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TV Really Might Cause Autism
Alien54 writes "Cornell University researchers are reporting what appears to be a statistically significant relationship between autism rates and television watching by children under the age of 3. The researchers studied autism incidence in California, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington state. They found that as cable television became common in California and Pennsylvania beginning around 1980, childhood autism rose more in the counties that had cable than in the counties that did not. They further found that in all the Western states, the more time toddlers spent in front of the television, the more likely they were to exhibit symptoms of autism disorders. The Cornell study represents a potential bombshell in the autism debate."
It's for the children! Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children! FORGET IT! Ban electricity! For the children! For the children!
What about internet use, with sites such as youtube, will that cause autism as well?
Well, cable television was becoming more prevalent, yes, but wasn't detection of autism and recognition of its status as a disorder also becoming more acknoledged?
Oh, and exactly what debate is there about autism? I think I missed something here.
~ C.
Damn, I read that as "TV Really Might Cause Atheism".
How disappointing!
Everyone, let's say this together. Come on, I want everyone to join in. Let's all yell it at the top of our lungs until the media hears us. Ready? Here we go:
CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION!
CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION!
CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION!
Now stop reporting on every correlation between disease X and social variable Y as though it were somehow equivalent to a randomized double-blind study on the effects of Y on X. Thank you.
"Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy."
I guess not anymore, huh?
Learn to separate truth from illusion. Because in this world, it's the hardest thing to do.
I call bullshit.
That is, it is entirely possible (and plausible) that a correlation exists. However I'd interpret it in the reverse way. That is, the study shows just that children born with autism are more likely to spend time watching TV (knowing the features of autism, this is entirely possible).
Moreover, the existence of a correlation does not show necessarily a cause-effect relationship. Do you remember Lisa Simpson showing Homer a rock that protected from tigers?
This kind of papers are what my collegues call "scientific pornography" -papers thrown up just to stir up controversy, but based on very fragile assumptions and with a few data inflated as much as possible. Quite a common occurrence, sadly, these days.
-- Patent no.123456: A way to personalize
Could there POSSIBLY be other factors at work?
How about the increased understanding of and accurate diagnosis of autism and autism-related disorders around that time?
How about the repetitive nature of television programming, especially kids shows, appealing to autistics as a source of consistency and comfort?
How about the fact that the places getting cable were also the places getting elevated concentrations of geeks, who seem to have genetic quirks that have this tendancy to result in autism-like disorders? Could that POSSIBLY have ANYTHING to do with a rise in autism in Washington, _Oregon_, and *CALIFORNIA*?
All tubes causes autism, so internet as well...
Dunno about TFTs
The Himalayan country of Bhutan only started recieving television in 1999. This was followed by a drastic increase in crime (including murder) in the tiny nation. It would be interesting to see if there's also an increase in autism, as this study would suggest.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
NO!
A solid background in statistics is required to launch a bombshell like this. It is likely that these authors have that background.
Furthermore, economists (which one of the authors would seem to be based on his affiliation) are well trained in methods of robustly detecting effects in non-experimental data (such as this); whereas medical researchers are typically more involved with experimental data. Experimental data is much easier to deal with than non-experimental data. Indeed, one could argue that these sorts of studies are more likely to be carried out properly by economists trained in dealing with this sort of data.
The important aspect of this is that there was a natural experiment carried out where some counties received cable television and others didn't. Provided the counties that received cable television did so for essentially random reasons, this data is the equivalent of a randomised experimental trial. As such, the standard argument that correlation does not prove causation is much weaker. There might well be a third factor at work here, but hold those knee-jerk reactions. One needs to be a good statistician to detect these correlations - medical researchers can work out the reasons later.
Before anybody starts jeering stupidly and making wise about this subject, perhaps people should read this article from Scientific American: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colI D=1&articleID=000B7F38-893D-152E-88E283414B7F0000
Now for some of the usual comments people tend to spew out:
Correlation is not causation
This is true - but correlation indicates that there MAY BE a causation. Thus, when things are strongly correlated and there are other reasons to suspect a causal connection, it is well worth researching further.
Increased awareness
Perhaps 'increased awareness' of autism means that we discover more cases that were not previously recognised? Perhaps, but I don't think it is very likely. Full-blown autism is not something you overlook. It is a serious disorder that in most cases means lifelong disability, and it is unlike any other psychiatric disorder. The increased awareness, I suspect, mostly means that now we spot more of the milder cases, but it is not my impression that this is what this research is about.
