Autistic Aphorisms

More Neanderthal Data

2011-12-17T22:17:00.002-05:00

One of the better sources for up-to-date information regarding Neanderthal admixture has been John Hawks' weblog. Hawks is a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin, and in addition to providing links to and commentary upon some of the latest research, Hawks and his students have been working at replicating and extending some of the more interesting findings regarding the Neanderthal genome and its presence in modern humans.

An excellent overview of the process is contained in this post from last week, and in it you will find a thorough but easily accessible explanation for how scientists arrive at the 1-4% admixture estimate of Neanderthal genetic material into non-African humans. In the original paper describing Neanderthal admixture (Green 2010), only five modern human genomes—two African and three non-African—were compared to the Neanderthal draft sequence. Hawks and his students have been making much the same comparison against a much larger database of modern genomes, with some clarifying results. Their work is of course still preliminary and not reviewed (and thus should be taken with a grain of salt), but if it proves to be accurate, it leads to some interesting conclusions:

The admixture finding from (Green 2010) is being convincingly replicated and confirmed as the genomes from more and more present-day humans are being compared to the draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome. Either the draft sequence has some very bad data, or the assumptions behind the genome comparison techniques are totally without merit, or Neanderthal admixture into non-African humans is a confirmed reality—there doesn't seem to be any other way around it.
The mean amount of Neanderthal admixture into non-African populations (over and above any admixture into African populations) looks to be around 3%.
Although 3% is the mean, the variability remains significantly wide: any given non-African individual might easily fall within the range of 2-4% admixture, and there are indications some individuals will fall well outside that range. Even within families, there might be significant variability.
All indications are that the Neanderthal admixture is shuffled throughout much of the modern human genome. That is, person A might have 3% admixture and person B might have 3% admixture, but the two may share relatively little admixture in common. It's not specific parts of the modern genome that are Neanderthal derived; instead, it appears that much of the modern non-African genome has been impacted in a shuffled-up sort of way.
The mean Neanderthal admixture difference between Europeans and Asians is extremely small. This result goes against the idea that an out-of-Africa migrating population interbred primarily with Western European Neanderthals around 35 to 40 thousand years ago. Instead, this result points more plausibly to the idea that admixture happened earlier in time and/or at another locale (such as the Middle East).
All these findings are based solely upon SNP analysis. The other sources of genetic differentiation—such as duplication, deletion, insertion, inversion—still await less costly and more accurate analysis. But in these areas too, Neanderthal admixture might be expected to have significant impact.

None of these findings provide any direct evidence for my idea that autism is a species-differentiation event (in particular, a species dis-recognition event), but neither do any of these findings contradict the idea. As I've said elsewhere, what we can look for now are studies comparing the Neanderthal draft sequence to modern humans diagnosed with such things as autism, schizophrenia and bipolar. If my idea is going to have any legs, then what we might expect to find are Neanderthal-distinguishing genetic signatures among these diagnosed populations, either admixture amounts outside the norm (most likely higher than the typical range) or a specific pattern of relationship against the Neanderthal genome unique to the diagnosed population. Given the rapid rate of technology advancement in this area, we might not have to wait all that much longer.

One other thing: as I read through these Neanderthal admixture findings, I can't help but be reminded of the genetic research conducted so far in the areas of autism, schizophrenia and bipolar. In each instance, researchers have been uncovering extremely lengthy lists of candidate genetic markers for the condition, markers that show up in only a tiny percentage of the affected population and markers that are scattered almost at random throughout the genome. This of course also does not provide any direct evidence that Neanderthal admixture is playing a role in such conditions, but the genetic similarities are difficult not to notice. And contrast this with the dubious conclusion being drawn by the autism research community, a community that insists on casting all these genetic variations as genetic defects, each leading (by miraculous coincidence, it would seem) to the same neurological and phenotypic outcome. There is a difference between the words “speculative” and “implausible,” and I see that difference on display here.

(Green 2010): Green, Richard E. and others. 2010. “A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome.” Science 328:710–22

Ami Klin's Good Science

2011-12-14T02:18:00.003-05:00

Can someone explain to me how Ami Klin's research team in (Shultz 2011) could have possibly overlooked the idea of running a second version of their experiment, one employing a visual scene more naturally appealing to autistic perception? It would have been so easy: remove the humans from the scene and through automated means have the toy wagon's door open and shut on a regular basis. Bring in another group of controls and autistic children, and make the same measurements as were made for the first scenario. The comparisons across populations and across scenarios might have provided a wealth of information for both autistic and non-autistic perception, probably far more than was provided by the study as conducted.

Any decent research team might have recognized the potential in that second scenario, but it was criminally stupid for the Klin research team not to have recognized it, because the team had already been through that experience!

The whole beauty of (Klin 2009) was that instead of the nothing-new experiment the authors had originally designed, and prompted by the “serendipitous” observations of a fifteen-month-old autistic girl, the study team was able to re-configure the experiment to test for both non-autistic appealing and autistic appealing scenarios, thereby setting up a wealth of cross-population, cross-scenario information for comparison and contrast. That serendipitous enhancement literally made the study.

So you would think the Klin team would know by now the value of taking that broader approach with every experiment going forward. You would think. But apparently the fifteen-month-old autistic girl didn't hit them upside the head hard enough.

