Early Brain Response To Words Predictive For Autism 182
vinces99 writes "The pattern of brain responses to words in 2-year-old children with autism spectrum disorder predicted the youngsters' linguistic, cognitive and adaptive skills at ages 4 and 6, according to a new study from the University of Washington's Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences. The findings are among the first to demonstrate that a brain marker can predict future abilities in children with autism."
Re:Good News / Bad News (Score:3, Insightful)
Fuck yourself. I have a nephew who will never lead an independent life because of autism and another who could live on his own but it would be a great difficulty for him and those around him. You or someone you know may have a form of autism that you find acceptable for every day life but everyone with autism isn't like that.
You take a ton of offense at someone calling it a cure but you never consider what that cure might mean to others.
Re:Good News / Bad News (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is pretty much what many adult autistics have been saying for quite a while now.
Autism itself isn't something you can cure, nor would most autistics want you to attempt to do so.
The current interventionist 'treatments' are all based on the idea that autistics lack something that non-autistics possess and that they can attempt to change that with treatment.
The reality is that autistics are simply wired differently, and many things that are intuitive to non-autistics are difficult for autistics. Trying to teach such people to see the world the way non-autistics do is like trying to teach colour blind people to understand the nuances of colours. It's misguided and of course is ineffective because it ignores the actual fundamental differences in autistics.
Most autistics can learn to navigate the non-autistic world and the social expectations of it, but that skill does not come from trying to change them, but by teaching them how they vary from others so they can appropriate respond to those others in a way they will understand, and communicate these differences where they matter.
What this all fails to address however, is if people communicate with these children in an autistic friendly way, and teach them directly about how others vary from them, do the outcomes change? From (admittedly anecdotal) reports I've seen, it does.
The only way to improve these outcomes is to throw out the idea that we can fix autistics and start to accept the idea that it's natural variation and as acceptance and understanding of this grows, negative outcomes will reduce.
Disclaimer: I am an autistic adult, and I do not want or believe in any cures.
Re:Good News / Bad News (Score:2, Insightful)
I would very much agree with you. Being somewhat autistic myself, the best treatment to fit in was simply learning a bit more about the differences between autistic and non autistic people.
Everybody needs to adapt behavior whenever they are with people different than themselves, you don't act the same around your bos as you do around your friends. The same is true for autistic people (exception being those that really can't work alone). We can adapt our behavior to better fit in with no autistic people, but we have to learn what the difference is between autistic and non autistic people, which for some possibly comes natural and for others does not.
Re:Good News / Bad News (Score:2, Insightful)
But it's still not really a 'cure', just like making someone who previously enjoyed sports dislike sports is not a 'cure'. Sure, some people may want the 'treatment', but to say that a person objectively needs to be cured because they think differently is just arrogant.
Re:Good News / Bad News (Score:4, Insightful)
Autism itself isn't something you can cure, nor would most autistics want you to attempt to do so.
In addition to the usual "I wouldn't be me anymore", I would add "I (literally) wouldn't know how to act - I've spent my whole life learning to adapt to the way I am".
A year or two ago I asked a doctor whether there was any reason to even get it diagnosed in an adult, and his answer was that maybe it would help you get hooked up with a support group. As a (presumed) autistic adult, I found that to be a very strange notion... joining clubs isn't something that comes naturally for us, nor do most of us care to, once we've outgrown thinking we should try to be like everyone else.
Re:Good News / Bad News (Score:2, Insightful)
You are making the erroneous assumption that all autistic individuals are high functioning. This is not the case. Some people with autism need intensive interventions to simply function at a level where they can take care of themselves. High functioning individuals may also desire treatment in order to better integrate in society, but that is more a matter of choice since many of them can find their own place in society or develop coping mechanisms.
Re:Good News / Bad News (Score:5, Insightful)
Treatment for autism isn't a cure because nobody knows how to cure the disorder, but many people with autism certainly would like to be cured instead of painstakingly learning methods that help them mitigate the problems caused by their "different way of thinking". With all the hype around Asperger's Syndrome and other high functioning autism spectrum disorders, it's easy to forget that the few who despite their affliction manage to shine don't make the lives of the many easier.
The antics of Sheldon Cooper are funny on TV, but if you take away the exceptional mental performance, then the social impediment causes real world Sheldon Coopers a lot of suffering, not because the world doesn't want to adapt to autism, but because social interactions are actually necessary and important. Unless you can bring that fabled "beautiful mind" stuff to the table, who's going to afford the time and stress to deal with someone who needs everything spelt out to them because facial cues and other normal aspects of social interaction are an enigma to them? Autism may in some rare cases enable new insights, but it comes at a cost, and that cost is crippling more often than not.
Re:Still no editors at at Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
"Nobody is perfect, why shouldn't we categroize small errors as well?"
Because it flies in the face of the very definition of "normal". Calling even the slightest deviation from some arbitrary norm a "disorder" is itself dysfunctional.
We might as well label every vehicle that doesn't get exactly 50 mpg -- whether above or below -- "defective".
Remember there was a time during which homosexuals were routinely sterilized or put in prison because they were not "normal". Hell, even heterosexual oral sex is STILL against the law in some states.
Things like that are the reason why overly-narrowing the definition of "normal", and defining everything else to be a "disorder", is harmful.
Re:Good News / Bad News (Score:5, Insightful)
Ugh, you've clearly never met someone with severe autism. The GP, who you nitwits have modded troll, has, and so have I. Some of them can't speak at all, nor can they understand speech. They can't understand tone of voice or facial expressions either. For them, it's as if they are trapped in a world of inscrutable aliens. They're easily overwhelmed by human interaction or even non-human stimuli, and react by going into a semi-catatonic state of rocking back and forth, or worse, by hitting themselves or bashing their head against a wall. They are completely incapable of leading anything resembling a normal life, and become a burden to their loved ones. They absolutely need a cure, and it is nothing like your frankly insulting sports analogy.
But the internet is full of socially awkward young men who self-diagnose as high-functioning autistics. This lets them explain away their awkwardness while pretending they have super intelligence. And so, without ever having met one of the millions of people with severe autism (how could they, since those people normally don't leave their caretaker's home?), they declare that autism is a good thing and shouldn't be cured. Fuck every last one of those twits.
Re:Good News / Bad News (Score:3, Insightful)
No, no, no, NO, NO!
This entire thread is fucking disgusting. You haven't met people with severe autism. I have. I've worked in a classroom for them. They have a severe and debilitating disability, which they can overcome through special education and extreme effort, both on their part, and on the part of their caretakers. Pretending that they're happy the way they are and we should just ... what? let them live their lives incapable of human interaction? ... is just sick.
Would you say we should let the handicapped crawl, rather than teach them to use wheelchairs? Would you say we should let the blind stumble about, rather than teach them to use canes or seeing eye dogs? Then why the FUCK are you saying we should leave autistic people to their fate, rather than teach them how to cope with their disability? Because giving people the tools to survive in human society is paternalistic?
This website gets worse every year. Bold, confidently-stated bullshit gets modded up over facts every time.
Re:Still no editors at at Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Still no editors at at Slashdot (Score:2, Insightful)