FEAT DAILY NEWSLETTER
Sacramento, California http://www.feat.org
January 21, 2002
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Abstracts (Technical language.)
·
Autism and Massage Therapy
·
Autism’s Picky Eaters
·
Verbal Association For Simple Common Words In HF Autism
·
Goal-directed behaviors in Autistic Children
·
Birth Order and Non-Verbal IQ
·
On the Differential Diagnosing of Autism, Language
Disorder
·
Why Neuropeptides And Neurotrophins Are Important To
Autism
·
‘Geeks’ Get Lucky
“Brief report: improvements in the behavior of children
with autism following massage therapy.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_ui
ds=11794416&dopt=Abstract <- - address ends here.
Escalona A, Field T, Singer-Strunck R, Cullen C, Hartshorn
K. Touch Research Institute, University of Miami School of Medicine, FL
33101,USA.
Twenty children with autism, ages 3 to 6 years, were
randomly assigned to massage therapy and reading attention control groups.
Parents in the massage therapy group were trained by a massage therapist to
massage their children for 15 minutes prior to bedtime every night for 1 month
and the parents of the attention control group read Dr. Seuss stories to their children
on the same time schedule.
Conners Teacher and Parent scales, classroom and
playground observations, and sleep diaries were used to assess the effects of
therapy on various behaviors, including hyperactivity, stereotypical and
off-task behavior, and sleep problems. Results suggested that the children in
the massage group exhibited less stereotypic behavior and showed more on-task and
social relatedness behavior during play observations at school, and they experienced
fewer sleep problems at home.
* * *
“An assessment of food acceptance in children with autism
or pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_ui
ds=11794415&dopt=Abstract <- - address ends here.
Ahearn WH, Castine T, Nault K, Green G.
The New England Center for Children, Southboro, MA
01772-2108, USA.
Some children with autism and pervasive developmental
disorder-not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) have been reported to have atypical
feeding behavior, such as sensitivity to food texture and selective preferences
for particular foods.
No systematic studies of feeding behavior in this
population have been published. Munk and Repp (1994) developed methods for
assessing feeding problems in individuals with cognitive and physical
disabilities that allow categorization of individual feeding patterns based on
responses to repeated presentations of food. In this study, we systematically
replicated the Munk and Repp procedures with children with autism and PDD-NOS.
Thirty children, ages 3 to 14 years, were exposed to 12 food items across 6
sessions.
Food acceptance, food expulsion, and disruptive behavior
were recorded on a trial-by-trial basis. Approximately half of the participants
exhibited patterns of food acceptance, indicating selectivity by food category
or food texture. Others consistently accepted or rejected items across food categories.
Whether these patterns of food acceptance are atypical
remains to be determined by comparison with the feeding patterns of typically
developing children and other children with developmental delays.
* * *
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_ui
ds=11794413&dopt=Abstract <- - address ends here.
Toichi M, Kamio Y.
Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Case
Western Reserve University/University Hospitals of Cleveland, OH 44106, USA.
We investigated conceptual relationships in semantic
memory using an indirect priming technique in high-functioning autistic
adolescents and their controls who were matched for age, verbal IQ, performance
IQ, and nonverbal reasoning ability. The prime was a single word and the target
task was completing a word fragment that was semantically related or unrelated
to the prime word.
The autistic subjects and controls showed similar semantic
priming effects, indicating intact conceptual relationships for simple common
words in those with autism. Only in the autistic group was a significant correlation
found between performance for the related items and two nonverbal cognitive
measures, which suggests a possibility that semantic processing in individuals
with autism might be qualitatively different from that in controls.
* * *
“Analysis of social interactions as goal-directed
behaviors in children with autism.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_ui
ds=11794412&dopt=Abstract
Ruble LA.
Treatment and Research Institute of Autism Spectrum
Disorders, Child
Development Center, Vanderbilt University, Department of
Pediatrics,
Nashville, TN 37232, USA. lisa.ruble@mcmail.vanderbilt.edu
An ecological psychology framework that considers the
intentions of the child within the child’s own social context was used to study
the complexity of social interactions of 16 children with autism or Down syndrome.