I can't describe how dumbfounded I am by the scientific blindness I see on display almost everywhere in the autism research community. People go on and on to me about the need to weed out bad science and to expose all the charlatans and to have better standards, and on and on and on they go. For what, I ask? For this? For more of Ami Klin's inability to see beyond the end of his own nose? Is this the good science everyone's striving for? Hell, I'd rather have the charlatans. At least the charlatans know what they're doing.

(Shultz 2011): Shultz, Sarah; Klin, Ami; Jones, Warren. 2011. “Inhibition of eye blinking reveals subjective perceptions of stimulus salience.” PNAS (in press).

(Klin 2009): Klin, Ami; Lin, David J.; Gorrindo, Phillip; Ramsay, Gordon; Jones, Warren. 2009. “Two-year-olds with Autism Orient to Non-Social Contingencies Rather than Biological Motion.” Nature 459: 257–61.

Competing Speculative Hypotheses

2011-12-10T19:37:00.001-05:00

About a year ago, I wrote a rather lengthy essay (Griswold 2011) inspired by the paleoanthropologist Richard Klein and his ideas regarding the behavioral and cultural changes known as the human great leap forward. Here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUp_6n8x3D0) you can watch a recent 45-minute lecture by Dr. Klein on the topic, and although I think his written works (for instance, (Klein 2002) and (Klein 2008)) provide better detail, the video lecture does give a reasonable introduction and overview to Klein's approach and is well worth the short investment of time.

Near the very end of the lecture, after having outlined arguments and evidence for the notion that the human great leap forward was a sudden event—occurring around fifty thousand years ago—Klein states his hypothesis that the sudden event must have been launched by a genetic mutation, one producing significant cognitive effect. Klein then briefly mentions the recent and preliminary work on the mapping of the Neanderthal genome (Green 2010), work that has led to two major (and still preliminary) results: 1. there is now a list (a fairly short list) of modern human/non-Neanderthal gene sequences that would serve as obvious candidates for recent genetic mutation; and 2. nearly all non-African modern humans carry a small influence (estimated in the neighborhood of 2.5%) of Neanderthal-originated genetic material.

As Klein mentions in his lecture, the first result opens the door to a means for testing his genetic mutation hypothesis. The idea would be to obtain a list of modern human genetic sequences that differ significantly from those of ancient humans (including Neanderthals) and see if a subset of these produce the kind of neurological impact consistent with human behavioral and cognitive change. There are of course some technical challenges that stand in the way of this approach: for one, the genome mappings are still in need of greater clarification and accuracy, and furthermore, scientists have not yet been all that successful in connecting genetic material to phenotypic effect, be it cognitive or otherwise. Nonetheless, these are challenges that might be expected to be overcome through technological advances, and so indeed, Klein's hypothesis might one day soon be put to a thorough scientific test.

As I outlined in (Griswold 2011), I'm fairly convinced Klein is going to be disappointed in the results of that test. Although I concur with Klein's assertion that the human great leap forward was a sudden anthropological event, I see an incongruity undermining Klein's explanation for that event. Although most scientists, Klein included, would take for granted that human cognitive advancement must have been driven by a genetic/neurological/evolutionary change, nearly everything scientists can actually demonstrate about genetics, neurology and evolution runs counter to the type of sudden, population-wide, large-scale event Klein is describing. It's as though the animal world had gone sightless for billions of years and then overnight one of the species popped up a pair of excellent eyes and immediately conquered the rest of the planet through this new-found vision. It makes for a dramatic story, but biology doesn't seem to work that way.

Genetically-driven evolutionary change does of course happen, but not on the time or impact scale Klein is proposing (and not even on the time or impact scale that cultural evolutionists would propose). On the one hand, Klein's description of sudden human behavioral and cognitive change looks accurate enough based upon the archaeological evidence, but on the other hand, his explanation for that sudden change looks utterly implausible based upon the logic of biology.

That said, it would still be prudent to wait for the science.

Also in the video lecture, almost as an aside, Klein dismisses the other major finding from Neanderthal genome mapping—the admixture of Neanderthal genetic material into modern humans—suggesting that as details of the respective genomes become more complete and accurate, this finding will prove to be false. Logically speaking, however, Klein doesn't need to make that dismissal: it's perfectly possible that Neanderthal admixture will continue to hold upon further analysis, and yet its impact on human behavioral and cognitive change will prove nonetheless to be benign. I think what's driving Klein's desire to dismiss the admixture finding is that he wants to emphasize how modern Homo sapiens—post genetic mutation—were so cognitively and behaviorally advanced over their Neanderthal contemporaries that all they could do was swamp the Neanderthals into extinction, not interact with or incorporate them. That's a reasonable conclusion to draw given what we already know about European replacement of Neanderthals (evidence for which Klein has intimate working knowledge), but in point of fact there's nothing about the Neanderthal admixture finding that implies it had to be a post out-of-Africa event—the evidence for the timing of that admixture remains inconclusive, and it's quite possible any such admixture could have taken place near the beginning or even prior to the out-of-Africa migration.

Here too, it would be prudent to wait for the science.

My own interest in the Neanderthal admixture finding is that it serves as possible evidence for an alternative explanation to the human great leap forward, an explanation I find logically more plausible—albeit perhaps just as speculative—as Richard Klein's. In (Griswold 2011) I outline how the introduction of autism into the human population—autistic perception in particular—could have served as the catalyst driving human cognitive and behavioral change. I won't repeat the details here, but the concepts at work are a description of autism as a lack of species recognition; autistic perception as a compensatory foregrounding of non-biological pattern, structure, symmetry and form; human cognitive and behavioral advancement as the environmental accumulation of these very same elements of non-biological pattern, structure, symmetry and form; and Neanderthal admixture as the conceivable biological cause for autism-related species dis-recognition. Under my scenario, all these concepts would have come together in a kind of circumstantial stew that began cooking around fifty thousand years ago.

