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."

Comments

Evolution

[dl107227]

Is this an evolutionary restraint on nerds breeding?

Re:Evolution

[jawtheshark]

Yes. Smarts are not a good trait at all. It usually implies that one puts energy in thinking and less in keeping a healthy body. For having good offspring one needs to be fit and show it to the females. Hence, smarts is bad. It's better to be athletic. Chances that you reproduce are greater.

While our civilisation builds upon what smart people have come up with, the survival of the species when civilisation collapses will depend on the non-smart but physically able people. Don't kid yourself: civilisation will eventually collapse. The state we are currently in is more an accident of nature. It will eventually settle back to normality where intelligence is a drawback.

Re:Evolution

[murderlegendre]

This is more accurately a social restraint on nerds breeding. I've never seen any information to suggest that there is a lower rate of fertility among autistic / aspergers individuals, or even common nerds.

Over the large span of human evolution, characteristics such as physical strength, size, agression and so forth had much more to do with the ability of an individual to procreate, as opposed to the ability to smooth-talk a member of the opposite sex.

Our modern social conventions are obviously much 'nicer', but as for the positive / negative consequences for our gene pool, only time will tell.

Re:Evolution

[Fordiman]

They linked autism to very specific skills: math and science.

The point is that a balance is needed. Slashdotters: find yourself an artsy chick to get down with; one who's pretty smart and asthetically pleasing. Add a little creativity to them logical sperm you've been carrying around.

Re:Evolution

[E 99]

Again the "you can't have it all" fallacy? Even if it's impossible with today's genes to be both brilliant, handsome and socially capable (which I doubt), it's not at all impossible that, over time, genes will mutate and spread so that one can be all of these.

It's not a fallacy, it's an inevitability. The things you mention, intelligence, good looks, and social skills, can only be meaningfully measured in comparison with the societal norms. To quantify, I would throw out that the terms brilliant, handsome and socially capable, are applied to say, those in the 98th or 99th percentile of those categories. Regardless of how humanity evolves in the future, the likelihood of the same person being in the high percentile in all three is necessarilly extremely low (myself being the obvious exception :-)). Maybe some future society is full of nothing but beautiful geniuses, relative to our standards. Or maybe we're that society relative to some pre-historic version of ourselves. It doesn't really matter, as people are judged by the standards of their own societies, which will always have a high end and a low end in any given measure.

Re:Evolution

[brpr]

Over the large span of human evolution, characteristics such as physical strength, size, agression and so forth had much more to do with the ability of an individual to procreate, as opposed to the ability to smooth-talk a member of the opposite sex.

What makes you think that this is true? It takes a lot more than brute strength to be a successful hunter-gatherer. You need a lot of knowledge of seasonal patterns, wildlife, etc. If you look at the fiew hunter-gatherer tribes still around today, you'll see that they tend to be of average build and slightly chubby. In all probability, prehistoric women (and men) were just as succeptible to smooth-talking as we are today, because intelligence is a desireable attribute. I don't see any reason to suppose that placing a value on intelligence and social skills is just a modern convention.

Re:Evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

If I could find a chick like that, do you think I'd be posting on here?!?

'Social skills'

[0123456]

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.

Re:'Social skills'

[SeekerDarksteel]

It is far more than lying and bullshitting. In a social situation, most people can talk naturally. They simply say what comes to mind. For someone with autism, they have little to no intuation. They literally have no concept of what to say or do. If it is severe enough, the only way they can perform in social situations is to observe how others act and react and mimic them when they are in similar situations. This is much more analytical than intuitive to do. If they can't choose a reaction they can't create one on the fly and will just freeze and say very little ("ah, i see") or nothing at all.

They also generally have a difficult time understanding and picking up on more subtle forms of communication. They only hear the words. They don't hear the emotion or inflection or notice the facial expressions, and they have a difficult time reading (or listening as it were) between the lines. Furthermore, they have a difficult time extrapolating the thoughts and feelings of another person. They can't "put themselves in the other person's shoes." Basically, if something isn't said, it doesn't exist to them. That is a crippling disadvantage in social situations.

Re:'Social skills'

[0123456]

"It is far more than lying and bullshitting. In a social situation, most people can talk naturally. They simply say what comes to mind."

I'm still trying to figure out how that's a benefit :).

But let me give an example: recently I went to a gathering of my extended family. Most of them work in agriculture or construction, and few of them can even manage to turn on a computer. What of 'what comes to mind' am I supposed to talk to them about? Trying to get a simulated Apollo Guidance Computer running again in a simulated CSM? Why .NET sucks? Whether the Tibetan Book of the Dead is talking about the same 'near-death experience' that Christians see as a long white tunnel with a guy with a long beard at the end and whether it has any meaning beyond chemical screwups in the brain? What neural network research has to tell us about the nature of 'consciousness'?