So why is it that people on this list are hostile to the idea that maybe TV can contribute to the emergence of autism? My guess is that this is because people on the list tend to be heavy consumers of passive entertainment, like TV and computer games; you don't want to hear that it may be bad for you.
If you have read the article I referred to above, you will know that autism probably has a lot to do with the development of 'mirror neurons' in the brain; a neural system that makes us able to imitate what other people do. Like all neural systems, the mirror neurons need to be trained, and TV is probably not a very good role model for that, at least not if you are already weak in this area. So it is actually quite reasonable to suspect that watching too much TV at an early age may contribute to the development of autism.
The MMR vaccine:
http://www.badscience.net/?p=249
This idea that all one needs to understand is statistics in order to comment on a scientific discipline is incorrect. Analysis of statistics is important, but in order to draw conclusions from them, one really has to understand the field they are being made in. It is a common issue with economists who tend to view the numbers as the be all and end all without understanding where they have come from and what the greater issues at play around the numbers might be.
That's such an idiotic assumption that it essentially destroys the research on its own. Genuine randomness is incredibly important is selecting participants for any sort of psychological experiment, and I can think of a number of reasons off the top of head why there would be a correlation between the availability of cable TV and incidence of autism.For example, increased wealth makes cable TV a viable business to set up, but also allows parents to pay to have autistic children treated resulting an increased number of reported cases. Alternately, cable TV may only be launched in areas with a certain level of technological uptake.
There's also a theory that autism rates increase when technologically minded people start gathering together at workplaces (therefore breeding, therefore passing on (and concentrating) their autistic-related genes). There's another potential explanation for the correlation.
This is certainly not a study that psychologists would credit as being worthwhile, which highlights why people should have some idea why they're talking about before dropping bombshells like this.
CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION!
I think that the study itself really drives this point home. If you read the actual paper (PDF file) a major part of their case is:
1) When the weather is lousy, children watch more television
2) Places with a lot of rain and snow have more autistic children
I'd imagine that when the weather is bad, children also are more likely to use umbrellas. Therefore, by their logic, umbrellas cause autism.
In Canada we have warning labels on cigarette packs. Big warning labels. Cigarettes cause cancer, etc. So, naturally, some dollar store entrepreneur creates fake warning labels.
;-)
... it's obviously not a perfect analogy, but I've been debugging way too long to care]
e -against-the-mighty-machines-day-9-of-no-tv.
Anyway, when I was a stereotypical angry young philosophy student, I thought it would be fun to make my own fake warning labels to put on my cigarette packs. So, who did I turn to? Hume, of course.
So, my cigarette packs had a big warning: "Correlation Does Not Imply Causation" on them. I thought it was a good joke, by philosophy joke standards anyway.
Now, I knew perfectly well that in this case even though it did not imply it, it was in fact true. Of course cigarretes caused cancer. In many cases correlation is, um, correlated with causation. But I was 18 so I didn't care; I thought it was funny.
What a joke.
So, the point is: correlation is a start. If there is a correlation, you should look for ways to establish whether causation exists or not.
Now, you usually cannot do real proper experiments on humans with smoking (starting with a large random set of non-smokers, making half of them smoke their entire lives, and seeing how many of each group died of cancer). The ethics boards at the university wouldn't approve
So, do you just give up and say "thank you for smoking" or "well, we'll never prove anything according to David Hume then". No, you don't. There are statistical tools like factor analysis which let people smarter than me figure out how much of A is (probably) caused by B, etc.
Anyway, I have a 2 year old son now, and stuff I thought was funny at 18 is certainly not funny anymore over a decade later. I quit smoking. I certainly wouldn't give my son a cigarette, ever.
However, if there is a strong correlation between TV and autism, I have to wonder whether I am in effect doing something similar. What if further anaylsis proves (as much as you can prove anything) that it is indeed a cause?
What would I have done??
[yeah, yeah, there's a mountain of evidence in one of the cases vs. one study in another
"Correlation Does Not Imply Causation" does not mean act insanely. You have only ever seen gravity by correlation, but you still believe in it. (Yes you do. Wipe that smirk off your face.)
Now, coincidentally, I also cancelled cable TV after reading Gregg Easterbrook's original Slate article. Obligatory blog whoring: I blogged about it at http://peterarmstrong.com/articles/2006/10/08/rag
Do I think there is conclusive, Hume-would-be-proud proof that TV causes autism. No.
