re m 6532 and IQ, when I analysed Lynn Mawhoods IQ stats for her sample of autistic adults studied in her PhD I found some striking patterns - sorry the quote below does not include the table, it wouldn't copy into this space without rearranging itself (and sorry I can't give a reference for this which I'm certain is published somewhere, I can't remember where). As well as the Raven's tests, the WISC and WAIS verbal and performance tests were used.
begin quote:
 According to Wikipedia “Raven's Progressive Matrices are widely used non-verbal intelligence tests. In each test item, one is asked to find the missing part required to complete a pattern. Each Set of items gets progressively harder, requiring greater cognitive capacity to encode and analyze. The test is considered by many intelligence experts to be one of the most g-loaded in existence.” That is to say, if there is such a thing as “general intelligence” then these matrices are thought to be exceptionally good at measuring it.

Each of these young people starts life with a higher Raven’s than verbal IQ, in many cases strikingly higher, see for example a, b and m. That is least true of n, who is the only one to have a higher performance IQ than Raven’s at Time 1: from a fairly low overall base n does well in every area, improving by 44 points on the Raven’s IQ, and is the only individual in this set who made a significant gain in the “performance IQ” dimension. L, whose Raven’s and WISC performance scores are almost the same as each other follows a similar but less notable trajectory of slight over all improvement. In marked contrast, a, b, h, k and m experienced steep declines (range -39 to -78) in Raven’s IQ scores and less startling drops in performance IQ scores (-7 to -24). These five all had Raven’s IQs well above normal, from 117 (m) to 181 (a), in early childhood (q with a similar but less extreme trend had a Raven’s IQ of 103 at time 1). It seems as though a large area of intelligence and potential in these young people may have been ignored and discounted; one might even conclude that they have been actively stupefied by some of their encounters with life.

I forgot to add that Sharon Begley did not use person first language, and used "autistics" as a noun, for which alone she deserves a heap of flowers and a lot of friendly, happy, encouraging, supportive letters (uh...address is Letters@newsweek.com ). I did ask her not to use person first language, and she listened with very good humour and very rapid understanding.

Also forgot to add (and I should really try to blog about this, just have to get organized [falls over laughing]) that in fact there were two autistic children who scored below 70 IQ on Wechsler--1st percentile is 65 IQ and both were below this--while scoring at the 95th percentile on RPM. That is, there were two autistic children with an RPM score 94 percentile points higher than their Wechsler scores (they were among the 7 autistic children whose RPM scores exceeded their Wechsler scores by more than 70 percentile points).

We're in Newsweek http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20226463/site/newsweek/

This article has some problems (the social deficit assumption, which you can bet your earthly possessions didn't come from us--and I didn't use the blind analogy in the context where it's now placed) of a kind which brings to mind what recently happened to Amanda Baggs (see http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=436 ).

But the Newsweek journalist, Sharon Begley, was pretty sympathetic and patient to speak with, and parts of this article are pretty good. Great quotes from Drs Mottron and Gernsbacher. And Sharon Begley deserves credit for asking a scientist outside the field of autism about the tests we used (the resulting reporting isn't 100% accurate, but it is in the right direction).

Edited by author 08-11-2007 01:11 PM
Boston Globe article, "School expands on mission to aid autistic children" http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/...children/?page=full

This is about the New England Center for Children, a very famous (Gina Green used to work there!) ABA school for autistics.

Here's the first paragraph:

"When a particular student acts up, Amy Giles sometimes places the girl in a tiny, windowless room and closes the door. Then Giles stands outside the closet-like chamber, waiting patiently until the child settles down."

Here's the next sentence:

"If it were another child, it might seem cruel."

But--this is an autistic child, so it's wonderful. It's quality education. It's the only hope. It's right at the forefront. It's the very best. Here's the next bit:

----------------------------------------------------------- ---------------

But Giles, a Westborough resident, is probably that student's best chance for a quality education. Giles teaches at the New England Center for Children on Route 9 in Southborough, a school that is at the forefront of educating children with autism, a neurological disorder that dramatically inhibits the way a child learns.

"We don't want to be the biggest program for autism," said Judy Cunniff Serio, director of administration. "We want to be the best."

---------------------------------------------------------- ----------------

That's what tiny, windowless rooms with closed doors are for. And once you've decided that autistics can't learn except by being put in tiny, windowless rooms, then how could anyone object?

The school staff make the standard behaviour analytic claim that autistics can't learn from the typical, every-day environment. There's also the problem that we learn things nobody teaches us, like calendar calculation, that aren't appropriate or adaptive. Whereas we fail to learn essential skills (can't live without them) like eye contact and how to tie our shoes. One parent who sent her autistic children to the school is sure that before these children attended for 9 years, they were locked in their own world (not in a tiny, windowless room) and did not want to communicate.

