"Evidence of Divided Attention Advantage in Autism"
http://psych.mcmaster.ca/richards/manuscripts/BBCS2004_poster.pdf

It isn't as though there's an actual shortage of evidence, published in peer-reviewed journals, that weak central coherence as a theory fails resoundingly to predict autistic performance in a wide variety of tasks. But the above is a readily available and immediately obvious poster which shows just how far away from reality WCC is. There is an impressive divergence between what was predicted, if WCC were valid, and what turned out to be true of autistics. And this is another autistic strength, in a condition of divided attention. To the credit of the authors, they didn't try to transform this autistic strength into yet another creatively-named deficit (and, uh, doesn't that look like a big deficit in non-autistic undergraduates?).

Unfortunately, a poster is only a poster (this one is from a Canadian group and presented at a Canadian conference), and I see no sign that this study, with or without additional data, has been published anywhere.

More information about this poster (including where it was presented) is here http://www.science.mcmaster.ca/~BBCS/2004/...?id=145&symposium=0

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Abstract

Autism is a developmental disorder characterized by deficits in social cognition, delays in language learning, and idiosyncratic, repetitive behaviours and interests. Past research suggests that people with autism focus on small, often irrelevant details of a display, rather than seeing the display as a whole (e.g., Jolliffe, 1997; Jarrold and Russel, 1997). If such “over-focusing” is a general phenomenon, one would expect people with autism to have difficulty dividing attention between central and peripheral tasks, as is required in the Useful Field of View task (e.g., Sekuler, Bennett, & Mamelak, 2000). Participants were 14 undergraduates, 10 adults with high functioning autism and Asperger syndrome, and 10 adults matched to the autism/Asperger group on education, age and IQ. Observers completed central letter identification and peripheral target localization tasks, under both focused and divided attention conditions. As expected, there were no group effects on the central task under focused or divided attention conditions. However, contrary to predictions, autistic individuals did not show higher costs of dividing attention in peripheral localization. Indeed, autistic individuals tended to show relatively diminished divided attention costs. We are currently conducting additional data collection to confirm these findings, but the results to date stand in stark contrast to the predictions of standard theories of visual and cognitive processing in autism.

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Rosa Parks will be always be remembered for her courageous and dignified witness to be treated as a free and equal human being.

Yesterday in my local public library I found the book "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory - The Life of Rosa Parks" by Douglas Brinkley. She recalled about her refusal to give up her seat on a segregated bus to a white passenger: "I was determined to achieve the total freedom that our history lessons taught us we were entitled to, no matter what the sacrifice, When I declined to give up my seat, it was not that day, or bus, in particular, I just wanted to be free like everybody else. I did not want to be continually humiliated over something I had no control over, the color of my skin."

Rosa Parks tried to register to vote in Alabama in 1943. While whites received their voter certificates when they registered, blacks had to wait for theirs in the mail, and Park's never came, After many enquiries she was told she had failed her literacy test. She took the test again in 1944 and was again refused voter registration. "They just told me, 'You didn't pass', she recalled, "They didn't have to give you a reason." In April 1945 she took a literacy test for a third time. This time she was sent her voter certificate in the mail, but had to pay a poll tax of $16.50.

Nelson Mandela said: "Before King there was Rosa Parks. She is who inspired us, who taught us to sit down for our rights, to be fearless when facing our oppressors."

Rosa Parks - a truly great person.

Edited by author 10-26-2005 01:25 AM
Re the Howard Florey Institute and their own description of their autism work ( /m2726 ), also described in this press release http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-10/ra-ape102305.php

This is yet another classic in the annals of irresponsible autism research press releases, and guaranteed to send steam shooting out of my ears (could that be my caudate nucleus spontaneously combusting in indignation?).

The relevant study has not yet been published (and isn't in the upcoming issue of the named journal). I looked around for any trace of it; the two authors named in the press release have not previously published anything about autism. I found this as a candidate,

"Silk, T., Rinehart, N. J., Cunnington, R., Bradshaw, J. L., & Tonge, B. J. (Under Review). An fMRI Investigation of Mental Rotation in High-Functioning Autism and Asperger's Syndrome: A Comparison with Mathematically Gifted Adolescents. American Journal of Psychiatry."

At least the journal is correct, and this is an fMRI study led by the student listed in the press release, and including Dr Cunnington in the authorship. But the press release makes no mention of mathematically gifted controls... maybe I should email the PR guy?

