hypotheses against each to see which has the strongest ecological correlation?
You'd come to the conclusion that the place to look for the cause of autism's explosive increase over the last 20 years is in areas of high Finnish ancestry where something is impo
Seastead this.
IANAPsy
Contrary to the article, lack of social skills is NOT the main feature of autism. Lack of social skills can indeed be a symptom, but there is more to it than that.
Autistics process information differently than "normal" individuals. Often the brain cannot manage multiple stimuli at once, leading to short attention spans or obsession with a specific thought or concept. Sensory overload is not uncommon, and often the autistic individual will retreat to a comforting mental space as a coping mechanism. When this mental space involves a skill we term this a Savant.
Autistic individuals can also have impulse control problems.
Lack of social skills is most likely caused by an inability to process all the information coming in and so an autistic individual misses out on most of the interaction. Attempting to mimic poorly understood behavior can lead to even more social problems.
I would wager that there is a stronger link between ADHD and Autism than there is with being analytical.
Is it because I's autistic?
I took the AQ test at the end. Apparently they hosed the calc engine in the background so had to mentally calc my score.
38 where the control was 16.4 - and yes I do have some of the classic signs of Aspergers. Go figure.
In fact, I think you agree. There is nothing about being analytical that causes disease.
Now, I go in and I can't see how to create a new entry. All it says is I can edit the existing enry, or delete it. Nothing about adding a new entry.
Is there some new trick in slash to adding new journals? What's the secret?
Thanks in advance for any help.
Are you Autistic? Tell me about it.
In that theory, it is the parents who have inner conflict. Inner conflict does in fact change body chemistry, and could affect the growth of an unborn child.
I think by far a more dangerous hybrid personality type that can result from the coupling of two highly technical persons is the offspring that is to some degree autistic, but self-aware enough to deceive. In other words, they lack the level of emotion required to be a decent human being, yet they observe proper human behavior and can mimic it perfectly, sometimes even surpassing others in the areas of social interaction and diplomacy. I believe a great deal of these individuals end up in marketing.
Wow! This must be a PERSONAL letter, just for me!
My wife has number-oriented Dyslexia , and can't do math worth beans... very hard for her to relate to it. She is in healthcare as a personal support worker, and does very well at it. I am a programmer, but as a kid I was highly musical and a kid who had a tallent for art. As I got older (16 years), I was able to get right into math and did quite well at it... I was even told by my main math teacher that I was creative with math. My wife and I now have a son who is almost 2 years old, and I even though it's hard to say what the world will bring him, I guess the idea of genetic diversity is good for him. Who knows if he will have Dyslexia... Does anyone know when you could find out if a child suffers from some form of Autism, Aspergers, or Dylexia?
Kids who are diagnosed of autism are done so later in life (like 2-5) when their behavior changes a lot, usually on the floor spinning in circles giggling.
There are some talks about the increase of mercury in shots being administered to younger babies for immunizations being a culprit for the increase cases we are seeing now days. But the official talks and stuff are happening in secret behind close doors. There are also some tests where they looked at twins and they didn't see any increase to the numbers.
There are even links to ADD and ADHD with adding florid to the water. That was tested on lab mice with what they estimate how much florid people are consuming with water, toothpaste, etc.
So who knows what this future will hold for us.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
A reply to a previous slashdot article mentioned the dangers of sociotism:
Sociotism is a mental disorder characterised by an undue obsession with social interaction and eye contact, which often interferes with healthy interests such as computer programming and science fiction. Sociotistic people often band together in tightly-knit heirarchies, where social status is determined by subtle shifts in "body language" rather than skill or experience. Sociotistic children often play cruel tricks on their healthier playmates for no logical reason. They prefer brutal team-oriented games like football over healthy, abstract tests of individual merit, such as video games.
Victims of sociotism of all ages tend to be less intelligent than healthy people. They are capable of learning skills that have an obvious and immediate short-term benifit, but profoundly lack the social independance and intellectual curiosity needed to explore new frontiers of knowledge. As a result, sociotistic people rarely succeed in fields such as science or engineering, and when they do succeed in these feilds it is usually only in a managerial capacity.
If you know anyone that fits the description of a sociotistic person, please pat them on the head in a sympathetic but condecending manner and tell them to get professional help for their obvious deficiencies. With any luck, we will some day discover powerful mind-altering drugs that will force these people to be as healthy and well-adjusted as we are.
So what, we go on a witch hunt and have each child checked? Then what? Throw them in the loony bin, mark them so people know to stay away from them? Maybe we'll just paint a big bullseye on their backs.
Either way, what you're suggesting would cause a lot fo children to be alienated and emotionally destroyed. Why the hell would you willingly destroy a child?
And don't you dare give me that "If they're autistic they don't feel emotions like normal people" bullshit.
We know what you must have done to her to know that she tasted bad.
I don't know what you guys are talking about.