Because the school is involved in research, the teachers there are described as highly skilled. An example is given. We're back at that tiny, windowless room--a closet, really:

"So when Giles sends her student into that tiny room, it isn't punishment. It's a treatment called "removal for reinforcement" for a girl with autism who exploded because it was time to move from one lesson to the next. Without the serenity of the room, Giles's student might never regain the focus she needs to continue a day of learning."

What a relief to know that putting a little girl in a tiny windowless room and shutting the door isn't "punishment". It's a sophisticated treatment (they probably mean "removal of reinforcement"). And Giles talks about this with "compassion" so it must be okay, in fact wonderful and serene, quite apart from necessary, to put a small child in a tiny windowless room and shut the door.

Oddly, one of the major ABA textbooks (Cooper et al., 2007--this is not an autism-specific text) lists "time-out procedures" as a form of punishment ("punishment by removal of a stimulus"). But maybe Cooper et al. (2007) aren't quite at the forefront.

What is at the forefront (we're back at school) is the classic ABA impoverished environment:

"Or they might need to sit one-on-one with a teacher in a cubicle that shuts out distractions, allowing them to focus on simple lessons, like drawing circles or other shapes."

Now we're not in a tiny windowless room with the door shut, but in a cubicle (how many cubicles does it take to make a quality ABA school? how many tiny windowless rooms?) with a minimum of simple stimuli. On the other hand, cubicles are an effective way to assist the teachers at this superlative-laden school in shutting out the distraction of autistic learning. How else are these teachers going to learn about the principles of behaviour analysis?

The James S. McDonnell Foundation (see http://www.jsmf.org/about/index.htm ) has an ongoing project (see http://www.jsmf.org/badneuro/about.htm ) which has undergone a recent name-change and is now described as follows:

"Welcome to the Neurojournalism Mill! The site dedicated to sifting the wheat from the chaff of popular media reporting on news about the brain. Regular readers of Bad Neurojournalism will find our usual bad-tempered neurocurmudgeonly musings, including the BNJ archives, in Chaff. In Wheat, the neurocurmudgeons will grudgingly acknowledge (only kidding, we are delighted when we have the opportunity to say something positive) articles and newstories that make a superior effor to "get it right". By "getting it right" we do not mean just getting the basic facts correct - we mean covering brain science with a high degree of integrity, sensitivity, and sophistication so that the reader is genuinely informed."

Their "Chaff" section http://www.jsmf.org/badneuro/chaff.htm is rather long, with a vast number of entries, sure to keep accumulating. In contrast, their "Wheat" section http://www.jsmf.org/badneuro/wheat.htm is brief. Only six articles have made the cut. What's more, many of these Wheat articles have caveats and quibbles attached. But not this article:

----------------------------------------------------------- ---------------

Neural Diversity

By Morton Ann Gernsbacher, Observer: March 2007, Volume 20, Number 3 http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observ...Article.cfm?id=2134

Getting it right. Morton Ann Gernsbacher, President of the Association for Psychological Science, has written an excellent article clearly illustrating why certain types of brain-imaging studies are misdirected.

---------------------------------------------------------- ----------------

Edited by author 08-11-2007 10:56 AM
Hi Philip,

It's great you had a good time, and that Autscape was interesting, and that there was no flood except in the infamous [grin] Autscape Bathroom Incident. That sounds exactly like something that would happen to me.

In fact I had a flood in my apartment not long ago. Forgot to write about it here. My toilet tank broke. It was in the middle of the night. Fortunately, the loud crack of the tank splitting up was enough to wake me up. Water was pouring out everywhere, and kept pouring until the water line was shut off (this took a while to accomplish).

Also, thanks for the description of Jim Sinclair's presentation--very interesting. I wonder if it's the Autreat presentation described at the beginning of this blog post http://joyofautism.blogspot.com/2007/06/are-we-listening.html

For a while there was a brisk back-and-forth conflict waged by autism researchers in the literature, over whether that presumed profound and primary autistic social deficit was cognitive (meaning, we're theory-of-mind deficient) or affective (meaning, we lack any emotional connection to others). In keeping with how autism research so often works, these were the only two possibilities considered. Prof Baron-Cohen, Uta Frith and Alan Leslie were on one side against Peter Hobson and his colleagues (and the Yale gang, who admire Dr Hobson and have embraced the position that autistics are far more defective than ToM can account for) on the other. Somewhere there's an article by Drs Frith and Leslie called "Hobson's choice". I remember running into it in a database somewhere, years and years ago.

