More clueless Autism researchers

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Speech and language deficits in children with autism may not cause tantrums - Penn State

Well, I fail to see why this is a BAD thing. I mean, at least now they'll stop giving parents "false hope", that their kids will improve if they could talk.

It is a bad thing because it shows a lack of knowledge or willful ignorance of the autistic experience.

It shows a lack of knowledge of some key reasons why "tantrums" happen in autistic people namely sensory overload and nonverbal communication issues.

They call meltdowns tantrums which they are not. Tantrums are willful and designed to get parents to give kids throwing them what they want. Autistic meltdowns occur when the person is overwhelmed.

Thier recommendations reflect these basic misunderstandings. Instead of dealing with the conditions that are causing meltdowns via accommodations and teaching coping mechanisms to handle stressors they recommend emphasizing the behaviors of the manipulative fragile brats. I do not want to go too deeply the Applied Behavioral Analysis debate here, but Ivar Lovass the founder of ABA viewed Autistic meltdowns as willful defiance ie. tantrums. I am not saying these researchers favor shocking or slapping autistics like Lovass did but their view of autistics has similarities with his.

I can not say I am surprised by this, but it is still very disturbing to me that researchers at Penn State a prestigious university should view autistic behaviors this way.

Are the researchers talking about tantrums or meltdowns? I've read the link and there's nothing there to make the distinction. Which supports the idea that these researchers are somewhat clueless.

As ASPartOfMe notes, tantrums and meltdowns are not the same thing. However, that doesn't mean that autistic kids can't throw a tantrum. I know as a kid, albeit older than the ones in this study, I threw a few tantrums. I also had meltdowns.

Most of my tantrums were when I was headed for a meltdown, partially because my self-control would get sloppy, but mainly because when I was heading into a meltdown, I would try to get out of the situation that was causing it. Simply saying I needed to leave or I was uncomfortable generally didn't help; people would just tell me things weren't that bad and all I needed to do was buck up and everything would be fine. So I'd end up throwing a tantrum because that would get me out of the situation. At the price of being treated as an immature and selfish brat, I would get a "time out" in someplace quiet where I could calm down and avoid the meltdown. The trade-off seemed worth it — especially since my father thought putting me in a room by myself for an extended period was some sort of punishment, though it never felt that way to me.

Now, I wasn't diagnosed until I was an adult, so neither I nor my parents had any idea of what was going on. All I knew was there were certain situations my parents and others could take in stride, but which would stress me out enormously. So I evolved a survival strategy that involved the odd tantrum. Obviously, as I grew older and could exercise more control over my movements and so could escape stressful situations more easily, I no longer needed tantrums, so they stopped. My tolerance for certain stressors also increased, which helped as well.

Perhaps some of the kids in this study may be following a similar strategy. If people ignore what you say and just keep telling you not to stress, then having language really isn't that useful.

The ubiquitous cluelessness of academic neurotypicals never fails to astound me.

You are welcome leejosepho

The ubiquitous cluelessness of academic neurotypicals never fails to disturb me but I am long past being surprised.