A grand unified theory of autism?

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There is plenty of research that shows a correlation in fetal testosterone and digit ratio per link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digit_ratio. I'm not suggesting it is conclusive.

SBC's research did show a correlation of lower 2d/4d digit ratio for people with Autism that are lower on the Autism Spectrum. The correlation was found to be not as significant for people with Aspergers or High Functioning Autism.

What do you think about the author's treatment ideas (see below). Will his recommendations make things better? I never had an environment like the author suggests and the end result was anxiety that ended up interfering with my life. But I don't see how such an environment would help one for the everyday world, because the "real" world is very hostile even for a person without any mental/developmental/social problems.

"Behavioral treatment according to the Intense World Theory is proposed to focus on filtering the extremes in the intensity of all sensory and emotional exposure as well as relaxation and progressive systematic desensitization to stimuli presentation. The probably most counter-intuitive suggestion that emerges from the Intense World Theory is to surround the child with a highly predictable and calm environment protected from abrupt sensory and emotional transients and surprises for the first years of life to prevent excessive sensory and emotion driven brain development. The child should be introduced to new stimuli and tasks gently and with caution, retracting at any sign of distress. The adoption of a responsive rehabilitation program would ensure that the teacher works carefully to avoid triggering adverse reactions. Introduction to strangers should be controlled, brief, indirect, and as inert as possible. Pharmacological treatment according to the Intense World Theory should focus on reducing brain reactivity in general, blocking memory formation, reducing stress responses, and enhancing memory extinction. Treatment should be applied as early as possible and should last until after the completion of the critical periods of brain development (probably beyond the age of 6).

Such critical periods are often irreversible milestones and hence the disorder might be avoidable if these milestones can be crossed without triggering or further driving the autistic child to seek refuge in a limited albeit secure world. Treatment for elderly children and adults with autism would be more difficult to reverse but memory attenuation and extinction-based rehabilitation programs as well as reducing anxiety levels and stress responses may at least partially reverse or ameliorate the pathology. An important consideration in any rehabilitation program as predicted by the Intense World Theory is the complication of hyper-emotionality, which may be well masked from the observer and which would demand even greater care in how the autistic is handled. Punishments may be greatly amplified for the autistic and imprinted rigorously and indefinitely into the future."

Last edited by Kon on 06 Jan 2011, 7:36 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Those sound scary. What do they mean?

I don't think this will work. You can't stop autism.
I lived in an environment of low sensory stimuli between 0-4. We had no doors but curtains. There was a beach in our backyard.
Population was 800 people. You can't get more relaxed than that.

RDOS

During the course of a lifetime of a person with an ASC, some may experience hyposensitivities to pain while experiencing hypersensitivities to touch, sound, and light. The sensitivities can go from hyper to hypo to hyper again depending on age and life circumstances. While I understand that it is not universal in ASC's to say it is not even that common does not seem to be reflective of what has been studied and reported in the condition. The following link has research that suggests rates over 80% for touch, sound, and light:

http://www.associatepublisher.com/e/s/se/sensory_integration_dysfunction.htm

A recent, informal poll conducted on the Wrong Planet Website is reflective of the research:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt141577.html


Regarding hyperactivity and hypersenstivity:

From Wikipedia:



When I first saw information on the Neandethral hypothesis on Autism, I noticed that sensory acuteness in Autism was an integral part of the theory. You presented some interesting information on your website related to this hypothesis.

When I read your bullets in your first post, I was surprised because they seemed significantly different from what I have seen in mainstream research on Autism. Does the Aspie quiz provide different results from mainstream research, and if so could it be that the respondents to the quiz are more likely to rest higher on the spectrum.

I relate this to the world planet website and forums on the web in general. People with poor writing skills, spelling, and punctuation are often slighted in forum discussions. Allthough many people view the discussions here, it is likely some don't post because they don't want to feel slighted for their writing skills. When I see this happen here it seems particularly harsh for the person with poor writing skills because this may be their only way to connect to the world, but understandable if people on the spectrum have a low level of empathy.