I have no trouble at all getting dates. With women. Cute ones. And having sex with them. After an appropriate period of time treating them like a gentleman, to camouflage my true geekiness...
nonanalytical, impulsive, controled-by-their-emotions
You mean women?
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
I've always wondered if not socializing when you were younger, would you be able to later in life. Like abused children who were locked away and never learned to speak, once you pass the point of no return your brain isn't able to do it.
There is the MIT type of computer genius, how different is that from an autistic kid did you ever think?
:(
:D If you teach a kid that solving stupid puzzles is a cool game, then she will solve stupid puzzles all her life. Teach her to break those toys. I also think that music will improve their lives, and of course they must be interacting with other kids, or they will never learn how vicious or helpful others can be.
:D)
Bent on repetition, the autistic kid does not seem to have the inspiration to change the world like the genius does. Neither does she seem to read emotions off people, making it harder for her to consume novels and movies, and well, just about everything in life
My analysis is that some genes for "analytical skills" can be part of the condition of autism, but I doubt it is a complete answer. From most accounts I've read, even savants are not considered to have a normal level of intelligence to get by in the society. I know that's also what you think of your boss, advisor or co-worker, but please leave the humor aside for a while. The problematic situation here is that, it seems, some irresponsible journalists love to make the implication that "science and mathematics is abnormal. mathematicians are mutants." possibly because they believed to be normal kids, yet understood basically nothing from science classes.
In my humble opinion, the research is neglecting the social dimensions when a computer scientist marries an electrical engineer. These guys are the new slaves. They never had a life. How much of a colorful and fulfilling life do you expect them to give to their children?
On the other hand, there are of course many engineer/scientist/whatever couples with actual lives, hobbies, emotions, goals, personalities. The fact as I see it, is that most good engineers are smart enough to find out about life and art, if they ever have the opportunity. I have seen many colleagues enjoy a beautiful social life and engage in outstanding "extracurricular" activities after school.
My advice for Silicon Valley couples who don't want their kids to look autistic is: endow them with art. I think art is the missing factor in many kids' lives. Please don't try to impose on them "the right kind of art". Good art is almost always the wrong kind
At any rate, I would personally like to have been the child of a bright scientist couple who'd motivate me to work on important problems when I was younger.
By the way, there is no such thing as "the right lifestyle". (Well, especially the lifestyle of advertisers
--exa--
If your son is two already, he should be showing signs of autism if they exist. Dyslexia I'm not so sure about. My son is 2 years and 3 months old and has been going to occupational therapy for about 2 months now. He is getting better, but some things are still very difficult for my wife and me. He refuses to eat any solid foods (no cheerios, no crackers/biter biscuits). Instead of pulling us toward something he wants, he will just scream his head off. He can only speak a few words still (though this has improved greatly with the therapy), but he still cannot put two words together (such as "want food", "go bye-bye", etc). We practically have to pin him down to brush his teeth.
I think if your son had any of these symptoms, you would have already been worried and asked the pediatrician about it, no? That's what we did at my son's 2 year checkup. The pediatrician then gave us a referral to a neurologist who "diagnosed" him with a form of autism so we could get him into therapy.
cowgod Esc:wq
Of course not. The reason geeks have all the hot women is that this "analytical-autistic" deformation happens to be a kind of "extreme male brain". It is an exaggeration of the most tangible differences between (most) female brains and (most) male brains.
:D
Have a look at this essay at PLoS Biology, which is mostly based on Baron-Cohen's results, and which seems to be causing quite a stir at the moment.
So next time your conversation dries up, rejoice, for this is a shining proof of your extreme virility !
Thomas-
If there's one thing you need to learn, it's that you can NOT turn a platonic female friend into a lover. That is not how women are wired. Once you are in the friend zone, there is a near-zero chance of you getting out of that zone. you absolutely must qualify the relationship in the proper context as early as possible. Women see sexual partners and friendship partners as two wholly distinct categories. Any other approach results in a massive waste of time and energy.
Does this fully explain the prevalence of autistic children among long term steroid users, sorry, among NFL quarterbacks?
The point you just made about body-chemistry caused by the supposed inner-conflict of a malignant analytical nature has no baring in Autism. Say that I'm a pregnant female who creates spreadsheets for my major professor on a research grant project. Are you saying that because I am doing the numbers crunching and data analysis, I will have a child with Asperger's Syndrome? My guess is that is the *last* freaking probable or possible cause for autism. I'm beginning to assume that you misunderstood the original article. People who naturally are bookish or nerdy or geeky who in previous generations did not have the means (read internet dating, newsgroups, etc.)to find, date, and mate with other like minded people. The mind is a product of both nature and nurture...I'm proposing that the NATURE of autism is the convergence of "geek genes" in the progeny. Notany behavioral traits,but genetics are the cause. I see it in my family. I see it in friends and my parents.