With the ongoing advancements in human genome sequencing, parts of my autism hypothesis might become just as amenable to scientific testing as Klein's genetic mutation hypothesis. The key evidence to look for is whether large or distinctive presences of Neanderthal-derived genetic material within individuals correlates significantly to diagnoses of autism (and perhaps to similar conditions of schizophrenia and bipolar). A high and distinctive correlation would be supportive for describing autism as a condition of species dis-recognition, and thereby indirectly supportive of an autism-related explanation for mankind's great leap forward.

Of course it's also possible that neither speculation—mine nor Richard Klein's—will prove to be helpful, and it will be some other explanation, perhaps one not yet thought of, that manages to untangle the mysteries from fifty thousand years ago. But one thing is for certain: these recent advancements in human genome mapping are opening an intriguing window onto our anthropological past. It's an excellent time to be alive if one is prone to asking such questions as, what caused human beings to become so distinctively human?

(Green 2010): Green, Richard E. and others. 2010. “A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome.” Science 328:710–22

(Griswold 2011): Griswold, Alan. 2011. Autistic Songs. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse.

(Klein 2002): Klein, Richard G. 2002. The Dawn of Human Culture. New York: Wiley.

(Klein 2008): Klein, Richard G. 2008. "Out of Africa and the Evolution of Human Behavior." Evolutionary Anthropology 17:267–81.

The Joy of Meta

2011-12-07T20:58:00.002-05:00

Here is an abstract from the very latest in autism research:

Recent studies have implicated physiological and metabolic abnormalities in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and other psychiatric disorders, particularly immune dysregulation or inflammation, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction and environmental toxicant exposures (‘four major areas’). The aim of this study was to determine trends in the literature on these topics with respect to ASD. A comprehensive literature search from 1971 to 2010 was performed in these four major areas in ASD with three objectives. First, publications were divided by several criteria, including whether or not they implicated an association between the physiological abnormality and ASD. A large percentage of publications implicated an association between ASD and immune dysregulation/inflammation (416 out of 437 publications, 95%), oxidative stress (all 115), mitochondrial dysfunction (145 of 153, 95%) and toxicant exposures (170 of 190, 89%). Second, the strength of evidence for publications in each area was computed using a validated scale. The strongest evidence was for immune dysregulation/inflammation and oxidative stress, followed by toxicant exposures and mitochondrial dysfunction. In all areas, at least 45% of the publications were rated as providing strong evidence for an association between the physiological abnormalities and ASD. Third, the time trends in the four major areas were compared with trends in neuroimaging, neuropathology, theory of mind and genetics (‘four comparison areas’). The number of publications per 5-year block in all eight areas was calculated in order to identify significant changes in trends. Prior to 1986, only 12 publications were identified in the four major areas and 51 in the four comparison areas (42 for genetics). For each 5-year period, the total number of publications in the eight combined areas increased progressively. Most publications (552 of 895, 62%) in the four major areas were published in the last 5 years (2006–2010). Evaluation of trends between the four major areas and the four comparison areas demonstrated that the largest relative growth was in immune dysregulation/inflammation, oxidative stress, toxicant exposures, genetics and neuroimaging. Research on mitochondrial dysfunction started growing in the last 5 years. Theory of mind and neuropathology research has declined in recent years. Although most publications implicated an association between the four major areas and ASD, publication bias may have led to an overestimation of this association. Further research into these physiological areas may provide insight into general or subset-specific processes that could contribute to the development of ASD and other psychiatric disorders.

I'm not sure how badly you'll want to delve into all that verbiage, but in short it's an assessment of various "abnormalities" associated with autism through the means of looking at research publication trends. For instance, the association of mitochondrial dysfunction with autism is assessed by looking at the rising number of mitochondria-autism research articles published over the calendar years from 1971 to 2010. It's the type of work that can be done with a good search engine and a spreadsheet program (3D color graphics would be a bonus).

In other words, it's a shitty piece of meta-analysis.

Of course, there have been better examples of meta-analysis applied to autism research, but this raises an intriguing question. How does one differentiate good meta-analysis from bad meta-analysis (think of how important this will be to Ben Goldacre as he's writing his next book, Bad Meta Science)? Well obviously, what we need to do is institute some standards, protocols and ethics for the general practice of meta-analysis, and once these are in place we can begin performing meta-analyses of all the meta-analyses. And if there happen to be any lingering problems, we can just ask Janet Stemwedel to remind the tribe of meta scientists of all their meta social duties.

No really. I think this would be a fruitful line of endeavor. As far as I can tell, the possibilities for employment are unlimited.

Autism Etiology

2011-12-05T19:34:00.001-05:00

Genetics, neurology, environment—permutations and combinations aplenty, plausible mechanisms afew.

Dispelling the Fog

2011-12-03T18:57:00.001-05:00

Why try to deny the Flynn effect or pass it off as a short-term anomaly? If we embrace the Flynn effect for exactly what it says, the faulty explanations disappear.

