Correlation Between Autistic & Feral Children?

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Interesting article about a feral child named "Dani" can be found --> H E R E <--

While the article does not link neglect to autism, there are developmental parallels between autistic and feral children.

Dangerous road...
I suggest you either alter your post to indicate that you don't mean there are similarities in the CAUSES of both states...
Or..... Get a flameshield ready.

BTW, I have an opinion on your notion, but I aint gonna voice it, because it's relatively impossible to walk an invisible line. Gonna see if anybody else posts here, though.

are Aspie parents more likely to have kids with Aspergers?

I don't think there's a correlation between autism and child neglect but I read that article and felt even more depressed than usual.
Aren't there interventions for this sort of thing in this day and age?

This topic has been a brief kind of mini-obsession with me. I'm still no closer to understanding how horrific neglect can present symptoms so close to ASD. If anything I'm further away from understanding how humans can be so cruel.

Here's another link speaking about ASD, and feral children, along with every case of feral children that has ever been documented. http://www.feralchildren.com/en/autism.php

"Correlation" is not "Causation" is a foundational concept in science - otherwise, the post already is explicit on the matter:
... next...


The correlative aspects are spelled out on page two of the article:
Again, correlation is not causation.


Absolutely! The problem lies in discovering neglected children that have been both confined and hidden away. It isn't as if police and child-welfare workers can go door-to-door looking for kids locked away in closets and attics. Someone has to actually discover these poor kids and report them to the authorities before the authorities can intervene.

Last edited by Fnord on 04 Mar 2009, 3:19 pm, edited 2 times in total.

i think there is a correllation definitely, in terms of heightened sensory processing.
it has nothing to do with causation.

i have long argued this.
my senses are very similar to an animal's.

from the feral one.

Fnord:
Correlation in development but not correlation in causation(neglect doesn't cause autism) and I couldn't get past the first page, it was just too awful.

Yes, why not go out into our communities and find these people before it's too late?

i am not really interested in the article.

but i am interested in why it is so tabou for humans to consider their animalism in little more than a negative light.

the minute some sort of parallel is made between animals and autism or feral humans and autism, people get all hot around the collar.

i personally think grandin is onto something in her rejoicing of this fact. heightened senses can be a pain to live with, but it they are also truly amazing.

This discussion is VERY interesting. I was a pretty severely neglected child, incest survivor and was physically abused and have some severe attachment issues, but I also have a lot of aspie traits and didn't talk until I was almost 5 years old. I still struggle with a lot of things that look like an ASD and don't really know how to tease out what is what.....

I keep getting misdiagnosed and misread all over the place and am extremely isolated. I also spent many years in isolation in institutions. I think some of the traits are similar but it is hard to say. My abuse and neglect went unacknowledged for years and I have suffered from some severe developmental consequences because of it relating to regulating bodily functions as well as learning disabilities and I have the "eye looking" and facial expression problem that I can't seem to make better. I was diagnosed with ADHD, bipolar and another learning disorder as well as an eating disorder but none of those diagnoses really fit my experience. And the meds don't seem to help, sometimes they make things worse! I took an aspergers test online and it said I scored 181 out of 200, but that's an online test.

I think it's really tricky to tease out severe attachment trauma, developmental trauma, and the effects of neglect and abuse from things like aspergers and ADHD. But definitely there is not causation as evidenced by so many loving and caring families with special needs children.

Chels, I struggle with isolation issues as well. Do you think you don't want to be around people because of your past? I have this same problem. I went thru a lot and now I don't want to be around people much at all.

Yes this discussion IS very interesting. Thanks Fnord and serenity for the links. Here is my horror story:

I know the Bruno Bettleheim theory that autism is caused by severe neglect on the part of the mother--has been debunked--but there are a small number of us for whom it seems pertinent. In my case I realized the truth before it was told to me. I got married fairly young. When I was 18, my father informed my fiance the truth which I had known but been in denial about. After 18, it was impossible to deny it any longer....... My mother freaked out when she discovered her pregnancy with me. For some reason, it [I] was viewed as an unhealthy tumor to her. She hated being pregnant and she hated me for the entire 10 months she was pregnant. During the delivery, she almost died and guess who she has always blamed that on?