Do I think that TV is good for young children?
Would I give my 2 year old son a cigarette?
Correlation is need to proove causation. But by itself alone it doesn't implie it. Other finding are necessary like models that explains WHY such causality should be expected (What's the biochemistry involved ?). Or see Koch's postulate : expremients that proove that by adding/removing the candidate cause ou can somewhat control the effect.
But on the other hand some mecanism is partially known. Also there are finding pointing to the fact that autism is associated and may be caused by some abnormal brain wiring that already happen in utero, thus debunking the old "it's-the-mother's-relationship-fault" supposed cause. Also if it start that early in the developpement, later exposure to the TV is less likely to be the main causing factor.
And in this case I think it's clearly a case of pure correlation that depend on an additionnal common cause. From what I've understood during my studies (got a degree in medecine) and what I've observed (one of my brothers has autism) : one of the caracteristics of an autist is being much less capable to anticipate or to cope with complex not easily predicted event. In this case the TV is reassuringly predictible : once turned it just plays the show. No complex social interraction required. And also, if wired to a VCR or DVD player, the TV can always play that specific shows that the autist knows and can correctly anticipate, etc...
TV isn't a cause *of* autism. But, the cognitive mecanism that are specific of autism, also happen to find the TV very reassuring.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The word Autism is a catchall for a wide spectrum of disorders, from severly impaired kids to the fashionably diagnosed little darlings belonging to attention-starved suburban housewives, which tends to muddy the diagnostic waters a bit. Most seriously Autistic children manifest symptons almost from birth. Despite what some parents claim as a regression during the toddler years, I suspect kids are born with it. It's simply difficult to diagnose a child with a psychological disorder before they are old enough to even walk or talk.
If you want a controlled study, here it is: I have two children, by the same wife. One is perfectly normal. The other is autistic. I suspected there was something wrong with the Autistic one by the time he was nine months old. (Most babies love to be held. This one was completely hyper, and would squirm out of everyone's arms as soon as he was physically capable of it. He rarely slept. He walked early, but displayed odd mannerisms. While many toddlers are fascinated by television, he manifested no interest in watching it at that age at all.) But he was not diagnosed until he was three, because there was very little diagnostic criteria to go one. Babies really don't do much other than cry, eat, sleep and poop.
They both watched plenty of TV by the time they were three. Just like I did in the sixties. They are 10 and 11 now. I taught the eldest to read the usual way, and he is a voracious reader. He still loves TV. And video games. And fart jokes, and every other thing a normal eleven year old loves. He's still not autistic. The youngest, the Autistic one, would rarely sit still for a story. He liked to flip through books, but didn't want to be read to. He can read now, though. Know why? I turned the English subtitles on whenever he watched his favorite DVD's.
He learned to read watching television.
This study is bunk. It's not a theory. It's more like the plot to Halloween III.
As a pediatrician trained in child development (and the parent of an autistic teenager), I've got a strong interest and background in this, and I can tell you quite plainly that the paper is crap.
This is a spectacularly good example of really stupid statistical games. I only skimmed it (Acrobat Reader blew up on me as I tried to save it, and I'll get another copy later), but these people did the following amazing things:
1. Accept as fact that autism itself is increasing (as opposed to the diagnosis of autism). This is possible, but contentious and somewhat controversial. I'll spare you the full story, but the general opinion is that while the disorder is more common than it once was, changes in diagnosis (and benefits for diagnosis) make it hard to do more than guess at the actual rate of increase.
2. Consider de novo a hypothesis "that early childhood television watching is an important trigger for the onset of autism." They do note that nobody else has bothered to consider this, but don't spend much time wondering why. Apparently, they're special. Perhaps because nobody has measured this in a useful manner? They do admit this, but they find a solution!
3. Because there are no good numbers for early television watching, they use precipitation as a proxy for television watching. Apparently, if it rains, you're likely inside with the tube on. They do show a strong positive correlation between rainfall and autism. Yep, that's right - rain causes autism.
4. But wait - it can't be the rain, it has to be the television! That's what we started trying to prove, anyway, so it's important to stay focused. They try it another way: they consider the availability of cable. They show that autism correlates with the availability of cable. No, really, it does. Of course, diagnosis of a LOT of chronic developmental syndromes increases with affluence, because of the increased availability of medical care and the reduction in "grab-bag" diagnoses like "mental retardation". But still, it must be the cable.