In the meantime, we can add the caudate nucleus to the towering heap of malfunctioning or deformed or otherwise inadequate autistic brain parts having been announced to the world as an explanation for why we're so defective.

Let's see, there's the fusiform gyrus, the amygdala, the corpus callosum, the superior temporal sulcus, the basal ganglia (of which the caudate nucleus is only one--others too are surely defective), the prefrontal cortex, the cerebellum, the bilateral temporal lobes, the brainstem, the inferior olive (just look at the Diva's--it has a pimento! http://www.geocities.com/autistry/brainpictures.html )... and so on. Never mind our tiny minicolumns and the overconnected, underconnected, misconnected, disconnected (etc) problem.

I can hardly wait for the next press release.

Edited by author 10-25-2005 08:59 AM
Scientists at the Howard Florey Institute, Melbourne, Australia, have shown using fMRI that autistic children "have less activation in the deep part of the brain responsible for executive function (attention, reasoning and problem solving)." See http://www.hfi.unimelb.edu.au - "Autism problems explained in new research."

NYT story about Rosa Parks, via the Toronto Star http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentSe...hAX&tacodalogin=yes

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The truth, as she later explained, was that she, like thousands of other blacks, was tired of being humiliated, of having to adapt to the byzantine rules, some codified as law and others passed on as tradition, that reinforced the position of blacks as something less than full human beings.

"She was fed up," said Elaine Steele, a longtime friend and executive director of the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. "She was in her 40s. She was not a child. There comes a point where you say, `No, I'm a full citizen, too. This is not the way I should be treated.'"

In Stride Toward Freedom, King wrote: "Actually no one can understand the action of Parks unless he realizes that eventually the cup of endurance runs over, and the human personality cries out, `I can take it no longer.' Parks' refusal to move back was her intrepid affirmation that she had had enough. It was an individual expression of a timeless longing for human dignity and freedom. She was not `planted' there by the NAACP or any other organization; she was planted there by her personal sense of dignity and self-respect. She was anchored to that seat by the accumulated indignities of days gone by and the boundless aspirations of generations yet unborn."

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Rosa Parks has died. Globe and Mail story, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/sto...tory/International/

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Speaking in 1992, she said history too often maintains "that my feet were hurting and I didn't know why I refused to stand up when they told me. But the real reason of my not standing up was I felt that I had a right to be treated as any other passenger. We had endured that kind of treatment for too long."

[...]

The Rosa Parks Library and Museum opened in November 2000 in Montgomery. The museum features a 1955-era bus and a video that recreates the conversation that preceded Parks' arrest.

"Are you going to stand up?" the bus driver asked.

"No," Parks answered.

"Well, by God, I'm going to have you arrested," the driver said.

"You may do that," Parks responded.

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Hi Michelle,

I am running behind on your message, I am being kept busy on awares conference site. I asked Dr. Fombonne what he thinks re the Brick township study, so we will have an answer for that.

I still haven't looked at Dr. Oyama's book in detail again yet(I apologize).

When you get time please visit http://www.interverbal.blogspot.com/
I refer to your article and terms several times. Please make sure that this is in an acceptable manner. If not, I will correct it.

Hi Michelle,

Thanks for the links to Nadia's drawings and to Alonzo Clemons beautiful sculptures. I really like them.

Nadia is mentioned in "Autism Explaining the Enigma" by Uta Frith. "Between the ages of four and seven, Nadia produced drawings admired by professionals and compared with the beauty of cafe paintings from 30,000 years ago."

But she lost her artistic ability as she made progress in other areas, such as language.

Cited in the end notes: Selfe, L. (1977) "Nadia: A Case of Extraordinary Ability in an Autistic Child" (London Academic Press 1997).

Humphrey, N. (1998) "Cave art, autism, and the evolution of the human mind". Cambridge Archaelogical Journal, 8 (pp.165-191). This is the first time I have seen autism linked to the cave art of the Stone Age, and mentioned in an archaelogical context. Maybe some at least of the cave painters of paleolithic Europe were autistic.