Read All About It

2011-11-30T21:19:00.002-05:00

From Rose Eveleth comes an absolutely gorgeous article on autistic potential, spurred by the work of Mottron, Soulières, Dawson and colleagues. The article makes a nice blend of realism and affirmation, and might be the best bit of autism-related journalism I've yet to see.

On the Prowl

2011-11-29T00:42:00.001-05:00

Scientists are perfectly free to keep looking for the source of intelligence inside the human brain. But they might as well keep looking for the luminiferous ether while they're at it.

A Balanced Approach

2011-11-21T00:36:00.002-05:00

I will say this much in defense of Ami Klin. His description of autistic perceptual characteristics comes with a corresponding (and fairly accurate) description of non-autistic perceptual characteristics, along with an appreciation for the merit and deeply ingrained nature of those characteristics (see for instance the answer to the next-to-last question here). This is an approach I wish the Mottron research team would seriously consider. Indeed, if we could combine the best of Ami Klin's observations and Laurent Mottron's research and ideas, we might arrive at an informative and mutually clarifying description for these two fundamental forms of human perception. But alas, blind spots continue to be the norm within autism research.

Calibrating the Eye-Tracker

2011-11-20T14:54:00.001-05:00

Ami Klin is making a fundamental mistake in emphasizing early autistic attention towards objects. When autistic toddlers line up toys, they're not intrigued by the toys—they're intrigued by the line.

Hobgoblin

2011-11-11T22:17:00.001-05:00

The one consistent finding throughout autism research is that whatever autistics do, it's wrong.

Liars and Hypocrites

2011-11-09T18:17:00.001-05:00

If I'd known that curing autism would be so easy, I might not have raised such a big objection. But according to recent reports, all we need to do is train autistic individuals to be better liars and hypocrites, and they'll become virtually indistinguishable from their neurotypical peers.

Blindside

2011-11-08T18:57:00.001-05:00

Many people attack science because they don't want to think. I attack science because scientists don't want to think.

How Do I List Thee? Let Me Count the Ways

2011-11-05T00:47:00.001-04:00

Oh, I just relish authorship discussions like this one. They always leave me wondering how Darwin or Tolstoy would have handled such dilemmas.

Applause

2011-11-03T19:47:00.003-04:00

It's nice to see the media attention being given to Laurent Mottron, Michelle Dawson, and their immediate colleagues in conjunction with the appearance of Dr. Mottron's commentary Changing perceptions: The power of autism (~~which sadly is behind a paywall~~). I've never been one to be hesitant about expressing my dissent from some of these researchers' positions and views, but this has always been done in the context of great admiration and respect for their overall effort. These are scientists who have consistently led the way in providing autism research that is affirmative, encouraging, accurate and productive for autistic individuals, a stance which has demonstrated both courage and insight. Any positive attention they get is well deserved and well earned.

[Update: It appears that the paywall restriction has been removed. More applause.]

Kierkegaard's Lemma

2011-11-01T23:53:00.001-04:00

When being a Christian was unpopular, unrewarding, even dangerous, then we had true Christianity. Science is no different.

Lab Rats

2011-10-29T23:34:00.001-04:00

The best science is descriptive. If you need an experiment to make your point, you've already missed the point.

Lateral Glance

2011-10-26T19:17:00.001-04:00

What makes a brain non-autistic? That would be an important question too.

Optional

2011-10-24T21:40:00.001-04:00

You know, to be a scientist these days is to engage in a form of “mandatory hierarchies of processing.” I wonder why people can't choose to be an independent thinker instead.

A Novel Approach to Ad Nauseam

2011-10-15T12:03:00.001-04:00

Here is the abstract from the latest autism-genetics breakthrough paper (Casey 2011):

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a highly heritable disorder of complex and heterogeneous aetiology. It is primarily characterized by altered cognitive ability including impaired language and communication skills and fundamental deficits in social reciprocity. Despite some notable successes in neuropsychiatric genetics, overall, the high heritability of ASD (~90%) remains poorly explained by common genetic risk variants. However, recent studies suggest that rare genomic variation, in particular copy number variation, may account for a significant proportion of the genetic basis of ASD. We present a large scale analysis to identify candidate genes which may contain low-frequency recessive variation contributing to ASD while taking into account the potential contribution of population differences to the genetic heterogeneity of ASD. Our strategy, homozygous haplotype (HH) mapping, aims to detect homozygous segments of identical haplotype structure that are shared at a higher frequency amongst ASD patients compared to parental controls. The analysis was performed on 1,402 Autism Genome Project trios genotyped for 1 million single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). We identified 25 known and 1,218 novel ASD candidate genes in the discovery analysis including CADM2, ABHD14A, CHRFAM7A, GRIK2, GRM3, EPHA3, FGF10, KCND2, PDZK1, IMMP2L and FOXP2. Furthermore, 10 of the previously reported ASD genes and 300 of the novel candidates identified in the discovery analysis were replicated in an independent sample of 1,182 trios. Our results demonstrate that regions of HH are significantly enriched for previously reported ASD candidate genes and the observed association is independent of gene size (odds ratio 2.10). Our findings highlight the applicability of HH mapping in complex disorders such as ASD and offer an alternative approach to the analysis of genome-wide association data.

Allow me to interpret that abstract without the spin: Here are a hundred-some authors admitting that all their previous data-mining techniques have failed to find what they were looking for, but fear not, because they've discovered yet another data-mining technique that alas, also fails to find what they're looking for. But there are some secondary benefits—namely getting one's name attached to yet another massive-author publication—and from that perspective, all autism-related data-mining techniques seem to be equally effective.

