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Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests

health.ucdavis.edu

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Re: Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests

#111

Post by hkt »

tw000001 wrote: post #11
scandox wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably they're creeped out because they believe your emotional responses are simulated and that your engagement in phatic discourse is inauthentic? But how they can they tell the difference? And even if they can how do they know that this isn't also true of everybody else, only that others are superior fakers? How can they even know that their own responses are authentic? I ask because I'm really not sure about t…

Normal people are extremely sensitive to deviations from social norms. There's even a word for it, "coolness" and more modern derivatives. Human social interactions are extremely complex, both verbal and otherwise, and people will subconsciously become uncomfortable or disinterested when people deviate too far from patterns. The weird kids get bullied because they are legitimately weird. But pretending to be normal i…

There's another name for it, actually:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_script

I've wondered about whether Asperger's could be considered a learning difficulty related to these in the past, especially having read that chronic anxiety can be approached in that way:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/is-chronic...

Re: Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests

#112

Post by woodandsteel »

kstenerud wrote: post #3

> The study also found that IQ had a significant relationship with change in symptom severity. Children with higher IQs were more likely to show a reduction in ASD symptoms. This is important information. People of higher intelligence would be more likely to learn things, such as how to mask effectively. I learned to mask so well that most people are shocked to learn that I'm autistic. It takes about 6 months of cons…

How specifically are you imitating a neurotypical person? Like are you pretending to be compassionate when you're not? And what specifically is it about you that creeps people out when they discover it?

Re: Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests

#113

Post by woodandsteel »

bsder wrote: post #93
futureshock wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sort of like telepathy, seriously. On Star Trek, there was Deanna Troi who was empathic, telepathic with emotions only. I actually think it goes even beyond feeling to thought as well. We are extremely sensitive to the inner mental lives of others and respond both consciously and unconsciously. It takes a sociopath or an extremely practiced actor to fool us. For the vast number of people, we can read their inner…

> We are extremely sensitive to the inner mental lives of others and respond both consciously and unconsciously. This is so wrong it's hilarious. Humans are terrible at ascribing meaning to what other people do. It even spawned a saying: "We judge others by what they do; we judge ourselves by what we intend." As such, we, as humans, generally have zero idea what is going on in someone else's brain when they do someth…

Well then what is it that people on the Asperger spectrum are missing, if it is not this ability?

Re: Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests

#114

Post by _y5hn »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #99
_y5hn wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an impossible accusation, as you could be wrong (plus too honest for own good), but the person would be masking better than you as well! Anyway, personal traits aren't criminal. I've heard sociopaths even excuse their "eccentric inattention to others" as possibly having asperger tendencies! Most people still lack experience to even understand they are poles apart. Regarding projections, burn the "rule book".…

Agree with this. I also realize I wasn't clear here, so lets says you have a person A who is a sociopath talk to person B. After that interaction person A comes to person C (me in this example) and says "I don't know, they strike me as a sociopath." Now in these cases, when I've had enough interaction with Person A in other situations, to feel confident in my understanding of their challenges, and when the feedback o…

If A is a bully, categorize B as possible future mark. This for very few A, B and opportunity.

If A is not a conscious bully (for lack of a better term), B could be perceived as artificial, weak, blunt, out of bounds, insulting, exploitative, etc. Reaction is to push "out" and "defend", maybe "as if" leader. Introspection at A may overcome reaction, though may need reassurance from respected source (=leadership). A and B will probably never work great together, though minimal interaction can work consciously. How A and B relates defines span of real org culture (in heaven).

Re: Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests

#115

Post by SubiculumCode »

gwern wrote: post #71
SubiculumCode wrote: post #2

I am part of the research team that collects and analyses this dataset, although I am not an author on this particular analysis. Feel free to ask me any questions.

I have a question: how do their analyses account for regression to the mean? The headline sex and IQ differences look exactly like regression to the mean to me: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gtvoan/around_30_p...

Generally, in longitudinal analysis, three data points are the minimum required to fit a line while guarding against reversions to the mean. The lead author is currently assessing data with a third longitudinal timepoint of the ADOS severity measure. That said, the research article tried to guard against this problem by defining the minimum amount of change to be considered a reliable change i.e. a Reliable Change Index statistic (RCI; Jacobson and Truax 1991), which is, in Latex: RCI_{{Z\,SCORE}} = \frac{{({\text{ADOS}}\,{\text{CSS}}{\mkern 1mu} {\text{Time}}{\mkern 1mu} 3 - {\text{ADOS}}\,{\text{CSS}}{\mkern 1mu} {\text{Time}}{\mkern 1mu} 1)}}{{\sqrt {2\left( {SD\sqrt {1 - r_{{xy}} } } \right)^{2} } }} which takes into account test-retest reliability correlations.

