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Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk

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Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk

#151

Post by CalRobert »

benreesman wrote: post #93

I'm sure everyone involved means well, but we are really starting to embrace a culture of defining "normal" down to some arbitrary amount that seems to have no floor. I'm all for making sure that effective treatments are made available to anyone they might help, but couldn't a lot of this be addressed society just...being tolerant of diversity in people? Gating everyone through "thrives in American High School" as a…

The redefinition of "autism" from "can't talk, stims constantly, maybe bangs head against the wall, serious danger to themselves" to "kinda awkward savant" seems like it has been profoundly harmful to people who want to find new therapies for those in the former group. Maybe normalizing it was a way for insurance companies and school districts to get out of funding appropriate measures for people who literally can not function in day to day life.

Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk

#152

Post by npteljes »

p1dda wrote: post #142

Why would anybody need this tech? Are we hunting autistic people? Please stop.

Autism, like many other mental conditions, is not very well understood. For example, diagnostics is problematic, because the classification changed recently, and the diagnostics protocols involve observers of childhood development, which not every adult can provide. So, additional signs like the one described in the article could help people get diagnosed in the future. It could also help people hunt autistic people. But that's more of a problem with those people, and not with knowledge itself. Most pieces of knowledge can be used to hurt others.

Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk

#153

Post by CalRobert »

klipt wrote: post #150
GoatInGrey wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have autism and experience dysfunction at such a small level that you can put the blame on other people, then consider yourself extremely lucky. I volunteer at an autism center and many of those individuals struggle to maintain hygiene, feed themselves, and perform other basic aspects of living in ways that persist regardless of how tolerant their peers may or may not be. Of course, these individuals are not a…

I guess the question is why did we start labeling slightly socially awkward people as the same category as the people you describe in the first place?

"Why should the school district fund accommodations for your child? It's not a disability, it's a different-ability lol!!!"

Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk

#154

Post by cardanome »

forgotoldacc wrote: post #92
cardanome wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact people with ADHD have also their peculiar walks: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/H1YsnuaYY-g > based on outward behavior Yes, neurodivergence can only be diagnosed based on how you work on the inside. It is not possible to diagnose based on outside behavior as people can show symptoms very differently and can mask their symptoms. And no, you obviously can not diagnose people based on how they walk. If anything…

> The fear of over-diagnosis makes no sense. It feels rational to me, especially coming from a society where everything that's considered a syndrome needs to be treated and washed away with medication. Back in the 90s, every boy who laughed or had any sort of fun in my school was recommended to be put in ritalin and other ADHD meds. I was a quiet kid, but like any child, had a moment of goofiness here and there. And…

> If you've got autism and the biggest thing that stands out is the way you walk... I don't think dragging a kid to a doctor to be told they're not normal is really all that beneficial.

There are very strict criteria on how people are to be diagnosed. More importantly you are NOT getting diagnosed if you are just happy and don't need any help.

You can NOT be diagnosed with autism without any support needs.

Same as you can not be diagnosed ADHD if it causes you not trouble at all.

> being labeled as having some sort of neurodivergence and being told they can fix it is surely more damaging than just letting them be a bit strange.

You want to know what going through life without an diagnosis for your neurodivergence looks like?

People hate you. You don't know why but they just do. You are wrong. Everyone else seems to know when to say the right thing at the right time but you don't. You are some weird alien that does not belong. You try to memorize things to say, copy how other people act, it works but the mask often slips. You must be hyper-vigilant in every social situation to not let the real you slip out. It becomes so automatic that you don't even remember who you are anymore. It is exhausting, so exhausting and alienating. You crash and burn from time to time.

Things that are easy for other people. You can't even fold your laundry. You are lazy. If you would just apply yourself, you could do so much. Achieve so much. But you don't. You lack discipline. Everything you try you just give up after a while. You read a bunch of self-help books, you learn you to organize your time, all the tricks but they never work for you. You are a failure.

Not being diagnosed is absolute hell.

Just being able to know why you struggle, to learn coping strategies that work with your brain, to talk with people with the same struggles, to finally find people that understand you, is absolutely life changing.