I can't even explain to them what I do for a living without them having at least a reasonable grounding in IT. About the closest thing to a common experience is talking to them about my moonlighting on low-budget movies as a hobby: at least they've seen movies.

Now, I like my family, and I don't think they're idiots, but I have little common ground to talk to them about and little reason to do so. You might say that I 'have no social skills' because I don't want to sit there chatting about the latest reality TV show or football scores, but I don't even care.

"They don't hear the emotion or inflection or notice the facial expressions, and they have a difficult time reading (or listening as it were) between the lines"

Again, I'm not convinced. That may well be true with clinically autistic people, but personally when I'm bored or pissed off with someone I love screwing with them by ignoring their 'between the lines' cues and deliberately feeding them 'cues' of my own to make them respond 'wrong'. You would then say I 'lack social skills', whereas I think that being able to deliberately choose what 'cues' to respond to and send is far more skilled than just responding in certain ways because you're programmed to... knowing what 'cues' to send and what to say lets me manipulate most people like crazy if I get the urge to do so: I'm just too 'nice' to abuse it.

Re:'Social skills'

[gad_zuki!]

>>As far as I can see, it's basically lying and bullshitting

Unlike some other commentators I will say that's about correct, but highly cynical. Telling white lies, bullshitting, etc all lend themselves to a social understanding of ones self and others. You tell a white lie not to hurt another person's feelings and you bullshit so you don't hurt your own feelings (who wants to admit to only having a handful of friends if that?). Its being self-aware but socially.

I find this interesting because when you meet someone who comes off inept or brash or whatever it makes me wonder if either they are unable to tell how other people percieve them (which may be a sign of old fashioned stupidity) or apathetic about it (which is a sign of being very asocial).

I think idealism and middle class values frowns upon things like BS'ing, gossip, and a loose class system, but as humans we are all about that. Acting like a stoic or being too serious leaves us unfulfilled.

I also don't think geeks are unable to build social skills. They can become very socially savvy. It takes work and effort. After a while it doesnt even feel like youre faking or it or even trying.

A few years back I challenged myself to make small-talk with strangers waiting for the train, talk to women about stuff thats interests them (not just what interests me), etc. Its not easy especially if you've become sensitized to the process and get very anxious. Also its worth mentioning that people with are asocial to a strong degree, cannot function as a team, etc may be suffering from an undiagnosed anxiety disorder.

Re:'Social skills'

[xilmaril]

I may be in the minority in this, but I'm good at talking naturally around strangers. I say whatever is on my mind. not-coincidentally, most of my friends/associates think I am very odd because of it.

Re:'Social skills'

[SeekerDarksteel]

You could argue that, and technically the behavior might become intuitive, but it's still different. For example, were someone to tell me that, say, a family member of theirs died, I know that the "proper" response is something like "I'm sorry for your loss." Someone else, however, would respond that way not because they've learned the behavior, but because they feel sad and want to express their feelings to the other person.

To use a less morbid example, imagine two players playing Starcraft. The first one is a natural wizard at it. The second one emulates the style of the first and becomes just as good as him. Now ask the first one why he used a particular strategy and he might respond with a tactical explanation. Ask the second why he did the same thing and he might respond "Because that's what works." To the outside world they may look identical, but there are large differences in their fundamental understanding of the game. And if something changes, someone does something unexpected or a change to the game affects strategies, the first player is going to be able to adapt easily. The second player will have to resort to trial and error or mimicry to come up with a new strategy. Now imagine that changes and unexpected events occur on a regular basis. The second player would have no way to keep up.

Some autistics/aspies may be able to analyze a situation enough to make it intuitive, but they probably don't understand the underlying "why" and by and large cannot adapt to new situations.

Re:'Social skills'

[radtea]

They also generally have a difficult time understanding and picking up on more subtle forms of communication. They only hear the words. They don't hear the emotion or inflection or notice the facial expressions, and they have a difficult time reading (or listening as it were) between the lines. Furthermore, they have a difficult time extrapolating the thoughts and feelings of another person. They can't "put themselves in the other person's shoes." Basically, if something isn't said, it doesn't exist to them. That is a crippling disadvantage in social situations.

Normal people communicate in the opposite way: they hear the emotional cues, inflections and facial expressions very clearly, but have a difficult time with the literal content of the communication. This is why so many people aren't able to grasp the logical consequences of anything that is said, and why so many geeks feel that they are not listened to in business meetings and other non-technical discussions. What we say is encoded in the literal meaning of the words we speak, not the non-verbal cues, and normals are logically tone-deaf in the same way we are emotionally tone-deaf.

