Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 214 posts

Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths

#101

Post by p3rls »

giantg2 wrote: post #96

He spent a month in a hospital as a small child. Of course this impacted his autism. We know that social interaction, play therapy, etc can be effective at reducing the severity and impact of autism and this is the direct opposite. How do you think a small child is going to learn about social interaction if they're stuck in a hospital without as much interaction and with much of the interaction being to the point? Th…

I once was hospitalized for depression and drug use when I was a teenager and my warcraft 3 stats never recovered after that. I always wondered if there were studies on that sorta thing.

Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths

#102

Post by dmurray »

andoryuu wrote: post #98
Barrin92 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely autistic to name drop the title to an audience of adults who likely don't remember anything about Sesame Street and being too literal. It shows the difference in cognitive ability between the brothers pretty well. The brother who seems to be doing better in daily life has a pretty good idea of what kind of answer a random person would expect.

> When asked to name his favorite episode > It's definitely autistic to name drop the title to an audience of adults who likely don't remember If someone asks me to name an episode I'll assume they know the show, and that the name is sufficient. Because they asked for only that. Why can questions have an implicit "and tell me about it", but the answers cannot have an implicit "I assume you know which one it is"?

You might be more likely to pick up on some context clues that this is an NPR reporter trying to make conversation about the topic she's just been told you're interested in, rather than a fellow obsessive fan of early-2000s children's TV.

Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths

#103

Post by [deleted] »

scottlamb wrote: post #54

This is driving me oddly nuts: > "I think there's an understanding that 'My twin isn't quite as capable of communicating in the way that they need to, so I'll help them with that,'" she says. > That description fits Sam and John. > When asked to name his favorite episode of Sesame Street, John blurts out a series of words: "Abby makes the seasons change." Sam understands immediately and quickly steps in to explain. >…

[deleted]

Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths

#104

Post by notamy »

crisply5706 wrote: post #42
sidewndr46 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading the article, it turns out the one twin who is "more autistic" had a hole in his heart that surgery had to correct. So I suspect the actual issue here is something simpler like a difference in brain development because of the difference in the amount of blood flow.

My theory is that this causation is flipped. Something about whatever the precursor to autism is causes the body to experience more physical failures or malformed structures. Something like whatever mechanisms decode structure from the genome are faulty and produce slightly wrong structures throughout the brain and body. Anecdotally, I see a higher rate of general illness and physical birth defects in autistic people…

There’s a correlation between autism and mitochondrial dysfunction:

https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2010136

> Most ASD/MD cases (79%) were not associated with genetic abnormalities, raising the possibility of secondary mitochondrial dysfunction. Treatment studies for ASD/MD were limited, although improvements were noted in some studies with carnitine, co-enzyme Q10 and B-vitamins. Many studies suffered from limitations, including small sample sizes, referral or publication biases, and variability in protocols for selecting children for MD workup, collecting mitochondrial biomarkers and defining MD. Overall, this evidence supports the notion that mitochondrial dysfunction is associated with ASD. Additional studies are needed to further define the role of mitochondrial dysfunction in ASD.

Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths

#105

Post by jawns »

swayvil wrote: post #33

The autist focuses. Concentrates. Invests his entire attention in a particular sliver of the experiential buffet. That's autism. If it's a useful sliver then there you go.

That's one type of autism. The reason it's now called Autism Spectrum Disorder is because there are many very different manifestations, not all of which involve hyperfixation.

Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths

#106

Post by yterdy »

giantg2 wrote: post #92
TeMPOraL wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that autistic, or is that just normal for someone who cares , and who actually has a favorite episode? I can't imagine not picking up the title after watching an episode a few times.

If you just care, you'd probably say the "the episode called..." and maybe describe it for the person if you interpret their reaction as not understanding or recognizing it. Edit: why disagree? Not recognizing that someone wants more information, or that your communication doesn't carry enough context for a person to know what you're talking about is classic autism. If you're someone without autism and just care abou…

Because the explicit query was, "What's your favorite episode?". It's frustrating to be accused of disordered thinking on your part when the actual issue is disordered expectations from the other party. What they actually should have asked was, "What happened during your favorite episode?", which might have produced the response given by the sibling.

It's not like neurotypical people don't also experience this frustration with having to divine what people actually desire in any given quantum of communication. I would even offer that people speaking with those on the spectrum might be primed to be less generous and forgiving with that anticipatory instinct; they jump to, "This person is weird," instead of considering the ways in which their own communication style is wanting. The reason they can get away with it, and autistic people can't, is simply a matter of how many people like them are around to validate their subjective experience. See your given CS department/TTRPG club for the flipside of this dynamic.

EDIT: Might also explain the phenomenon of smug, "What you ACTUALLY wanted was-" responsed on SO. We've trained people with precise thought to assume that anyone coming to them with questions doesn't actually know what they're trying to accomplish. We've created monsters.

Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths

#107

Post by Anotheroneagain »

hiciu wrote: post #2

> identical twins at opposite ends of the autism spectrum. I understand this is just a figure of speech, but this wording suggests that there are "two ends" of the spectrum and (as I understand it) autistic communities are trying to fight that myth.

Please stop spreading such lies, if anything, they don't like being grouped together with obviously disabled people.

Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths

#108

Post by jrsdav »

scottlamb wrote: post #53
twobitshifter wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s possible but he did get crazy antibiotics as well. FTA: “The infection was from drug-resistant staph bacteria. So John went back to the hospital and spent a month on powerful antibiotics pumped directly into a vein near his heart.”

...or just being in the hospital environment for a month. The older theory they mentioned here: > "The earliest twin studies really helped to debunk this theory that autism was caused by parenting," Morris says. Under this theory, moms took the brunt of the blame, supposedly for being "cold and distant and detached from their child." ...might not be entirely wrong. They've since shown genetics is a factor, and I'll i…

> Under this theory, moms took the brunt of the blame, supposedly for being "cold and distant and detached from their child."

Before the heredity nature of autism was accepted, this was the school of thought (“refrigerator mothers”). But in truth, it’s neurodivergent parents having neurodivergent children, and society punishing the parents (namely mothers) for their inability at providing the “expected” nurturing conditions.

Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths

#109

Post by tialaramex »

OJFord wrote: post #82
scottlamb wrote: post #54

This is driving me oddly nuts: > "I think there's an understanding that 'My twin isn't quite as capable of communicating in the way that they need to, so I'll help them with that,'" she says. > That description fits Sam and John. > When asked to name his favorite episode of Sesame Street, John blurts out a series of words: "Abby makes the seasons change." Sam understands immediately and quickly steps in to explain. >…

Devil's advocate: it is characteristically autistic to have episode names memorised like that, and it sort of is 'blurting out a series of words' if you don't know that's what it is; a more 'normal' answer might be more like a description of the episode or 'the one called [...]'. I think perhaps you can see that in Sam's assistance, he doesn't know the episode names, possibly he knows or expects that is an episode na…

> it is characteristically autistic to have episode names memorised like that

One of my colleagues recommended that our department invite somebody from outside to explain to us about "neurotypical" people so we can better accommodate their special needs at work. We don't seem to have many "neurotypical" people so hence the idea to get an outsider to do a talk.

Maybe one of the things it would be good to understand is, are there actually lots of these "neurotypical" people or are they just bad at counting ?

Re: Identical twins both grew up with autism, but took different paths

#110

Post by Anotheroneagain »

One possibility (strongly supported by cases like this one) is that "severe" autism is caused by severe neglect, when the child gets essentially abandoned once labelled as "autistic". Has anyone tried to expose John to anything else than his "favorite" show? Was he even exposed to enough language?
Post reply on HN