5. Having neatly done all the "proof" they require, they then proceed to tear the numbers apart and "prove" that 40% of autism in California is triggered by early television watching, while only 17% is triggered in PA. Why, we don't know, but it appears that rain, or cable, or maybe just TV is more powerful in CA than in PA. Or something like that.
I don't have time for a complete fisking right now, but I may do it later. Aside from the basic methodologic errors (confusing correlation with causation, adopting a highly questionable proxy indicator without validating it, and spending almost no time ruling out confounding factors or tainted data), there remain the dozens of smaller tactical problems that should have sidelined this turkey. I assume the peer reviewers, if there are any, were on drugs.
This paper will be a bombshell, all right. I'll use it over and over again as I explain to medical students and colleagues that you don't have to have much in the way of actual brains to write a scientific paper. Or, as I said about another paper in journal club once, "the font is nice, and I like the layout of the tables. It's a shame the actual science is such garbage."
TV causes autism? I doubt it.
An article in Slate yesterday argued that TV watching causes autism. The Slate article is based on research done by Cornell economists Michael Waldman, Sean Nicholson, and Nodir Adilov. You can download the academic working paper here.
The paper gives some theories why TV and autism might be linked, but the more interesting part of the paper is the data analysis. The researchers are trying to find a "natural experiment" that shifts around TV watching, but otherwise has no impact on whether a child is diagnosed as autistic. Rainfall is one of the things they use. In places where it rains a lot, kids watch more TV. Maybe rainfall doesn't affect autism in any other way. This is a creative approach, although it suffers from the weakness (which they acknowledge in the paper), that rainfall changes other things, like how much time you spend indoors doing other things besides watching TV. They also use the arrival of cable TV in an area. This approach is potentially stronger, although it would be better if they used availability of cable TV, rather than the number of people who actually subscribe.
These are intriguing approaches, but personally I did not find the empirical evidence in the paper very compelling.
The rainfall evidence is based off of three states: Washington, Oregon, and California. It rains a lot in some parts of these states, but not others. There is more autism in the parts of the states where it rains more. The problem is that it rains on the coast of Oregon and Washington, and in Northern California. But there are a million other differences between the coast of Washington and the Eastern part of the state, and between Northern and Southern California. The researchers also look at how much rain there was when you were between the ages of 0-2, controlling for your county. This is more promising. The impact of rain gets smaller, but it is the most convincing evidence in the paper.
The data analysis of cable TV is limited to California and Pennsylvania and also finds positive results. The difficulty with the cable TV analsyis is that there is an incredibly strong positive trend in autism. The cable TV data are basically on an upward trend. The regression analysis is going to have a very hard time sorting out between a steady rise in cable TV penetration and the time trend. In the current version they only include a linear time trend, which is an extrememly powerful predictor. My guess is that if they generalize their specification to allow for non-linear time trends, the cable TV result will disappear.
The authors have done some interesting work, but the nature of the problem makes it a really hard one to answer convincingly. For instance, you might think that Oregon and California should have similar autism rates. Nope, Oregon's rate is four times higher. That sort of gap is almost certainly due to differences in what is called autism in the official data in one state versus the other. The increasing time trend is also heavily influenced by what is labeled autism. When the outcome of interest is measured so poorly, it is hard to know what the analysis is really picking up--differences in the underlying symptoms or just in the reporting of them.
The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that there might be a causal link between rainfall, TV, and autism, but not the one suggested by the paper.
My theory: when it rains a lot, parents watch more TV, see more shows about autism, and this leads them to seek out a diagnosis of autism for their kids. They have the same kids, it is just that TV makes them believe that their kids are autistic.
I don't mean to sound overly negative on this research. I applaud the authors for asking a daring hypothesis and gathering data to try to test it. My gut, though, tells me that this is a result which will not stand up to scrutiny.
from http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/
I wish I'd gotten in here sooner. I am officially diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, and I spent most of my childhood without TV. Even though I had to entertain myself in other ways such as reading, and indulging different hobbies (having several obsessive hobbies is in itself an autistic trait) I still turned out the way I did. The only way that TV could affect someone in this way is if they were already genetically or developmentally predisposed to it (or EVERYONE would be autistic, since nearly every kid watches TV in developed countries) Also, it pisses me off when people try to "cure" autism. It's not some disease that I have, it's a part of who I am. If it were possible to remove all of my autistic traits, I wouldn't be the same person after said process was done. Autism is just a different way of seeing the world and interpreting things around me, and even though people mean well, the fact that they would want to override who I am and attempt to make me like they are does kind of insult me.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
From the paper: If, for example, one compares the US Department of Education's reported number of school-aged
children diagnosed with autism in 1999-2000 with the similar figure for 2003-2004, one sees that
over those four years the reported number has more than doubled.
