Autism severity can change substantially during early childhood, study suggests • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by pbhjpbhj » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

_y5hn wrote: post #109

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to your list: Some people don't have any close friends and don't have any [diagnosed or suspected] neural atypicalcy. Reflecting, I don't require people to have any obligation towards me, and if they don't want to spend time with me that's their call I'm not going to force myself on people, so when people just sort of drift past; that's just what happens. I feel like I could have friends if I was happy to play…

You can find friends doing volunteer work, taking courses that interest you, various meetings and groups. You may need to either find a group that draws you in, or try to genuinely talk to people and get to know them. If your goal isn't to be friendly, nothing much will happen.

Fwiw I do/have done those things. I have many acquaintances that will greet me in the street or whatever.

There focus here isn't me, and I'm trying to keep it that way: I mean to say that these things may help but shouldn't be viewed as sufficient.

There's something else needed, for sure. IMO only people who you spend time with outside of the original context are really friends - like someone you have as a colleague might become more than an acquaintance when you, say, go to a (non-work directed) event outside work together. There needs to be some sense of choosing to be with one another, not just happening to be in the same location because you both like volleyball, say.

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

#172

Post by BiteCode_dev » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 5:00 PM UTC

kstenerud wrote: post #149

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would advice to get a hold on the book "The inner game of tennis", which is, exactly like it sounds, a book on tennis training. Except when it's not. It hold advices that can be generalized to improve your ability to learn without using analysis and develop natural actions in a given field. Apply it to social interactions. Those are much better for everyone involved when you mostly instinctively react, yet subtly a…

I spent my early 20s doing this, and stopped after a few caring people pulled me aside and told me to stop doing strange things X, Y, Z.

This happens if you miss the "subtly adjust using logic" step.

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

#173

Post by fragmede » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 5:10 PM UTC

SubiculumCode wrote: post #10

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for coming on. This quote caught my attention: >The fact that more of the girls appear to have decreased in autism severity may be due to an increasing number of girls who have learned how to mask their symptoms. What hypothesis exist to explain this gender disparity?

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…

My hypothesis is that there's is a simpler, more-cultural answer, which is that girls with autism simply aren't diagnosed at the same rate that boys with autism are.

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

#174

Post by SubiculumCode » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #173

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…

My hypothesis is that there's is a simpler, more-cultural answer, which is that girls with autism simply aren't diagnosed at the same rate that boys with autism are.

That is certainly one of the hypotheses in the mix. Personally, I think it accounts for some, but not all of the disparity.

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

#175

Post by ocschwar » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

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…

> As such, we, as humans, generally have zero idea what is going on in someone else's brain when they do something unexpected (it is unexpected after all).

The thing is, we don't do unexpected things in front of each other all that often. Which is why neurotypical people generally do have a sense for each other's state of mind.

Aspies have trouble with this even in normal situations.

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

#176

Post by SubiculumCode » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

cmehdy wrote: post #7

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.

Out of curiosity, what is the basis for the idea that girls have an ability to camouflage or hide their symptoms better than boys? While trying to find information about this, I came across this meta-analytic review of gender differences in emotion expression in children[0], but without being in the field it's hard to make a link between emotion expression and ASD symptomatology. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/…

Camouflage is just one of the potential hypotheses out there, and the one with which I am least familiar. There are ideas about increased social-cognitive abilities in girls, allowing more effective masking/adaption. But it can also be the case that it is not merely camouflaging symptoms, but actually neural adaption and compensation that reduce or even eliminate symptoms. It could be that girls receive more social support than boys, and the one thing we do know about autism during early childhood is that early behavioral interventions can improve quality of life outcomes.

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

#177

Post by SubiculumCode » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

gwern wrote: post #139

SubiculumCode wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 In…

I see. > suggesting biological relevance one might not expect with a statistical reversion to the mean. Just going to note here that regression to the mean is not 'just' statistical. It happens any time two variables are not perfectly correlated. The imperfect correlation could be due just as easily to 'biological relevance' as it could be to some sort of more purely statistical random error like rater error, so poin…

Thanks. I will think upon this.

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

#178

Post by ocschwar » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 5:32 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #76

kstenerud wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's sort of the problem. I don't have a solid baseline to work against. I observe certain behaviors like facial expressions (smiling convincingly is especially difficult), discussions about irrelevant things (except that they serve a social function), looking into someone's eyes (very difficult), certain postures that have meaning (you're bored, you're angry, you're... something) . It's a lot to keep straight in y…

Eyes! Eyes! Is what I tell my 13 year old daughter. But she is far more comfortable looking away while in conversation. The theory that has resonated most with me is that both facial interpretations and language processing are very cerebral processor intensive. Turning off your facial tracking algorithm by looking away frees more brain nodes to help with processing and thinking about what you are hearing and saying.…

She's old enough to know the tradeoffs, and she can probably make the choice for each occasion. She can be eye contact averse, which will be deemed off putting by people who don't know her personally just yet, and may make bad first impressions. Or she can make the conscious choice to maintain eye contact at appropriate levels (for some people that literally means having to count silently and look away at regular intervals, because non-stop eye contact is also off putting), at the cost of finding the occasion tiring and needing to curl up somewhere afterwards.

(FWIW, the lock down has limited my social activity to circles that tolerate my eye contact aversion, and I am taking advantage of it to get what slack I can)

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

#179

Post by Lammy » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 8:10 PM UTC

hanniabu wrote: post #91

Lammy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two years old is well past "very early" development stages.

What constitutes very early? 6 months? 2 months?

https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones/index.html

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

#180

Post by ocschwar » Mon, Jun 01, 2020, 8:30 PM UTC

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #17

my son had a couple of very annoying years between 4-7 where he would seem behind compared to other kids on certain things such as motor skills and physical (hand/leg) coordination. he was also huge for his age, like trapped in a larger child's body. when it was time to send him to school our neighbors who knew him (because he hung out with their kid) suggested to send him to an IQ test because they figured he might…

> "Whenever I play with the kid I think he is pretty normal, except for that he is a lot smarter than anyone else. Like a smart boy stuck in a smaller childs body."

Classic sign of Asperger's syndrome. The rules for interacting with adults are clearly spelled out and consistent, requiring no intuition, unlike the rules for interacting with peers on the playground. So the child will seek out adults who take an interest in his school topics or special interests.