(Casey 2011): Casey JP, Magalhaes T, Conroy JM, Regan R, Shah N, Anney R, Shields DC, Abrahams BS, Almeida J, Bacchelli E, Bailey AJ, Baird G, Battaglia A, Berney T, Bolshakova N, Bolton PF, Bourgeron T, Brennan S, Cali P, Correia C, Corsello C, Coutanche M, Dawson G, de Jonge M, Delorme R, Duketis E, Duque F, Estes A, Farrar P, Fernandez BA, Folstein SE, Foley S, Fombonne E, Freitag CM, Gilbert J, Gillberg C, Glessner JT, Green J, Guter SJ, Hakonarson H, Holt R, Hughes G, Hus V, Igliozzi R, Kim C, Klauck SM, Kolevzon A, Lamb JA, Leboyer M, Le Couteur A, Leventhal BL, Lord C, Lund SC, Maestrini E, Mantoulan C, Marshall CR, McConachie H, McDougle CJ, McGrath J, McMahon WM, Merikangas A, Miller J, Minopoli F, Mirza GK, Munson J, Nelson SF, Nygren G, Oliveira G, Pagnamenta AT, Papanikolaou K, Parr JR, Parrini B, Pickles A, Pinto D, Piven J, Posey DJ, Poustka A, Poustka F, Ragoussis J, Roge B, Rutter ML, Sequeira AF, Soorya L, Sousa I, Sykes N, Stoppioni V, Tancredi R, Tauber M, Thompson AP, Thomson S, Tsiantis J, Van Engeland H, Vincent JB, Volkmar F, Vorstman JA, Wallace S, Wang K, Wassink TH, White K, Wing K, Wittemeyer K, Yaspan BL, Zwaigenbaum L, Betancur C, Buxbaum JD, Cantor RM, Cook EH, Coon H, Cuccaro ML, Geschwind DH, Haines JL, Hallmayer J, Monaco AP, Nurnberger JI Jr, Pericak-Vance MA, Schellenberg GD, Scherer SW, Sutcliffe JS, Szatmari P, Vieland VJ, Wijsman EM, Green A, Gill M, Gallagher L, Vicente A, Ennis S. 2011. “A novel approach of homozygous haplotype sharing identifies candidate genes in autism spectrum disorder.” Human Genetics (in press).

Evidence Christ Was Autistic?

2011-10-11T18:18:00.002-04:00

Here is the abstract from a recently published paper (Izuma 2011):

People act more prosocially when they know they are watched by others, an everyday observation borne out by studies from behavioral economics, social psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. This effect is thought to be mediated by the incentive to improve one's social reputation, a specific and possibly uniquely human motivation that depends on our ability to represent what other people think of us. Here we tested the hypothesis that social reputation effects are selectively impaired in autism, a developmental disorder characterized in part by impairments in reciprocal social interactions but whose underlying cognitive causes remain elusive. When asked to make real charitable donations in the presence or absence of an observer, matched healthy controls donated significantly more in the observer's presence than absence, replicating prior work. By contrast, people with high-functioning autism were not influenced by the presence of an observer at all in this task. However, both groups performed significantly better on a continuous performance task in the presence of an observer, suggesting intact general social facilitation in autism. The results argue that people with autism lack the ability to take into consideration what others think of them and provide further support for specialized neural systems mediating the effects of social reputation.

It's difficult to read that passage without being reminded of Matthew 6:1–4, from the Sermon on the Mount:

Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret Himself shall reward thee openly.

What would Jesus do? Apparently not what non-autistics would do.

(Izuma 2011): Keise Izuma, Kenji Matsumoto, Colin F. Camerer, and Ralph Adolphs. 2011. “Insensitivity to social reputation in autism.” PNAS 2011: 1107038108v1-201107038.

Autistics Think Differently, Part 3

2011-10-10T00:29:00.003-04:00

In “The Level and Nature of Autistic Intelligence II: What about Asperger Syndrome?” (Soulières 2011), the following sentence appears:

“Autistics can maintain more veridical representations (e.g. representations closer to the actual information present in the environment) when performing high level, complex tasks.”

That's an intriguing statement, and I think I have a rough idea of what the authors are driving at (and I would generally agree with that rough idea). But the sentence as stated strikes me as slightly off key and a bit misleading. Let me see if I can explain.

I'm going to lay out a hypothetical visual scene (something similar could be done in the auditory domain if so desired), and once I've described the scene, I'm going to have three different entities survey it, including one that represents autistic perception and another that represents non-autistic perception. But when it comes to veridical representation, it's going to be the third entity that emerges as the clear winner in “capturing the actual information present in the environment.”

Here's the scene: It's a fairly open and sparse field, maybe in a large park or reserve. Near the front section of the field is a bench, where a woman and a girl are seated and talking. Rising behind them are four tall light poles, evenly spaced and situated so that they form a diagonal across the visual plane. The sky is mostly blue with a few nondescript clouds, and there is nothing else worthy of note.