Does anybody really think that the rates of autism really doubled in this time period. Isn't it far more likely that the rate of diagnosis simply went up. What would cause parents to become aware of this unusual condition called autism? Maybe they saw a segment about it on TV?
Isn't it simply possible that autism rates are correlated with TV watching because many americans get much of their information about the larger world by watching TV, and therefore the higher the rates of TV watching (determined in this study by looking at cable installation rates and precipitation rates - people watch more TV when it's rainy out ) mean higher rates of awareness of autism as a condition to ask your child's doctor about? So now, instead of being diagnosed as retarded, the child is diagnosed as autistic because the child's parents saw a segment about autism on cable TV on a rainy day.
My suspicion is that the problem is due to the (over) stimulation of the visual centers in very young children. Have you noticed how incredibly brief the duration of one camera shot is in modern TV? Barely 5 seconds. SECONDS! The point-of-view is constantly shifting from one camera to another, and it's common with children's programming to have a hand-held camera that bobs and sways in order to keep the show "interesting" and increase concentration. Add to that the visual effects and zoom/fades/transitions plus all the audio crap and it's a miracle any child emerges with his brain intact.
Go watch a classic episode of I Love Lucy or The Honeymooner's or The Twilight Zone. It's not uncommon for one camera shot to last four minutes. And at that point in time (I'm thinking 1960s and earlier) it was common to listen to dramas on the radio -- Green Lantern, Lone Ranger, The Strangler, etc. -- so the listener was actively involved in building mental imagery. Kids who have been raised on a steady diet of modern tv don't have the patience for old-fashioned TV or stories (or, for that matter, conversations requiring well-developed listening skills)... it's too "boring." (IMO, their brains aren't well adapted to concentrate for that period of time and they find it tiring and/or difficult.)
...and here we have another M.D. who thinks he knows something about science. I wish medical schools would concentrate less on memorization and more on critical thinking skills, especially with respect to statistical studies.
This is a spectacularly good example of really stupid statistical games.
In actuality, the paper is a good example of the way in which social research can take advantage of natural experiments.
I only skimmed it...
Then why write with such unwarranted authority and in such certain terms about its contents and conclusions?
Aside from the basic methodologic errors (confusing correlation with causation, adopting a highly questionable proxy indicator without validating it, and spending almost no time ruling out confounding factors or tainted data), there remain the dozens of smaller tactical problems...
They made none of the errors you list. I would like to think you might have realized this had you bothered (as I did) to actually read the paper, but based on the evidence of your post, I would be reckless to assume that.
Does anybody really think that the rates of autism really doubled in this time period. Isn't it far more likely that the rate of diagnosis simply went up. What would cause parents to become aware of this unusual condition called autism? Maybe they saw a segment about it on TV?
1. Something is WRONG with your child when they are autistic. You know there is because she/he doesn't act normally. A minimally responsible parent figures out what it is.
2. The medical condition of autism is well-defined. It doesn't just visit the child like a common cold. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/autism.cfm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism
3. "retarded" is not a medical condition. That is the social term for a host of developmental problems.
people watch more TV when it's rainy out
This is the West. It doesn't rain much... There's no excuse for watching more TV other than babysitting your child for you. I'll go further than that and say there is no reason for children to watch television until at least 5. But this means parents have to raise their children. So it's an unpopular opinion.
Please consider your opinions in this matter as poorly constructed as the science you claim is flawed.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
My son has high functioning autism and his symptoms showed long before he started watching tv. Rates are increasing because there is better diagnosis information available to the doctors-origionally they were clumped as mentally disabled or retarded. To say TV is causing autism is a farce IMHO. We have actually used video games to increase my sons ability to cross over midline. He is very proficient playing games. There is real science going on now that has located a gene that may be the link to why it happens. They are trying to manipulate that gene into mice to see what different outside influences trigger autism. They will test mercury in that study since it has been used in vaccines for babies. Yes they "concluded" that it is not causing autism in other studies but why did the manufacturer of the vaccine get congress to make a law excluding manufacturers from liability? There is too much misguided studies on autism-I feel the gene route will be the one that will give the best answers.