I vividly recall telling a former employer that I'd completed a major contract for a very happy client, and that the revenues would keep the company afloat for the rest of the year (we would otherwise have been out of business.) He said, "Yeah, that's good" and then moved on to the next thing, which was the "great job" being done by a charismatic under-achiever who was running a year behind on an eight-month contract and whose inability to do his job was the reason why the company was just about broke. My information didn't have the right emotional cues packaged with it--it was just a factual report of a successfully completed major contract.

In contrast, the only thing the charismatic under-achiever had going for him was a mastery of the non-verbal, emotional aspects of communication. He made people feel good about themselves when he dealt with them.. He would make a great salesperson, but as someone who actually had to deliver working code he was a danger to himself and everyone around him.

He understood that the fundamental purpose of any human interaction is to control how the other person feels. If you can do that, then anything is possible and you don't actually have to have any skills, because people will want you around and will ignore all but the most blatant failures (and sometimes even those, for a while). We are extremely fortunate to live in a society where a small amount of attention is paid to literal content--this is a rare circumstance in human history, and if we aren't careful it will be a short-lived one.

Re:'Social skills'

[Merlyn_3k]

See, you have plenty of social skills, you just decline to use them.

People who lack 'social skills' have problems understanding the common rules of social behavior. They literally do not know how to respond in a social situation, and often make embarassing social errors.

We call them social Skills, because for most of us these behavioral rules can be learned. Many pick them up automatically as they grow up, by watching and mimicing adults.

Autistic individuals not only don't know the rules, they often can't understand them when they are explained.

Re:'Social skills'

[syousef]

I vividly recall telling a former employer that I'd completed a major contract for a very happy client, and that the revenues would keep the company afloat for the rest of the year (we would otherwise have been out of business.) He said, "Yeah, that's good" and then moved on to the next thing, which was the "great job" being done by a charismatic under-achiever who was running a year behind on an eight-month contract and whose inability to do his job was the reason why the company was just about broke. My information didn't have the right emotional cues packaged with it--it was just a factual report of a successfully completed major contract.

I think you're still missing the cues here. Bad communication or not, your boss would have understood the facts and figures (unless he was totally incompetent) so I put it to you there's another explanation here. Possible ones that come to mind:

1) The boss simply didn't believe you or see it the same way.
2) The other guy was related to the boss
3) The other guy had something on the boss
4) The boss simply doesn't like you for whatever reason (perhaps something you did, perhaps related to the way you communicate)
5) The boss is incopetent and doesn't understand his own business.

Otherwise even a socially inept person would get some recognition for saving a company.

I tend to believe the converse

[foreverdisillusioned]

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.

Increased rates of autism

[MrPeng]

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).

Theory

[Elad Alon]

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.

Re:As a Diagnosed Individual

[darkmeridian]

Well, I don't have Asperger's but I still have great trouble with women.

Re:Finally!

[Ignignot]

While the article does say that people with highly analytical brains tend to have more Autistic children, it does not say that people with poor social skills tend to have highly analytical brains. I think it is a common fallacy around here that not knowing how to interact with other people well is some kind of badge proving how smart they are. Or to put it the slashdot way, even if you have a really fast Athlon 64 system, if you are connecting to the world with a dialup you aren't going to be able to play an online FPS well.

Re:Wired article a few years back

[plover]

Is it possible the Silicon Valley spike in autism was simply the result of better diagnosis? Think about it, that region was awash in money in the '90s. Every rich kid in the valley had access to the best pre- and post-natal care ever seen in the world. A kid could barely get a runny nose without a doctor visit.

So for the "milder" cases of autism, the ones in which the children are quite likely to lead self-sufficient lives (a friend's daughter with Asperger's syndrome comes to mind) isn't it a valid hypothesis that these kids would have been correctly diagnosed, while similar kids in an impoverished (or even "average") areas would have just been labeled "troublemakers" or perhaps misdiagnosed with ADHD and given ritalin?

I certainly don't know the statistics here, the percentages of kids diagnosed, the quality of the diagnoses or any of that stuff. I'm just guessing at possible reasons for the correlation on a few things mentioned hhere. But I do know that it's very tough to compare apples to apples when money is involved. And we all know that correlation does not guarantee causality.

Size matters not.

[everphilski]

We use only a small portion of the full capacity of our brain. Its not size. Its in the wiring.

Wrong Line of Research

[randall_burns]

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.

Kind of a fuzzy theory

[deuterium]

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.

fundamental problems with Baron-Cohen's thesis

[randall_burns]

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.

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.

Because the world wants to know my story

[noisyfont]

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.

Re:old news....

[Breakfast Pants]

Exactly. I'm awaiting the day that extreme versions of "stupid jock" syndrome make it into the DSM-IV.