Here are three entities viewing this scene from the same perspective, along with a rough description of what each perceives:

Entity 1 surveys this scene entirely as light and color stimulus. You can think of it as a pixelated view, where the perception of this scene is best described as a series of points, each point determined by its relative position and its light qualities, such as brightness and hue.
Entity 2 surveys this scene and is immediately drawn to the woman and girl on the bench. If asked about this perception, Entity 2 might say something like, “Yes, I can see the mother and daughter on the bench over there. See, the daughter is extremely upset—she's crying.” If asked about the light poles, Entity 2 might offer the observation that it's a good thing to have them here, because people can come at night without being afraid.
Entity 3 surveys this scene and is struck by the particular arrangement of the light poles. Entity 3 might note that there are four of them, or might point out that they are evenly spaced, or might remark on the angle they form in the visual plane. If asked about the people on the bench, Entity 3 might say they were noticed and there were two of them and they looked small beneath the light poles towering above them.

Although these descriptions are meant to highlight only general tendencies, I think most people would agree that the perceptions of Entity 1 closely match those of a camera, the perceptions of Entity 2 are fairly typical of a non-autistic person, and the perceptions of Entity 3 are more indicative of someone who might be on the autism spectrum. Each entity sees the exact same visual stimulus, but each extracts from that stimulus an entirely different set of information. That is the essence of what we mean when we talk about the concept perception.

In my way of thinking, Entity 1 has by far the most veridical representation here—it comes the closest to perceiving this visual scene as it truly is. The key to a camera creating an accurate visual representation is, ironically enough, not to do much of anything at all with it; in particular, not to impose any form upon the visual scene. No foregrounding. No backgrounding. No extracting of signal from noise. Just reproduce the visual scene as it visually is—that's all a camera is required to do.

By contrast, both Entity 2 and Entity 3 come to their particular perceptions by imposing some kind of structure on the raw visual stimulus, which is to say some elements in the visual scene form perceptual foreground while other elements fade mostly unnoticed into the background. The perceptual process is quite similar for both Entity 2 and Entity 3 (and quite different from the perceptual process of Entity 1). What distinguishes the perceptions of Entity 2 and Entity 3 is the material of the signal itself; that is, there is a categorical difference in what tends to foreground within the perceptions of Entity 2 and Entity 3.

It's not obvious yet that Entity 3's representations are more veridical than those of Entity 2, but let's keep exploring all these perceptions in more detail.

It's actually quite fortunate that Entity 1 is not a biological or responsive agent. If it were, having the most veridical representation of the visual scene would manifest as a huge liability. To be responsive to an environmental stimulus requires that information be extracted from it, exactly what Entity 1 cannot do. This has actually been a problem in the world of robotics, where despite having extremely accurate cameras, it has been nonetheless difficult to get machines to respond flexibly and constructively to various visual stimuli, precisely because it is difficult to get machines to recognize what constitutes the necessary foreground and what needs to be dismissed as inconsequential background.

Possessing a perfectly veridical representation of an environmental stimulus is tantamount to experiencing sensory chaos. Everything comes across as noise, nothing appears as signal. And with no signal, there is no information. And with no information, there is no ability to respond with purpose. We must keep in mind these thoughts about perfectly veridical representations and their corresponding sensory chaos, because when we later consider the perceptions of Entity 3 (autistic perception), we'll discover this very same concept comes into play.

First, however, let's talk in more detail about the perceptions of Entity 2 (non-autistic perception). It's my contention that what signifies and distinguishes non-autistic perception is its strong tendency to focus upon human-related events in the sensory environment; that is, it is the human-specific features that most commonly foreground within non-autistic perception, and it is this human-specific focus that provides the necessary structure for extracting signal from the sensory noise. You can see this at work in my depiction of Entity 2's perceptions, where the attention is drawn primarily to the people in the scene—and in a very detailed way—and even the elements which are not so apparently human-related are often tied back to humanity by some indirect means (the light poles, for instance, are comprehended as helping people see at night and not be afraid).

I wouldn't use the terms “global processing” or “hierarchies of processing” to describe this phenomenon, but I would consider such a term as “common thread” to suggest how these people-specific perceptions tie non-autistic cognition together into a cohesive package. And this works at more than just the individual level. Since nearly all humans share the characteristic of these people-specific perceptions, these perceptions serve to coalesce not just individual thoughts and behaviors but also the conventions and actions of the species as a whole. Humans formulate their shared species-specific perceptions into a series of cohesive thoughts, behaviors, conventions and environments, exactly as we might expect from a species-driven, biologically essential phenomenon.

Indeed, it is important to note that it's not just in humans that we observe this common form of species-specific perception. All across the animal kingdom, we can observe abundant evidence that creatures attend most strongly to the other members of their own species and to the species-related elements in their surroundings while most everything else in the sensory environment is ignored as inconsequential background. It is in this sense that I think the word “mandatory” comes into play. The common thread of a species-specific focus is extremely powerful, it has been forged through the long-burning furnace of evolutionary time. I think most organisms inherently rely upon this common thread, and would find it extremely difficult to step outside it.

In my previous post (Autistics Think Differently, Part 2) I complained that the authors of (Soulières 2011) have not provided an affirmative, distinguishing description for non-autistic perception and cognition. If it were up to me to provide that description, I would do it in much the same way I have here, highlighting the species-specific perceptions non-autistics share and that help cement the common cognitions and behaviors across that particular class of the population. I am of course open to criticisms of this idea and am willing to consider alternative suggestions, but so far I've not see much of anything forthcoming, anything beyond that is just a settling for describing non-autistic individuals as constituting the norm.