From the time of my birth, my mother hated me twice as much as she ever had during pregnancy--because in her opinion I tried to kill her. So, in terms of my mother's care, I was subjected to severe neglect, avoidance and a hatred the likes of which I have never seen anything ever approach----except for some unfortunate Muslim women who are stoned to death because they have been raped. I was incested twice by my mother's relatives as a child and my mother has convinced herself it was my fault. Reason to hate me that much more. I know this sounds horribly dismal...but there is a silver lining in my story. My father was a very loving person and he showed me constant affection. Also, my mother's mother lived with us and while she wasn't very affectionate, she was mildly nurturing and she exhibited no hatred toward me. There were times when she appeared to barely tolerate my presence....but that was a relief compared to my mother. In addition, my mother loved cats and we almost always had a cat or 2 when I was a child. So my father, grandmother, and the cats almost neutralized the severe hatred coming from my mother.

Almost.....being the operative word. To this day I can't even think of my mother without experiencing incapacitating anxiety, severe stimming and a deep-seated desire to harm myself [which I can usually resist] ..... I have mostly forgiven her, about 70%....because it seems my mother also had a difficult childhood, although I don't know or recall many of the details..

For the other 30% that I haven't forgiven my mother, she is a monster and I can't really accept that she was ever my mother. My father [and grandmother to a lesser degree] has always been both my mother and father. Today I feel almost nothing in common with humans, but I feel very close to most animals and to nature. Cats are my "siblings" and mother nature is my mother....as what fate gave me for a mother was truly a monster. ...not her fault though...just another tragedy..and she passed on that tragedy to her only child, me...

I am sort of like this too. Lots of friction in my relationship with my mother and I have a lot of anxiety around her. My mother has always blamed me for it. She acts like it's all my fault and I am defective in some way and she did nothing.
My mother was abusive at times and neglectful at others. She was, basically, inconsistent in parenting and had psychological and addiction issues although she was functional enough to have a career. Her functionality in some regards is, I believe, what kept us from getting more assistance for our problems.

I saw a program on Fox News about that little girl. They said there that mental retardation and autism can definitely be caused by severe neglect and abuse. I have also read that on other web sites. Autism and autistic behaviors have many causes. My husband's autistic behaviors are caused by brain damage due to seizures and brain surgery.

The overlaps occur because there is some similarity in cause. The difference is one is a matter of what stimulus exists in the environment, the other is more about the neuro-handling of stimulus.

Evidently the comparison article is not entirely accurate as the concept of "feral children" includes those who are extremely deprived of human interaction in their early formative development (for instance children in over burdened orphanages who are for most of the time simply left in a crib/cot or tied to a bed). When you see footage of these children, they do indeed engage in stereotyped repetitive behavior...very obviously in fact (and this is described as being the case in the article Fnord posted).

I know this is an old thread but I came across it independently when reading about "feral children".

Why has nobody made this argument... I think there is a common cause, but it has nothing to do with bad parenting... both feral children and autistic children are deprived of growing up in a normal "social environment". The difference is that for feral children, the isolation is physical: there IS no social environment. For autistic children, the isolation is neurological: there is a social environment that they are somehow unable to comprehend. Thus, information from their social environment fails to "get through".

Its largely an intuitive judgement for me, but I really favor the idea that the primary symptom of ASD is an inability to learn socially, and all other symptoms are secondary to this. Of course, feral children cannot learn socially either, but its because they don't have a society to learn from, whereas autistic children have brains that cannot understand society and may find it utterly pointless to dwell on social interactions. Thus, they focus on things that they understand, things that they can learn in isolation.

This explains the language deficit, since language is socially acquired with little effort for most children. Very interesting that language ability is spared to an extent for Asperger's syndrome, but often there are problems with comprehension even if there are no problems with generating language.