Most things that occur to people happen on a scale. You're not just fat or thin, you're not just smart or dumb, you are not just tall or short. Everyone falls in a range.
Why is it not obvious that autism is the same way? Where are all the partially autistic people? They are engineers and scientests. These are the reason that geeks are "Picked on" in school--not because of their hobbies, but because they actually lack genes that most people use to empathize.
We all deal with it somehow, Some overcome their lack of empathy by emulating it, some buy friends and are happy with that, and some just don't even bother. Most don't even recognize that they have a birth defect unless it's pointed out and they go back and review the mistakes they made that cost them relationships in the past...
I think the human mind is just good enough that it compensates for whatever we don't have, but that doesn't mean that everyone is truly created equal.
Thank you for the "slashedautism" joke.
Really very cute and made Autism Diva laugh.
- Autism Diva
I analyzed the world. And I decided it's better to shut up.
I've seen some research where differences in the brain were seen for ADD patients as well. More specifically, a lot of activity was found in places normally found dormant or rarely active. The source I studied (sorry I can't cite it, been awhile) called it an "Evolutionary Brain" which seemed to imply that this will eventually become the measure of a "Normal Brain".
"Are you saying that because I am doing the numbers crunching and data analysis, I will have a child with Asperger's Syndrome?"
I was saying the opposite of that, of course.
That this research wasn't actually by behavioral psychologist Sascha Baron Cohen ?
I was diagnosed at 16 with NVLD, an "autistic spectrum" condition similar (but not identical) to Asperger's.
I had enormous social problems as a child; school was a very traumatic experience, which ended with me spending some time in a psychiatric inpatient unit after I left.
The older I've become though, the easier it gets. After leaving school, I read heavily in the area of relational psychology. The main books were Machiavelli's The Prince, Sun Tzu's Art of War, Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends and Influence People, and the Art of Seduction and the 48 Laws of Power by Robert E. Greene. The works of Internet author David D'Angelo were also enlightening. I am now in a romantic relationship as well which is entering its third year, so I figure I must have learned something. I'm aware that a number of better known autistic people are celibate, and the stereotype does tend towards celibacy, so I tend to consider my success with the opposite sex to be a fairly major achievement.
Another thing which happened that I actually consider extremely beneficial in hindsight was an 18 month encounter with marijuana. I had heard about marijuana being used medically to treat people with autism, and due to my own experience highly recommend it for such, although I do not recommend smoking on a permanent basis. Marijuana does lessen intelligence and damage neurology I believe...but for an autistic person, that also has the effect of making us human.
The thing about it is, I've tended to believe from observation that there is a neurological tradeoff between mathematical/computer related ability and the ability to know how to socially interact. Interestingly, I discovered that my own computer-related ability appeared to markedly decrease as I became more effective at interacting socially. It's a difficult struggle, but I think it is worth it.
This news isn't entirely new. I remember reading over a year ago, maybe even almost two years ago, reading about 'breakouts' of aspergers syndrome (which is like a milder form of autism) in areas with huge pockets of 'analytically minded' people.
Is he talking yet?
Is there some kind of repetitive behavior? hand flapping? opening and closing of door like items? Stacking blocks in some kind of pattern?
Find a developmental pediatrician now if you have any doubts. The earlier you get therpy, the better off he will be.
As a programmer I have dealt with my fair share of neural net programming and training that have lead me to my own thoughts on austim. When using Markov modelling for conversation simulators based on how the neural net is built up you can get very autistic results. These results usually happen from information overloading. When conversing with the simulator on a very high intellectual level it tries to learn overly complex ideas too early and forms the strongest memories without any true understanding. It tries to mimic very advanced concepts with very little success in very obvious autisic ways. But if the simulator is talked to in simple words with simple grammar and ideas over time it shows almost normal communication skills that feel more natural and right. So this boils down to the thought that a child born into a couple that are such systemizers will influence the child in the same way as the first neural net example I have given. Genetics may play a hand but I have a feeling that it can be faulty training of neural characteristics at a very early and crucial stage that will impart these autistic traits that will show up later in life.
I see the future in my dreams.I can slow my dreams down to see how it works.The brain is so very powerfull .I can tell you exactly what is going to happen 3 months from now.I mean exactly. I have autism. The problem is that the future is not so bright.Seeing the future is very sad.I wish it was happy.The only way to see the future is to step out of evolution.I also need to care about everything equally.I cannot change the future it would be like changing the flow of a large river.I can only get out of the stream and look ahead.
I do think that autism is used where and when a spiecies can afford to change in leaps.The coarse of evolution is predictable but not changable.
The reason that oil floats on top of water is that it's lighter. It's entirely possible to have two liquids that won't mix and the one you pour second goes to the bottom.
That example didn't even fill in any information useful to the larger post.
I'll ask your mother :)
remember to loot and pillage before you burn!
Interested parents can enroll in this study by answering a brief questionnaire here:
http://www.cambridgepsychology.com/parents/