Edited by author 10-24-2005 04:24 AM
Hi Philip,

I tried to find some of Nadia's drawings online (I've seen a few--in a book, I think, but I can't remember which), and there aren't many. Here are a few http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/c/s/cse1/Nadia.htm and a few more http://www.twicegifted.net/autistic.htm

I don't have a favourite autistic artist--I really like a lot of artwork done by autistics, including by my boss Ralph and by the Diva--but I've always been amazed by the work of Alonzo Clemons, an autistic sculptor. You can see some of his work here http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant/clemons.cfm and some more here (this one takes a long time to download) http://artsales.com/ARTists/Alonzo_Clemons/index.html

The NAS has no Dr Gernsbacher in its vast holdings... I found 25 articles with Dr Lovaas as an author... and I was astonished to find some of Dr Mottron's work dating from when he was still in France.

I saw "The Secret of Drawing" (/m2713) on BBC television yesterday evening. It showed the superbly accurate drawings of horses by Nadia an autistic woman, whose drawings I have seen reproduced in books. There was also several minutes footage on the Creative Growth Art Center - http://www.creativegrowth.org - which is a visual arts centre in Oakland, California for autistic people, and for mentally and physically handicapped people, and on the autistic artists Richard Tyler and William Tyler and examples of their drawings were shown.

The UK National Autistic Society's database of over 17,000 published research papers, books, articles, videos and other materials on autism is now online at http://www.autism.org.uk/autismdata.

I have been having fun with searching it. Michelle has two items listed: "Autism and Ostracism in Paul Martin's Canada: not the usual autism letter" published in Good Autism Practice, 2004, Vol 5 (2),; and the Misbehaviour of Behaviourists. Murray,D. has 12 items listed. Mottron, L. has 17 items, Baron-Cohen, S. has 48 items. There was nothing listed for Baggs, A. or for autism diva.

There was no results for 'cure, three items for 'autistic culture' and 325 items for 'theory of mind'.

Edited by author 10-22-2005 06:17 PM
Thanks Camille. I'm wondering if we could locate the inferior berzerko gyrus by putting ABA parents in MRI machines while presenting them with excerpts from, say, Let Me Hear Your Voice; TMoB; the Auton trial decision; the Auton Supreme Court of Canada decision; Norah Whitney's Senate brief; jypsy's Senate brief...(etc). Baseline would be the text of Stompin' Tom Connor's "The Hockey Song" (or would this set off ABA parents who believe the Auton SCC decision means Canada as we know it is dead? This could be a possible confound...). An event-related design measuring BOLD (blood oxygen level dependent) fMRI signals should pin down the IBG. The controls could be autistics, with a second control group of non-ABA parents, and a third control group of non-parent non-autistics. Should we apply for a grant? [grin]

But seriously--one thing I suggested a long time ago is finding out what happens in typical brains when non-autistics make judgments about autistics.

Last year at almost exactly this date, another huge project was finished--Dr Mottron's book. It was 20 October, 2004, when I was handed my copy.

One of our email subscribers (to this QT board) has helpfully pointed out that text enclosed in 'arrow brackets' <like this>[like this], <<or this>>[[or this]], is often missing from digest versions of this discussion (and from individual messages, as well). To my knowledge, this is because 'arrow brackets' are sometimes translated as HTML tags (depending on what email software the individual is using), causing the enclosed text to become invisible. One way to get around this is to substitute square brackets [square brackets], as I've done in the above examples. Hope this makes sense. :)

Edited by author 10-22-2005 05:40 AM
Hi Michelle,

I am very glad that you may found my explanation of Kantian ethics helpful.

On 10 October there was a debate in the House of Lords in the UK Parliament on a select committee's report on a private members bill on the assisted dying of the terminally ill. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics.../0,,1588687,00.html, and http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1589073,00.html.
There was not a vote at the end of the debate. There are letters on the subject here -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,1589861,00.html.

Edited by author 10-22-2005 05:18 AM
Globe and Mail story about accommodating differences, in a boy with some spectacular strengths but also with significant difficulties compared to what is considered typical http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/Art...UTER22/TPEducation/

There is not even one mention, in the entire article, of any attempt to make this boy "indistinguishable" from his peers, at all costs. This article also shows that "independence" doesn't mean "needing no help" (everyone needs help), it means "getting the help you genuinely need, which might be different from the help other people need".

Congratulations, Michelle. I'm sure you deserve to take a deep ballet bow with a large bouquet of roses and all kinds of crinkly green paper around them.

I look forward to seeing the issue of JADD. Do you suppose they'd use my poster as the cover art for that issue? It does feature the inferior berzerko gyrus, doesn't it?

:-D

Camille