Pensieve, were you exposed to TV at that age?

I'm glad I didn't get any Pharmacological treatment when I was young. To achieve what they are suggesting would mean altering neurotransmitters. Unless better drugs are developed the side effects might outweigh the benefits. Blocking memory formation and enhancing memory extinction sounds tricky. Reminds me of Electro-Shock Therapy. Environmental and behavioral interventions would be safer, but it is likely, eventually, the autistic person will have to face an intense world coming at them, full speed. Answers are hard.

Sounds a lot like meditation to me. Apart from memory extinction. What does that mean? I mean, I can guess, but I might be wrong.

Cartoons I think. My older siblings watched a lot of TV.

Memory Extinction is useful in Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome when the intensity of a memory is particularly distressing. Memory Extinction is used to lessen the intensity of the memory.

Research is ongoing to produce drugs to enhance the process. Here is a link that discusses it:

http://www.dana.org/news/cerebrum/detail.aspx?id=76&p=2

They talk about norepinephrine and how it strengthens long term memory. This can explain a correlation between higher amounts of norepinephrine in fearful or stressful events and the intensity of long term memories produced.

There is a link between higher levels of norepinephrine, laser focus, memory formation, and long term memories; the event doesn't have to be fearful, an intense positive experience can also increase levels of norepinephrine.

In general higher brain reactivity, as discussed in the Intense World Theory, can allow a person to take in more information from the environment and remember more information on a long term basis. The theory proposes a solution in reducing the general reactivity of the brain through drugs. To me it seems like reducing the amount of activity that the brain reacts to is a better remedy when necessary and possible.

It seems very complicated because a person with autism my be hypo-sensitive one day and hyper-sensitive the next day. Some senses can be hypersensitive and some may be hyposensitive at the same time. A person may be hyperactive because they are hyposensitive or debilitated because they are hypersensitive. And one person may experience all of these conditions at some point in their life.

This part seems to blur the difference between the social anxiety seen in AS, Social Anxiety Disorder and HSP:

"The lack of social interaction in autism may therefore not be because of deficits in the ability to process social and emotional cues, but because a sub-set of cues are overly intense, compulsively attended to, excessively processed and remembered with frightening clarity and intensity. Typical autistic symptoms, such as averted eye gaze, social withdrawal, and lack of communication, may be explained by an initial over-awareness of sensory and social fragments of the environment, which may be so intense, that avoidance is the only refuge."

To be honest this part seems to describe my own problems with social interaction very well. I don't particularly feel like I'm going to be humiliated as in SAD but that I will mess up because there are so many things to be considered in any social interaction. But unlike some descriptions on here I kinda think I understand social interactions but I don't know which is the right decision. This does cause anxiety though especially if I'm in front of an audience and I'm scared of getting a panic attack because it has happened to me before. Either way, most people seem to be able to weed out stuff and make much more quicker social decisions. Does anyone feel this way?

I don't find the concept of "sensory integration disorder" meaningful. It is a sorry mess of many different things, and as such there will never ever be any cure or proper understanding.

Here is some parts of it:
* Superior/different sensory acuteness (this is what call hyper/hypo sensitivity, and which is related to Aspie perception traits)
* Lack of enhanced NT perception traits in the area of coordination and judgement of distance, speed and acceleration (this is what I call NT perception, and these traits are NOT related to Aspie perception)
* Instinctive reactions to sensory stimluations (like being afraid of spiders, flushing toilets, motorbikes). These are NOT the same things as hypersensitive senses, even if they are related
* Hyperactivity. Inherited hyperactivity is a social/hunting trait. Environmental hyperactivity is something totally different.
* Problems of social/emotional functionality. This has nothing whatsoever to do with sensory processing!



Such polls do not say too much. They generally attract mostly the ones that answer positively on the issue.

Yes, the same can apply to the Aspie Quiz, if it is only offered online, and if it is called the "Aspie" Quiz you are not as likely to get responses for the other parts of the Autism Spectrum.

OK, I'll change that to usually not related. There could be links like you propose above, but in general, social/emotional functionality is related to specialized brain functions that are species-typical.