Autscape has ended and I will be leaving the venue in 30 minutes. I have had a really good time there in autie friendly space, with interesting presentations and events. Also it's been good weather - warm and sunny and no rain.

I will always remember this year's Autscape for the flooded bathroom incident yesterday morning. While I was running a bath the hot tap broke which meant I was unable to turn it down or off. The tap is designed so that the water doesn't run direct into the bath but straight ahead. The hot water kept gushing out of the tap at full force, flooding the bathroom. I phoned the venue staff person on duty, who came a few minutes later. By then the water had flooded out of the bathroom onto the corridor and to the ceilings of the rooms below. He had to turn the central water system off for a short time. By yesterday evening the bsthroom and corridor was dry, though there was still a wet smell. By this morning that smell had gone.

Was just staggering off to sleep or eat or something, then was notified that the July issue of Cognitive Neuropsychology has been published. So I don't forget here it is http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=g781221529~db=all (abstracts are linked to this page).

This issue has one of our articles in it:

Local bias and local-to-global interference without global deficit: A robust finding in autism under various conditions of attention, exposure time, and visual angle
Authors: Lixin Wang; Laurent Mottron; Danling Peng; Claude Berthiaume; Michelle Dawson

This article attracted a commentary, which is also included:

Do local bias and local-to-global interference reflect intact global processing in autism?
Author: Lilach Shalev

Then we were given the opportunity to reply, and our reply is also included:

Cognitive versatility in autism cannot be reduced to a deficit
Authors: Laurent Mottron; Michelle Dawson; Armando Bertone; Lixin Wang

I've also read this paper (in fact, we reference it in our reply), from the same issue:

Evidence of a divided-attention advantage in autism
Authors: M. D. Rutherford; Eric D. Richards; Vanessa Moldes; Allison B. Sekuler

The first, third and fourth authors are at McMaster University in Ontario. The second author is from the University of PEI. It's a pretty good paper. The authors report a strength in autism as a strength, which in itself is rare and worthy of sending them flowers. And they find this strength in an area where autistics have long been presumed to be impaired. Good on them, for taking the trouble to actually test the validity of this presumption. Make that large bunches of flowers.

Back later when I'm more awake (I hope).

Very swamped with still a lot to do (that had to be done yesterday), never mind totally whacked. Will catch up soon as I've bailed out a bit.

Here is an article I would be interested in other viewpoints on: http://theemergencesite.com/Tech/TechIssue...D-Aspergers-ADD.htm

I'm planning to go through it in-depth later on and probably will post about it on my blog once I've done so. My cursory glance indicates that it's rather psychoanalytical in nature, and seems to be strongly related to (or, at least, similar to) Stanley Greenspan's (of FloorTime fame) theories of development.

My initial thoughts are that it is probably too simplistic a theory and cannot easily be proven or disproven. It also seems to expect that "stagnation of development" that so many "autism advocates" put forth.

Anyway, others' thoughts are definitely welcome; as I said, I haven't been able to read it through in-depth yet, but I plan to do so in the near future.

Jim Sinclair gave a webcast this afternoon at Autscape on "Autism and Emotions: Some Thoughts About Feelings", which he had presented at Autreat earlier this year.

Here is my summary of what he said and what was printed on the screen. I will not use quotation marks to distinguish what was in his presentation from what is my paraphrase.

Why are emotions of particular concern for autistic people?

There is too much myth and misunderstanding around autism and emotions.

Autism was originally thought to be a problem of emotional processing. Kanner found that the unique feature of autistic children was that they related differently than other people.

Reasons for the traditional focus on autistic emotions as disturbed/impaired:

People (especially 'therapist types') still focus a lot on autistic people's emotional 'problems', (particularly on anger and anxiety and on a supposed lack of 'postive emotions').

People (especially 'therapist types') often attribute anyone's life difficulties to disturbed or impaired emotional processing. And autistic people are more likely to have more life difficulties than NT people have.

Autistic people don't express emotions in the same way that NTs do. When we do correctly interpret NT people's emotional expressions we often don't respond to others' expressions in the same way that NTs do.

Autistic people often don't have the same feelings that NT people have about the same situation. He gave the example of parents who are unhappy that their autistic children eat their school lunch alone. But he would have been delighted to have been able to eat his school lunch alone.

Autistic people may not have the same personal experience of emotion that NTs or other autistics have.

What are emotions?

Emotions occur when the brain of a conscious entity registers that:

1) A stimulus has personal significance - it is important.