And no, it is not about fixing people. You can not fix ADHD, people are born with it and that is how they are. It is about them getting the help they need and embracing that people are different.

> I was a quiet kid

Quiet kids can have ADHD

> my parents got calls from a teacher

Teachers don't diagnose children. They don't decide whether you need to get medicated or not.

Furthermore, yes people where probably very ignorant about ADHD in your childhood, we understand it much better now.

> drugged up

That not how ADHD meds work. They can give you the super power to fold your laundry in a single business day, they don't get you high. Some people hate how they feel but for many they work great. Medication is just one option, you can also learn better coping skills through therapy or coaching.

> It feels rational to me

As someone who was diagnosed late, it seems more like ignorance to me.

Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk

#155

Post by john01dav »

klipt wrote: post #150
GoatInGrey wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have autism and experience dysfunction at such a small level that you can put the blame on other people, then consider yourself extremely lucky. I volunteer at an autism center and many of those individuals struggle to maintain hygiene, feed themselves, and perform other basic aspects of living in ways that persist regardless of how tolerant their peers may or may not be. Of course, these individuals are not a…

I guess the question is why did we start labeling slightly socially awkward people as the same category as the people you describe in the first place?

The social protocol that low support needs autistic people use is similar to the social protocol that some higher (meaning those who can communicate) support needs autistic people use. The fundamental difference in my opinion (which is primarily formed from fairly extensive personal experience and thinking about it) is that autistic communication is fundamentally collaborative, while allistic communication is fundamentally adversarial. This is not to say that anyone is always collaborative or adversarial, or that the communication mode necessarily matches intentions.

For example, an allistic (meaning not autistic, but perhaps neurodivergent in some other way) person is more likely to keep their goal unstated and only known through subtle semi-involuntary signs that others evolved to pick up on due to the advantages that come from understanding such semi-involuntarily-shared information. Autistic people who can speak generally just say, with words alone, what they want to communicate, and are less inclined to make such subtle inferences and less likely to perform them in the way that allistic people do. For some people this manifests in an autism accent where the speech is completely well formed in a grammatical sense (not necessarily the same grammar that's in formal writing) but has no tonal information.

This difference is also reflected in conflict resolution: most autistic people will each say what their goals are and then try to find a way to satisfy everyone's goals. Allistic people I have observed are more likely to not want to put that effort in, and will this via the aforementioned subtle communication decide on some particular resolution or will play social status games to get their way.

There is also some scientific research in this area that provides support for this understanding of different modes of communication. For example this¹ provides evidence that there is a different mode of communication, although it doesn't explore what makes up those differences. It filtered for typical IQ scores, but not for support needs.

1: Crompton, C. J., Ropar, D., Evans-Jones, M., Adams, C., Pearson, A., Scott, F., & Fletcher-Watson, S. (2019). Autistic people’s social camouflaging in daily life. Autism, 23(3), 606–613.

Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk

#156

Post by MangoToupe »

npteljes wrote: post #147
MangoToupe wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we just accepted, "hey, some people are like that" more, I think we'd have a lot fewer problems. This is how much of the world works. Johnny doesn't have autism, he's just really into trains. It would be incredibly rude to say much more.

That's more like how the world is said to be working, but not how it actually works. There is a huge difference between how people express their tolerance and expectations and what they actually okay with, with no extra internal feelings. It really would be incredibly rude to say much more, and so it's not said, but it's all there in inside, coded in unspoken feelings and expectations. I'd like to draw a parallel wit…

I encourage you to examine how much of this is specific to western culture, and in particular business-oriented western culture. Expectations and tolerance vary widely from community to community even in the US, but I submit autistic individuals are likely to struggle the most in highly atomized cultures. It's a very deep and broad topic so I don't expect you to see much at a glance, but I do believe there's a reason such a label emerged from western, white supremacist culture with a very, very high degree of commodified labor.

Of course, what you point out is universal, so there are limits to this perspective. But in more collectivist cultures, I suspect that the burden of adjusting to people who struggle to conform can be more easily shouldered by more than just the nuclear family, or even celebrated more, erm, naturally.

Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk

#157

Post by swores »

generalizations wrote: post #51
Melatonic wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are mistaking toe-walking with landing fairly flat footed (the way most people tend to run with more minimalist barefoot style shoes) Running purely on the balls of your feet seems like its more of a sprinting thing

It's def also a sprinting thing, but it can also be a normal running gait - it lets your leg muscles serve as shock absorbers. And if you've ever heard of the description of an athletic person as someone with a 'cat-like' walking gait, I think toe-walking is what's meant.

Anecdotally, I played football (soccer) as a kid, and multiple coaches taught me that it's better to rest with weight on balls of feet rather than heels for the benefit of being able to quickly move in any direction rather than being planted on the spot. It was just about when standing still or walking slowly, they never tried to adjust how I ran (though maybe if I'd been in a more professional level they would have), but I can imagine that sort of training might well have affected how I walk if I kept playing into adulthood.

Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk

#159

Post by forgotoldacc »

cardanome wrote: post #154
forgotoldacc wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fear of over-diagnosis makes no sense. It feels rational to me, especially coming from a society where everything that's considered a syndrome needs to be treated and washed away with medication. Back in the 90s, every boy who laughed or had any sort of fun in my school was recommended to be put in ritalin and other ADHD meds. I was a quiet kid, but like any child, had a moment of goofiness here and there. And…

> If you've got autism and the biggest thing that stands out is the way you walk... I don't think dragging a kid to a doctor to be told they're not normal is really all that beneficial. There are very strict criteria on how people are to be diagnosed. More importantly you are NOT getting diagnosed if you are just happy and don't need any help. You can NOT be diagnosed with autism without any support needs. Same as yo…

I hear this a lot but also know a lot of people who were put on meds when they were young and didn't really understand what was going on.

I also have an adult friend put on an antipsychotic to treat their moderate depression. They went through horrifying side effects while doctors kept telling them to stick with it. They're going through even more horrifying side effects during the third week of their withdrawal.

There are no strict criteria. Some people need it. A lot of people don't. It's really no different from the opioid crisis America has, where many doctors hand stuff out like candy because, honestly, who cares? Not their problem. But it's a nice paycheck.

And the constant downplaying and dismissiveness of it all, with many people who have personal experience saying things are over-prescribed as well as studies showing such[1][2], while also saying things are massively under-dosed, really does not help the image of the psychiatric drug industry trying to find a solution to any divergence being a pill.

It's fine if you have actual struggles in life and need help and medicine helps you. It's good, actually. But if we're at a point where we're nitpicking and saying, "Your kid walks on their toes. That's bad. Let's get them diagnosed. Then get some meds", yeah, it's horrifying and absolutely indefensible.

And yes. Putting a 10 year old on a prescription drug that makes them sit and fold laundry all day very much fits the definition 99% of people would consider "drugged up." 10 year olds have periods of being little shits. If they're folding laundry all day, and you're giving them medication that makes them do so, you are very much drugging them up. And yes. Teachers did proactively call parents and try to get kids (mostly boys) medicated in the 90s. It was so wild that even South Park had an episode about it. It's unfortunate because people with legitimate issues do get caught up in it and have their issues dismissed. But then children who have no problems are also victimized by being forced to take drugs that make them fold laundry and quit being a kid.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11107288/

[2] https://www.rutgers.edu/news/risky-combos-psychiatric-drugs-...

Re: Signs of autism could be encoded in the way you walk

#160

Post by Cthulhu_ »

lenerdenator wrote: post #75

Honest question: What does this really bring to the table as a diagnostic tool for autism? By the time that you're evaluating gait, you're evaluating a lot of other things, too, since autism usually starts appearing during childhood. Obvious things, like trouble socializing, learning, and processing stimuli. I'm not a doctor or involved in any sort of diagnosis, treatment, or curing of diseases or conditions, but giv…

I've had an autism assessment recently, and I did mention gait because toe walking was a bit of a meme for a while. The assessor did note it but it was only a footnote, they focused on the other questionnaire items.
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