There are two new studies on autism. I can't help responding to these studies.
One study found a correlation between autism and pollution. Many scientists have speculated that autism is the result of genetics, plus environmental triggers. The question is what environmental factors are relevant. One study finds suggests babies born to mothers who live close to freeways have double the risk of becoming autistic compared to other kids, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
We lived in Washington Heights, an neighborhood that has already been identified as having an unusually high number of children with asthma. This might be because of air pollution. That area of Manhattan has a large number of highways that converge, which is also why drug dealers like that neighborhood so much — easy in and out of the city. It might also because of poverty. There are also some correlations between cockroach feces and asthma. It would be fairly easy to see if there are correlations between asthma rates and autism.
It is difficult to separate the genetic component from environmental factors. People who carry the autism gene might be more likely to live in urban areas where there are many highways. I remember a while back there was a study that found that there were more people with autism in the Pacific Northwest, so scientists speculated that there was a correlation between rain fall and autism. They forgot that the Pacific Northwest also is home to many software companies, and computer geeks almost always carry the gene for autism.
The other study that I feel like tearing apart this morning looks at the visual deficits and autism. This study found that autistic children had poor visual skills. In real life situations, they found it difficult to locate objects like apples in supermarket or shoes in a messy room.
Well, these children's failure to locate shoes in a messy room might not be an indication of poor visual skills. It may be because of poor executive functioning. After presented with a messy room, the kids forgot what they were supposed to find or they became overwhelmed with the messiness of the room.
Someone in this house has highly developed visual skills. He can locate the key Lego piece in a pile of jumbled pieces. He's the first to find an object in a hidden picture puzzle. I can send him to find the waffles and juice boxes in a supermarket and then bring them back to me. I am more and more convinced that autism is too broad of term; we have mistakenly grouped together several different neurological differences into one condition.
Well, that was fun and probably of interest to only two readers. Time to move on.
Apt. 11d 
Laura- it was definitely of interest to me and i have a feeling I am not one of only two interested readers! Autism affects so many people and families- I think it is of more general interest than you think. I’m a pediatrician who doesn’t always have time to keep up on all the latest research on every topic so I love your updates on autism research and thought. Thanks
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Someone in our home can find a single kernel of popcorn in the world’s largest haystack.
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or shoes in a messy room.
The headline should have been, “Children without autism can find their shoes. It’s science, so that makes it official. Go back and look again. Your mother and I have other things to do so we can’t devote half our brain to keeping track of your shoes which would be easy to find if you’d just get into the habit of putting them in the same place every time you remove them. If you can’t find them in 2 minutes, we’ll use the old pair because we really need to get into the car now.”
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Hey, it was of interest to me. 🙂
I lived in Maine (damned rural, even though we lived in the second largest city in the state, if you ask me) when I was pregnant with E. We moved to MA (across the street from a gas station) and walking distance to an interstate when he was 13 months old. And we still live near an interstate, come to think of it.
Re the visual stuff: YES. E couldn’t find a frickin’ box of hot chocolate this morning — in the same closet where he has been getting his hot chocolate for the past few days. How annoyed am I when I have to get up from my warm comfy bed to find him something so obvious? In my family, we have a saying: “It’s right next to the submarine.”
But he is similar to Ian in ability to find many things and notice things visually. The problem is something else, not visual skills.
E got his report card yesterday, btw. It’s interesting to get the first post-IEP report from the specialists. He gets social skills, OT, and writing, and strangely, the social skills part is going best right now. In OT, he can’t handle “identifying his own state of arousal” which means he doesn’t realize when he’s getting loud or boisterous. And in writing, he still needs additional time to complete his work.
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or shoes in a messy room.
The headline should have been, “Children without autism can find their shoes. It’s science, so that makes it official. Go back and look again. Your mother and I have other things to do so we can’t devote half our brain to keeping track of your shoes which would be easy to find if you’d just get into the habit of putting them in the same place every time you remove them. If you can’t find them in 2 minutes, we’ll use the old pair because we really need to get into the car now.”
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Oh, thanks for the links and the unpacking of the same. I always react with great suspicion to anyone claiming they’ve found a clear correlation of environmental factors or particular manifestations in autism.
Environment in our world is so entwined with economy, culture, access to services and the like that it’s hard to ferret it out as a direct factor. Maybe the schools and community workers in a place are just that much more “on the ball” about diagnosing the problem.
As for the visual processing problems, I’m with you in that it sounds like executive functions. Youngest is still too easily overwhelmed by anything, whether it’s picking up her pajamas from the floor or being told to help clean up her stacks of books. She may read at a college level, but her skills in navigating the physical demands of life are still somewhere at grade school level because of the difficulty in following a particular plan of attack.
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The headline should have been, “Children without autism can find their shoes. It’s science, so that makes it official. Go back and look again. Your mother and I have other things to do so we can’t devote half our brain to keeping track of your shoes which would be easy to find if you’d just get into the habit of putting them in the same place every time you remove them. If you can’t find them in 2 minutes, we’ll use the old pair because we really need to get into the car now.”
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“Well, that was fun and probably of interest to only two readers.”
Not at all!
“I remember a while back there was a study that found that there were more people with autism in the Pacific Northwest, so scientists speculated that there was a correlation between rain fall and autism. They forgot that the Pacific Northwest also is home to many software companies, and computer geeks almost always carry the gene for autism.”
I’d also point out the prevalence of Scandinavians. If there isn’t a larger than average helping of autistic genes among Scandinavians, I would be very surprised.
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I’m with you Laura,there’s a big difference between a visual problem and a processing difference.
F (3.5 years old) and his father are eerily similar in where they would test on the spectrum but F can find things and his father can’t. As far as I can tell what happens is that F can block out all of the other stuff except what he’s looking for while his father is unable to distinguish “the clutter” as individual things.
I’ve tested this a couple of times by describing something to F without letting him see it, then asking him to find it. It seems as long as he can visualize it he can focus on it to exclusion of everything else.
On the other side I’ve had autistic students who were almost unable to ignore any visual stimulus. This made learning to read extremely difficult, but they could tell you all kinds of details about everything in their environment.
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To me, the second study missed the main point: Children without autism can find their own shoes. I’ll clip it for when mine is old enough to read.
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“probably of interest to only two readers”
Hardly.
“It is difficult to separate the genetic component from environmental factors.”
This is an important concept to get out there. Mainstream media stories, by their nature, don’t do a very good job dealing with gray areas.
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