Not really. First, Aspie-quiz currently only have about 30% of "very likely Aspie", and similar figures for "very likely NT". So while it certainly attracts more suspected Aspies than a neutral quiz, it has a mix of different types of people. Also, participants use several hundred links on the web, which means participants are rather random on other aspects than being suspected aspies.

Second, when you do a poll on WP, people that are interested in this issue will be much more likely to participate, so the result will be biased. However, when I research things in Aspie-quiz, I mix up the issue with 150 more or less unrelated issues, which means there will be no bias on the issue surveyed. I also do not consider the amount of positive answers, but correlation with other issues in Aspie-quiz.

So, no, it is not the same thing as a poll on WP.

Okay, someone brought up the fact that people with non-AS forms of autism are less likely to participate in your quiz. And you responded by talking about how many people scored as NT. That made zero sense. NT is not the same as other parts of the spectrum.

Of course your quiz also doesn't take into account many other things like people taking it repeatedly over the years, including under different usernames or IP addresses.

What infuriates me about your quiz is the very first page. It asks whether you're diagnosed "AS/HFA/PDD". As if those are the only possible autistic people taking your quiz. What about people diagnosed with just plain autism, no functioning level added? Or those labeled severe or LF? Do you think none of us come to your quiz or what? And how could you even know how many non-AS autistic people come to your quiz (and thetefore know whether the person you are replying to is wrong or not) if you don't even have a way to count us? To me, when I see "AS/HFA", it's like putting a gigantic sign up saying "Sorry you're not only not welcome here but we also don't acknowledge your existence!" Personally I don't agree with functioning labels or even with keeping AS separate but in that case the inclusive term is autism, not aspie. Aspie is a term referring exclusively to one kind of autistic person while autistic is inclusive. But if you do want to track people by diagnosis you should list each possible one.

I'm not much interested in differentiating various DSM-diagnoses anymore. Neither diagnoses on the ASD-spectrum, nor related diagnoses either. I tried this concept a few years ago, and they cannot be separated on the personality-dimension. Rather, people will either get none of them or a long list of them. I've also tried various professional tests, and they all correlate to ASCs. About the only way to differentiate between ASD-diagnosis and non-ASD-diagnosis is to use dysfunction descriptions in DSM, and that is not the aim of Aspie-quiz.

I have also asked for diagnosis of much more than AS/HFA/PDD, ADD/ADHD and Social Phobia. There have been questions for autism, PDD and a dozen other DSM diagnoses, and autism and PDD has similar scores as AS/HFA/PDD, and the other DSM diagnoses all score considerably higher than the NT control group. The reason that these remain is because it is the most interesting ones to follow-up consistency.

As for people doing Aspie-quiz many times that is not a problem. Several years ago retake frequency was around 15%. Today it is at most 6%, and probably considerably lower than that.

And in final version II, about half of the dataset was collected in 3-4 months time with two top months with 16,000 answers. There is no way that most of these answers were people repeatedly doing the test, or these participants being from the autistic community even.

How could you possibly know how many people are retaking it? People could go to different computers/ISPs, different locations, make multiple accounts from lacking passwords on old accounts, etc. And they don't necessarily enter all the same answers each time.

Also, what would you exactly have me enter as my diagnosis on that first page? Go through it as an "NT" because I'm not "HFA," "AS", or "PDD"? If other autism scores roughly the same, then why not just include all autism diagnoses on that one instead of making it look like if you're not one of those three you don't exist? It just doesn't make any sense.

I'm quite sure there are some odd-balls that do the above, but their affects disappears with "large numbers"

The figure 15% was derived by asking people how many times they had done Aspie-quiz in the past. The current maximum at 6% was by studying people that have indicated they might want to do it again (they registered an acount). Of people that have registered an account, 6% actually have done Aspie-quiz more than once already. There are around 19,000 accounts and 250,000 answers during the time accounts could be registered. That means at most 7-8% of participants even considered the option of doing it again.



I could, but this information is only used for sanity-checking. It has no relevance for scores or future updates.