2) There is an impulse to do something about it.

Emotions are survival responses. In evolutionary terms they are necessary for survival and intelligence.

NT emotions have affective, cognitive, expressive and behavioural components. Not all NT people sre alike, nor are all autistic people. Autistic people also share these emotions. But this is the position on average for NTs.

NT emotions involve different parts of the brain working together.

He gave an explanation of the relationship of emotions to the limbic system and the cortex, with a colour illustration of the brain.

Autistic emotions:

Autism is a pervasive development difference. Affect, cognition, communication and behaviour are likely to be different in autistic people than in NT people.

Autism also affects integration of differing emotions.

Implications of autistic differences:

Communication:

Non-verbal expressions may not be hardwired.

Other people's non-verbal expressions may not be instinctively understood.

Words may not be learned for feelings. [I'm not sure about this sentence]

What emotions we feel in a given situation may be different from what NTs feel.

Affective arousal:

Might be more or less intense than usual.

Might be delayed.

Might last longer or shorter than usual.

Might be confused.

Cognition:

Might be more intensely focused than usual.

Might be confused or disorientated.

Might be stuck. [This is not the same as perserverations].

Might be more or less intense than usual.

Might be qualitatively different. He gave the example of flapping
hands rather than smiling to express happiness.

Might be frozen.

Might not be expressed appropriately for the situation.

Integration of affect, cognition, communication and behaviour:

Might take extra time for everything to catch up.

Cognition might be faster than affect. This is unusual for NTs.

Afective arousal might not correspond to cognitive processing, or might take longer to respond.

Outward expression might not match inward experience.

Consequences of autistic differences:

Interpersonal misunderstandings - others' responses ('empathy') may be counterproductive.

Pressure to express emotion may take precedence over experience of emotion.

Autistic people may feel inadequate about their emotional processing.

If autistic people have difficulty in expressing emotions they may not be given the support they need.

Edited by author 08-08-2007 10:28 AM
Very worthwhile post from the BPS research digest blog http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/20...tion-destroyed.html

I don't have a clue about the subject discussed (the effectiveness of bereavement counselling), but the popular view in this area has gotten around enough via the media that I'm familiar with it. This popular view is (it seems) based on sloppy reporting which got so far out of hand that someone finally blew the whistle.

This reminds me of how things happen in autism research, and also at the level of public policy in autism.

One public policy example (no time to fetch the links) is a frequently-cited non-peer-reviewed report written by two Ontario behaviour analysts (Adrienne Perry and Rosemary Condillac) in 2003. This report states as fact a very high rate of mental retardation (75-80%) in autism. These two behaviour analysts cite no sources whatsoever for this information. They didn't bother providing even one reference. Then their 75-80% figure is stated as fact in the big Ontario ABA-in-schools report, with the unrefereed, source-free Perry and Condillac (2003) cited as the reference. There's those low/no standards of science--the ones promoted by "autism advcoates" for autistics--at work.

In research, the use of secondary or more distant sources for rates of mental retardation in autism is truly epic. I once asked a major autism researcher about the empirical source for his/her assumptions about autism and mental retardation. It became clear that s/he was not familiar with the epidemiology and was relying on secondary or more distant sources.

Then there's the hundreds or is it thousands of papers advertised as evidence that ABA/IBI is the effective treatment for all autistics (no doubt about it!). Why can't we have a more exact figure, if all these behaviour analysts and "autism advocates" have actually read these papers? And if they haven't, then they shouldn't cite the [rude participle] studies.

And so on. Just scratching the surface... If I got into the cognitive and neuroscience stuff (geez, the face processing literature alone...), I'd never stop. I could write about this stuff for the rest of my life and never catch up.

And today we've shown up on PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?D...nel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

That's my first first-author PubMed appearance. So I thought I'd stick the link somewhere. Maybe I can retire now.

More in the "slow on the uptake" dept., Morton Ann Gernsbacher has posted both the Raven paper (final) and the in-press version of the learning chapter (this version will undergo slight changes through copy-editing and is not yet completely final). You can find both linked to this page http://psych.wisc.edu/lang/autism-research.html

The joint attention article is highly recommended (stay tuned for more; Dr Gernbacher has a great joint-attention-in-autism article that's in press and is cited in the learning chapter).

I've noticed that more major autism research groups are posting their papers online, for free (with implicit or explicit copyright notices, such as Marcel Just's here http://coglab.psy.cmu.edu/reprints/Reprints.htm ). This is a good trend. E.g., see nearly the whole repertoire from Geraldine Dawson and colleagues, here http://depts.washington.edu/uwautism/research/publications.html .