Children were observed in their homes and behaviors were recorded. Records were then analyzed by dividing
behavior based on the children’s own goals.
Goal-directed behaviors were then categorized. Statistical
analyses revealed similar social contexts and opportunities to receive bids
from others for both groups. Differences in the frequencies and complexities of
children’s behaviors depended on behavioral intent. Socially intended behaviors
were less frequent, less self-initiated, and less complex in children with
autism.
These findings are discussed as problems of attention and
executive function, because social behaviors were more likely to occur
secondarily, within the context of another ongoing behavior.
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* * *
“Birth order effects on nonverbal IQ scores in autism
multiplex families.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_ui
ds=11794410&dopt=Abstract
Spiker D, Lotspeich LJ, Dimiceli S, Szatmari P, Myers RM,
Risch N. Department of Psychiatry and
Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, CA 94305-5719,
USA.
Lord (1992) published a brief report showing a trend for
decreasing nonverbal IQ scores with increasing birth order in a sample of 16
autism multiplex families, and urged replication in a larger sample. In this report,
analyses of nonverbal IQ scores for a sample of 144 autism multiplex families
indicated that nonverbal IQ scores were significantly lower in secondborn
compared with firstborn siblings with autism. This birth order effect was
independent of gender as well as the age differences within sib pairs.
No such birth order effects were found for social or
communicative deficits as measured by the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised
(ADI-R), but there was a modest tendency for increased scores for ritualistic
behaviors for the firstborn sibs. Further, there were no gender differences on nonverbal
IQ scores in this sample. Results are discussed in terms of implications for
genetic studies of autism.
* * *
On the Differential Diagnosing of Autism, Language Disorder
“The use of the ADI-R as a diagnostic tool in the
differential diagnosis of
children with infantile autism and children with a receptive
language
disorder”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_ui
ds=11794550&dopt=Abstract <- - address ends here.
Mildenberger K, Sitter S, Noterdaeme M, Amorosa H. Heckscher Klinik fur Kinder- und
Jugendpsychiatrie, Abteilung fur teilleistungs- und verhaltensgestorte Kinder,
Munchen, Germany.
Children with infantile autism and children with a
specific receptive language disorder often show similar behavioural problems,
making the differentiation between these two diagnostic categories difficult.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the usefulness of parental information
in the differential diagnosis of the two types of disorders mentioned above. Sixteen children with a receptive language
disorder and 11 children with infantile autism participated in the study.
All children had normal non-verbal IQs. The ADI-R (Autism
Diagnostic Interview-Revised) was performed with all children. The results
showed that the ADI-R items reflecting behavioural features at pre-school age
(age range 4-5 years) were better suited to differentiate the groups than the
items reflecting behavioural features at the time of the investigation (mean
age:
9 years).
The items on the dimension “Reciprocal social interaction”
and “Communication and language” discriminated the groups better than the items
of the dimension “Restricted interests”. According to the ICD-10 algorithm of
the ADI-R one child with autism and one child with a receptive language disorder
were falsely classified. These false classifications were mainly due to a
distorted parental perception of the child’s behaviour. The ADI-R is a useful
tool in the differential diagnosis of developmental disorders.
* * *
Why Neuropeptides And Neurotrophins Are Important To
Autism “What are neuropeptides and neurotrophins and why are they imortant in autism?”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_ui
ds=11794417&dopt=Abstract <- - address ends here.
Minshew N. Publication Types: *
Editorial
‘Geeks’ Get Lucky
Mark Blaxill
Autism experts have a long tradition of displaying
contempt for the parents of autistic children. Most famously, Bruno Bettelheim
propounded the theory of the “refrigerator mother”, while boasting that “all my
life, I have been working with children whose lives were destroyed because
their mothers hated them” (1). More recently, Chistopher Gillberg turned the spotlight
to socially unfit fathers, speculating in a peer-reviewed article that autism
might be increasing because of “indirect associations of maternal immigrant
status and paternal Asperger’s syndrome”, creating a situation in which “men...with
increased risk of fathering children with autism and with difficulty in finding
a native partner, might have children by women from far-away countries, who
would not immediately identify the social anomalies or ascribe them to a
difference in culture” (2).