It is also my contention that what most fundamentally distinguishes autistic perception is that it lacks the species-specific focus that is characteristic of non-autistic perception. For reasons not yet clearly identified, autistic individuals do not tend to naturally foreground human-related elements within the sensory environment, and as a baseline, this would leave autistic individuals in much the same situation as that of Entity 1: autistics would perceive the raw environmental stimulus almost exactly as it is and would have no natural means of obtaining signal from the various aspects of that stimulus.

It's primarily in this sense that I think it's fair to say autistic individuals experience more veridical representations—representations that don't come with as many pre-imposed filters, such as the human-focused filters that get routinely and naturally applied within non-autistic perception. But this also means that the natural (beginning) state of autistic perception is one that comes dangerously close to sensory chaos, and I believe this goes a long ways towards explaining why autistic individuals tend to experience sensory difficulties, difficulties that vary in domain and range and seem to have no discernible physical cause. It also goes a long ways towards explaining the developmental difficulties autistic individuals experience in their early years, because both as an individual and as a member of a species that has built its environmental surroundings out of a shared perceptual experience, an autistic individual would find himself closed off from those species-shared experiences and all their coalescing and foregrounding effects. As was stated in the discussion for Entity 1, the possession of a perfectly veridical representation is actually a huge liability when it comes to acting as a biological or responsive agent.

The saving grace for autistics is that there are features within the sensory environment that seem to inherently foreground in the absence of any stronger means of perceptual organization. It's not entirely clear to me (logically or biologically) what causes these particular elements to form signal against an otherwise chaotic background, but we recognize these mostly non-biological features through such names as symmetry, repetition, pattern, mapping, structure, and form. The authors of (Soulières 2011) routinely invoke said features in describing the distinguishing characteristics of autistic perception and cognition [see for instance (Mottron 2009) and Principles 6 and 7 in (Mottron 2006)], and in my depiction of Entity 3's perception, you'll notice the emphasis being placed on such things as number, repetition, pattern, geometry and so on. And just as non-autistics will often apprehend non-biological features in their sensory environment through a referential connection to humanity, autistics will often reverse this process, apprehending humans through such things as number, categorization and measure. It seems to me that there is a good deal of evidence backing the idea that autistic perception is drawn primarily to those environmental features consisting of non-biological pattern, structure and form, and it is out of such features that autistics gain the majority of their perceptual foregrounding. Apprehension of non-biological environmental structure forms the backbone of an autistic individual's atypical means of overcoming sensory chaos, allowing that individual to respond productively as a biological agent.

One of the fascinating aspects of autistic perceptual foregrounding is that it can bring forth incredible variety and novelty. An autistic individual is apt to pull almost any kind of information from a sensory environment (it wouldn't have been all that surprising, for instance, if Entity 3 had ignored both the light poles and the people on the bench and had fixated instead on the harmonious colors in the clouds and sky). Because of the variety, novelty and non-biological (objective) nature of the information autistic individuals tend to gather, this too might be considered a valid reason for classifying autistic representations as more veridical (and I think the authors of (Soulières 2011) actually have something of this consideration in mind). But here I think we should be a bit more cautious. Once an autistic individual has actually foregrounded some aspect of the sensory environment, he has already moved far away from the realm of true veridical representation, is no longer perceiving reality anything at all like a camera. And no matter what structure is being applied to the environmental stimulus—be it the biological, species-driven form common to non-autistic perception, or the more pattern-based variety familiar to autistic perception—it can have equally valid potential to be a good or poor reflector of environmental reality. When we consider the entirety of human history, as well as the entirety of modern human society, I think it's fair to say that all types of human perceptual foregrounding are potentially informative and valuable, we wouldn't want to be deprived of hardly any of these perspectives.

In summary, I think there is merit and truth in the (Soulières 2011) claim that autistic individuals have a tendency to experience more veridical representations under many circumstances, but I wouldn't want to make that statement as obvious, simple fact. To come to that conclusion requires a deep understanding of both autistic perception and non-autistic perception, and in particular a deep understanding of what fundamentally distinguishes them. And this is just one more example of why I think it's inadequate to describe either autistic or non-autistic cognition as merely a deficit or norm. What's needed here are clear, affirmative, distinguishing descriptions—descriptions that enlighten us about both autism and non-autism, descriptions that bring out the essential value in each of these points of view.

(Soulières 2011): Soulières I, Dawson M, Gernsbacher MA, Mottron L, 2011 The Level and Nature of Autistic Intelligence II: What about Asperger Syndrome? PLoS ONE 6(9): e25372. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0025372

(Mottron 2009): Mottron L, Dawson M, Soulières I (2009) Enhanced perception in savant syndrome: patterns, structure and creativity. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 364: 1385–1391.

(Mottron 2006): Mottron L, Dawson M, Soulières I, Hubert B, Burack J (2006) Enhanced perceptual functioning in autism: an update, and eight principles of autistic perception. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 36: 27–43.

Autistics Think Differently, Part 2

2011-10-09T00:27:00.001-04:00

In the discussion section of “The Level and Nature of Autistic Intelligence II: What about Asperger Syndrome?” (Soulières 2011), you will find the following paragraph:

“We have proposed that autistics' cognitive processes function in an atypically independent way, leading to “parallel, non-strategic integration of patterns across multiple levels and scales” and to versatility in cognitive processing. Such “independent thinking” suggests ways in which apparently specific or isolated abilities can co-exist with atypical but flexible, creative, and complex achievements. Across a wide range of tasks, including or perhaps especially in complex tasks, autistics do not experience to the same extent the typical loss or distortion of information that characterizes non-autistics' mandatory hierarchies of processing. Therefore, autistics can maintain more veridical representations (e.g. representations closer to the actual information present in the environment) when performing high level, complex tasks. The current results suggest that such a mechanism is also present in Asperger syndrome and therefore represents a commonality across the autistic spectrum. Given the opportunity, different subgroups of autistics may advantageously apply more independent thinking to different available aspects of information: verbal information, by persons whose specific diagnosis is Asperger's, and perceptual information, by persons whose specific diagnosis is autism.”

