What Is the Cause-And-Effect Chain of ASD Symptoms?

Post Reply New Topic

It has a list of different symptoms. But why do these symptoms occur together? Which symptoms lead to other symptoms?

Which symptom is the core symptom and what evidence have they found? I know they focus on "social skills" but what if another one of the symptoms is actually responsible for leading to the social skills deficit rather than the other way around?

Have they figured this out at all?

There are lots of theories, but no one knows for sure yet.

As best I can tell, the "core" symptom is probably a basic difference in the way the brain develops--the whole brain, not just the language or social areas. Autistic people learn differently, process information differently, and think differently; so I'm pretty sure the difference has to be something in the way the brain develops, and autistic traits are the result.

It seems like a lot of the time people say one thing causes another but it's not true.

Like people who claim that social isolation causes special interests (when special interests can precede and outlast isolation). I rather think differences in sensory processing probably cause stimming (along with not caring what other people think-- being willing to do what you need to and be a functional loner rather than miserable and popular-- but I don't think that's very much of it).

I really don't think any inherent part of autism is high-level. I think it's all about the basic structure of the first few filters applied to your senses, and the basic ways in which you process information. I don't think, then, that any of the ultimate causes are "trouble socializing" or "trouble with eye contact" or some such thing.

Many parts of the brain don't develop properly. There's the frontal lobes which involve social, short term memory and all those other high thinking areas. There's the temporal lobe which involve vision, hearing, emotions (I think - I'm trying to relate it to my TLE which affects all three things). There's the brain stem which regulates body temperature and many people with autism has disregulated body temperature. There's the parietal lobe which involves motor movement sensory regulation. And there are other areas of the brain affected by autism.
All the areas that are supposed to regulate emotions (especially anger/fear), social skills, sensory information, the ability to switch from one thing to another, a motor movements are affected. Hand flapping to me is the inability to control these motor movements. That's what it feels like to me at least.
It's not one thing leads to another but all things lead to autism. I mean there could be some traits you develop because of some symptom. Social anxiety and avoidance for one. But I agree that special interests come before social isolation.
Oh and on the lack of eye contact thing. There is an large area called a social network in the brain that should light up when people amke eye contact but this doesn't in autism.

And really because we all have different experiences and no single brain is alike the symptoms will differ but be similar enough to be diagnosed with autism.

That was never a symptom for me. I wish it was. I still try to do this, but it's hard.

If no one symptom leads to the others then why did all these various brain differences clump together? There's got to be some reason for an evolutionary standpoint why they tend to happen together instead of separately.

I can imagine several possibilities:

1 - restricted interest create social isolation:

If your only interest in live are birds of prey, you will have difficult and little interest in participating in conversations about other issue

2 - social isolation creates restricted interests:

well, sincerely, I can't imagine a mechanism for that, but I read many things proposing this theory...

3 - social isolation creates the appearance of restricted interests:

Everybody as only one or two hobbys; then, if you take away social interaction from someone, he will spend the day doing only 1 or 2 things

4 - social isolation and restricted interests co-occur largely by a matter of definition:

A criteria used to consider if an interests is a "restricted interest" is if interferes with your social life, then people with social isolation are more prone to be considered as having restricted interests

5 - the symptoms simply don't occur together - many people have social problems without restricted interests (like in schizoid and avoidant pd and social anxiety) and many people have restricted interests without social isolation, and what we call ASD is simply the co-occurence in the same person of the two conditions (like some person could have simultaneously daltonism and hemophilia).

6 - a common third cause creates social isolation and special interests; possible causes:

6.1 - oversensitivity :

An oversensitive person, if he is interested in something, will be really INTERESTED in that thing; and he will find the natural difficulties of social life much more painful than "normal" people, leading to social isolation

6.2 - distraction by internal preoccupations, self-absorption:

It's easy to see why "distraction by internal preoccupations" could create social isolation; about the restricted interests - if we define restricted interests as having only one or two interests, or being interested in very narrow topics, like the Iraqi electoral law, there is no reason to "self-absorption" creating that; but if we consider that any interests that interfere with your daily activities are "restricted" (even if you have many interests and/or in broad areas), then someone distracted by internal preoccupations will have restricted interests in this sense

6.3 - difficulty in attention shifting:

If you have difficulty in attention shifting (like in the second part of this test - http://www.brainfitnesscentersofflorida.com/quiz.php), you will have problems with the unpredictably and ever-changing nature of social interaction; and you will have also tendency to become stucked in one topic

Making a self-analyses (but I am undiagnosed), in my case I see a mix of 1, 6.1 and 6.2

A strong point in favour of theory 1 is the example that Atwood gives in one of his books, about two boys with AS that are both obsessed with ants, nd whet they were together, had a perfect relation with each other.

Why there is a tendency to focus in the "social skills" part? Well, I think that is largely the story of the man who lost his keys and is searching for them near the street lamp because is where there is light: is is much more easy to imagine strategies of intervention (like social skills classes) if we assume that the main problem are social skills.

Another point is that, for psychologists, much probably "social problems" are a more fascinating topic than "restricted interests", than they will dis-proportionally will write papers and books about social skills.