Posted on 10/01/2009 1:37:05 AM PDT by neverdem
Contrary to what had been thought, young people with autism recognize and compare relationships among objects in scenes
Children with autism have difficulty forming social relationships. But they discern relationships among objects in visual scenes surprisingly well, indicating a fundamental grasp of analogical reasoning, according to a new study.
Youngsters diagnosed with autism, or autistic disorder, reason about the relations between objects and people on a par with kids free of any developmental problems, psychology graduate student Kinga Morsanyi of the University of Plymouth, England, and psychologist Keith Holyoak of the University of California, Los Angeles report in an upcoming Developmental Science.
“Our findings indicate that the basic ability to reason analogically is intact in autism,” Morsanyi says.
In addition to social difficulties, autistic disorder is characterized by impaired communication and a preference for strict routines. Related developmental problems are referred to as Autistic Spectrum Disorders.
Some researchers had thought that difficulties in planning and in thinking symbolically could obstruct analogical thinking in some people with autism. And a proposal known as the theory of weak central coherence holds that people with autism focus on details of what they encounter rather seeing the big picture.
Yet in the new study, kids with autism discerned the overall context of visual scenes and relationships within those scenes, Morsanyi says...
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
I do not know much about this. At first it just seems like a war on introverts, but I did not know about the brain & hands size differences. Is the enlargement associated with any particular risk factor? I have heard that aging egg or sperm are a risk factor, but what else predisposes children to enlarged hands and brain? Are these children more likely to be IVF?
Physicists shrink X-ray source - Laser accelerator almost fits on a tabletop.
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
In my opinion people diagnosed with Autistic Spectrum Disorders do not all have the same malfunction.
I have been to support group meetings and although the symptoms are similar, the treatment methods that show some improvement are not consistent.
In my opinion the failure is in the autoimmune system. The best Doctors absolutely do not understand this problem.
It is hereditary.
I will call your attention to a very interesting article that I found several years ago about the Asperger’s branch of the disorder.
“Crypto Sensitivity Syndrome”
http://www.backlash.com/content/disab/2003/rvm1203.html
Have a family member with the problem, whatever name you wish to call it. My sympathy if you have similar situation.
I’ve not worked much with autism, but I have with Aspergers and found that it is caused by a super masculine conscious processing pattern that denies input from the amygdala. This pattern appears to have developed at the end of the first trimester of pregnancy during CNS development.
If you look at the top exec’s in many of the hi tech firms like Microsoft, you will see these people are very successful as their conscious processing pattern is instrumental in their jobs. They exhibit Asperger’s symptoms!
One interesting characteristic is that their emotional aspect of consciousness that they have abandoned during development is still functioning at the level of a very young child. When they do allow themselves to express emotions, they thrash and cry just like a young child. I’ve been working with this for about 18 years, especially in children as it relates to learning disabilities. These children do not learn in the same manner as the normal child and often are held back, even though they are academically superior to their peers.
Recently I worked with an 8 year old girl who had been diagnosed with autism and had repeated kindergarden three times. She whooped my ass in a card matching game, as her memory was based upon location of the memory, not emotionally indexed as with most children. I instructed her father to buy two identical sets of flash cards with the letters of the alphabet and words/pictures on them. After a short time using them, she advanced ahead to rejoin her class.
The problem arises as autism/Aspergers children store and retrieve memories by location and do not use the emotional indexing methodology of most children. Most children do not develop this ability until age 8 to 9 when they are in third grade and begin to learn long division and multiplication. These processes an aspergers child will excell at. The problem arises when they do not have the foundation leartned by other children.
"Our findings indicate that the basic ability to reason analogically is intact in autism," Morsanyi says.Thanks neverdem.
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