I have used Gillberg’s odd contention in recent
presentations as a joke. It’s a reliable laugh line. To Gillberg’s modest
credit, his speculation was buried deeply in a long paper in an obscure
journal. He certainly did not seek to call attention to it.
But now, Simon Baron-Cohen has taken this “geeks get lucky”
theory out in the open. In a recent essay (3), Baron-Cohen develops Gillberg’s speculation
into a full-fledged argument. Autism increases, Baron-Cohen claims, are the
direct consequence of advances in transportation and information technology.
Dads of today’s autistic children, “would traditionally have not competed well
in the competition for mates, as appearing socially odd might have either put
off prospective females from choosing them, or put off prospective
parents-in-law from arranging such a marriage for their daughters.”
Too bad, lonely geek! But in the modern world, claims
Baron-Cohen, “two massive changes hit the planet: the airplane and the
computer. The airplane has allowed unprecedented opportunities for changing
your culture. And when you go from your
native culture into another one, your social oddness may be far less obvious.”
Score one for the dating strategy of the mysterious stranger.
But that’s not all of the good news for our strange
friend. Now he can even get a job! “In just 50 short years, there is now no
office in the developed world where computers are not essential, and we need
those people with the cool, razor-sharp logic to fix them, reconfigure them,
develop them, adapt them, program them. The autistic mind was sitting around
for centuries, even millennia, under-employed, because how many jobs were there
for mathematicians and scientists, who also needed this style of thinking?”
It’s hard to make this stuff up. Under most circumstances,
one would be tempted to write this off as lunacy from some out-of-touch crackpot.
But here is the astonishing part. Baron-Cohen is an autism expert, and a respected
academic as well. As Professor of Developmental Psychopathology and Co-Director
of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University, he has published widely
on autism and is one of the small cadre of epidemiological researchers who have
been responsible for investigating the prevalence of autism and how it is
detected. Most notably, he led a research effort that tried to develop tools
(4) for diagnosing autism in infants. He failed (5). Neglecting to notice that
this failure might actually support a case for an increase in regressive autism
(why did the early detection tools fail to find over 60% of the infant autism
population if autism is determined in utero?), he has now moved on to
unsupported theories of natural selection and new-economy mating patterns.
But this is pure nonsense. Malicious nonsense. And we must
expose nonsense when we see it. Especially when it comes from Cambridge
professors with international reputations as autism experts. Bruno Bettelheim
was one of the most celebrated psychologists of his time: can we calculate the emotional
damage he inflicted on a generation of mothers? As for Baron-Cohen, I suspect
he would prefer that those of us he would judge as unfit to mate would simply
to withdraw to our computer programs. We must not. We need to hold him
accountable for his theory.
I would suggest that the scientific method is the best way
to hold the good professor accountable. He has a theory. Can he provide plausible evidence to support
it? Can he provide a rigorous test for it? Can he defend it against the simple
standard of common sense? More specifically, he offer two hypotheses: * The mobility hypothesis. Baron-Cohen
argues that social mobility created by air travel has allowed “geeks on the go”
a chance to mate. If this were true, then Baron-Cohen would have to explain why
other increases in cross-cultural mobility and mating would not have produced similar
increases in autism. The mobility
hypothesis would predict higher autism incidence in: historical periods of high
migration; periods of involuntary mating (e.g., war); societies with higher
rates of internal migration; cross-cultural and mixed race marriages; female
populations with lower degrees of social standing and ability to attract “normal”
mates; and countries with high and rising rates of immigration.
·
Commentary continues at:
http://www.angelfire.com/on/FEATNews/MBlaxill.htm
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