Roughly speaking, this meant the the change groups ended up changing dX>+2 or dXFurthermore, in data I did help analyze which is currently included in a journal submission, the change groups defined here exhibited altered longitudinal trajectories of white matter fractional anistropy and diffusivity, suggesting biological relevance one might not expect with a statistical reversion to the mean.

Re: Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests

#116

Post by RivieraKid »

kstenerud wrote: post #9
scandox wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably they're creeped out because they believe your emotional responses are simulated and that your engagement in phatic discourse is inauthentic? But how they can they tell the difference? And even if they can how do they know that this isn't also true of everybody else, only that others are superior fakers? How can they even know that their own responses are authentic? I ask because I'm really not sure about t…

In my attempts to discover the secret behind perfect social interaction, people I've spoken to have been unable to explain exactly how they do it. It seems reasonable to assume that the brains of social animals are specially tuned to learn social interaction quickly, as such individuals would more quickly form a cohesive group with better survival potential (historically speaking). The question of authenticity, thoug…

I think that the key is whether you're using system 1 or system 2 thinking in social situation. It's a concept popularized by Thinking, Fast and Slow. System 1 is automatic, effortless, quick - for example face recognition. System 2 is deliberate, tiring, slow - think of solving an equation. It's kind of similar to unconscious vs conscious.

When people are naturally good in social situations, they're primarily using system 1 for decision making such as "what should my facial expression be". It's kind of a state of flow, in which system 2 mostly just observes what system 1 is doing, without micromanaging every face muscle, intonation, sentence, etc.

This may also be a reason why introverts find social interaction tiring.

(This is just my understanding.)

Re: Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests

#117

Post by SubiculumCode »

Jare wrote: post #79
SubiculumCode wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gender disparity in autism prevalence is one of the big mysteries of autism since genes associated with autism risk are not generally located on the XY sex chromosome. There are a number of hypotheses out there for the disparity of prevalence. One hypothesis is that the disparity is more apparent than real: That girls are better at masking/adapting to their symptoms, and thus more frequently escape diagnosis. The…

It would seem to me that masking works to a point (towards the "highly functioning" side of the spectrum), and once you get to the ways in which autism blocks ability to perform certain common behaviours and activities (e.g. non-verbal), the gender percentages should get closer again, because there's no masking to hide them or social expectations that they match. Is this the case?

It should be noted that this research sample, as opposed to many autism samples, includes autism with non-verbal, and severe intellectual disability phenotypes of autism, phenotypes not always captured in neuroimaging research of adults due to compliance issues (We collect neuroimaging data while participants sleep in the scanner).

Re: Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests

#118

Post by jamiek88 »

Inu wrote: post #98
TrinaryWorksToo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The closest I've found to making and keeping friends has been the FBI interrogation manual, which explains how police officers who would normally scare a suspect can get them to disclose intimate details of crimes. https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/hig-report-august-2016.p... https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/hig-report-interrogation... Obviously you're not entering an interrogation, and you also want to level th…

>The closest I've found to making and keeping friends has been the FBI interrogation manual, which explains how police officers who would normally scare a suspect can get them to disclose intimate details of crimes. Sorry, but this is the funniest thing I've read on HN in a while.

It’s the most hacker news comment ever.

In context reasonable, show it elsewhere and derision would follow.

Funny.

Re: Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests

#119

Post by loriverkutya »

valuearb wrote: post #103
wirrbel wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or is it just something unique about her I can’t change and I am just causing her unresolvable stress? Why don't you let her decide?

Because that’s not parenting? This may be an unpopular truth in today’s world, but sometimes you need to make your kids do or try things they are resistant to in hopes it gives them skills to better succeed when they are adults.

And forcing them to do something they find extremely uncomfortable makes you a good parent. No, this is not parenting.

Re: Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests

#120

Post by james_s_tayler »

JacksonGariety wrote: post #18

I have high-functioning autism. Does anyone have some suggestions for making and keeping friends? When I meet a friend, things seem to go really well at first, and then my friend seems to slowly get bored of the interactions we have, and after a couple months I just don't hear from them again. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. Is there a scientific way to find out?

It's much easier to make friends at the start of a school year. Or the start of anything really where a new group of people come together and bonds tend to form in that time. Outside of that regular participation in groups tends to lead to friendships but I find them of a shallower quality than the first variety.

From my observations and what I read it seems that most people when they are adults actually have very few friends and there aren't many opportunities to make friends as an adult.

Just as a baseline to compare to I guess...

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