That's a lovely paragraph in many respects, highlighting several of the strengths in these authors' approach to describing (affirmatively) the characteristics of autistic perception and cognition. It's practically all there: atypical information processing, independent thinking, patterns, versatility, creativity, veridical representations of complex stimuli, specfic/isolated abilities, and so on. With nary a reference to a neural construct, this paragraph manages nonetheless to capture a broad, descriptive range of autistic cognitive concepts, all translating well into observable and distinctive autistic behaviors. While the rest of the autism research community continues to focus on describing autistic perception and cognition as deficient relative to their non-autistic counterparts, the authors of (Soulières 2011) make an informative rebuttal simply by providing consistent evidence and detailed descriptions outlining what autistic perception and cognition actually are, as opposed to obsessing on what they are not.

On the other hand, the above paragraph also highlights the glaring weakness in these authors' approach. Here we have yet one more time from these authors an instance of an extremely detailed, extremely descriptive, extremely compelling description of autistic perception and cognition that goes entirely unaccompanied by a corresponding description for non-autistic perception and cognition.

In the above paragraph, the description of non-autistic perception and cognition is reduced to a single phrase: “non-autistics' mandatory hierarchies of processing.” It's bad enough that this description is so sparse, but what makes it worse is that there is no clear indication of what that particular phrase is supposed to mean—it actually sounds empty to me. When I read it, the questions that pop into my head are: What is the nature of these hierarchies? Are there examples? What's at their root? What's at their leaves? What is it about these mysterious hierarchies that make them mandatory? And above all else, how does any of this shed light on non-autistic perception, cognition, and behavior? Listen, I may be a very poor reader, but I honestly can't find an adequate answer to those questions in any of these authors' work.

If you follow the reference that is attached to the phrase “non-autistics' mandatory hierarchies of processing,” you'll be taken to (Soulières 2009). Unfortunately that doesn't help very much, because (Soulières 2009) simply repeats the terminology, not explaining it in any greater detail than does (Soulières 2011). I suppose a subtle interpretation that could be made from this reference to (Soulières 2009) is that the authors are intending the phrase to be taken neuronally: that is, “mandatory hierarchies of processing” is meant to invoke a particular form of non-autistic brain structure and organization. I would note, however, that even if this interpretation is valid, it would only be a theory, not an observation or a description. I would also note it wouldn't let the authors off the hook: these authors have provided similar theories about autistic brain structure and organization, but that has never stopped them from augmenting such theories with a broad array of non-neuronal depictions of autistic perception and cognition—precisely the type of supplementary explanation that is conspicuously absent on the non-autistic side of the equation.

Perhaps a more helpful reference for the phrase would have been (Mottron 2006), which actually does discuss global hierarchical processing in some detail (albeit a bit haphazardly). There you'll find an assortment of loose explanations for the term, including some of which are more neuronal in nature (as was perhaps being suggested through the reference to (Soulières 2009)). But more commonly in (Mottron 2006), global hierarchical processing is discussed in terms of relative autistic/non-autistic performances on various laboratory tasks, with the conclusion from this analysis being summed up succinctly in the statement of Principle 5: higher-order processing is optional in autism and mandatory in non-autistics. Which is to say, the authors are suggesting that autistics can process all the information that non-autistics can, and on top of that autistics can process more. Which is to say, the authors are suggesting non-autistics can process less. Which is to say, the authors are suggesting non-autistic cognition is deficient relative to autistic cognitive processing. Which is to say, the apparent purpose of using the phrase “non-autistics' mandatory hierarchies of processing” is to lead the reader back to what must undoubtedly be these authors' greatest autism research discovery so far, namely the deficit-based model of non-autism! (Maybe they'll win a Nobel Prize for that.)

Well really, what am I supposed to think? Look at the above quoted paragraph and consider what it must imply, in the absence of other information, about non-autistic perception and cognition. Autistic thinking is independent. So non-autistic thinking is not? Autistic thinking is flexible. So non-autistic thinking is not? Autistic thinking is creative. So non-autistic thinking is not? Autistic thinking is veridical. So non-autistic thinking is not? After having convincingly rebutted the research community's nonstop reliance on deficit-based models of autism through their use of informative, detailed, affirmative descriptions of autistic perception and cognition, these authors then make the tragic mistake of turning right around and presenting non-autistic perception and cognition as nothing more than a series of unflattering comparisons to autistic perception and cognition. Heck, if I were to rely on what these authors have implied so far about non-autistic cognitive abilities, I would have to conclude early intervention wouldn't even be worth the bother for this population, we might as well just dispatch the poor non-autistic souls straight off to the institutions.

Or on the other hand, we could just go back to assuming I'm a very poor reader. Here is what I would propose to set me straight:

Start with a clean sheet of paper. Head one column with “Autistic Perception and Cognition.” Head the other with “Non-autistic Perception and Cognition.” Fill in the columns with the descriptions and observations from the authors of (Soulières 2011). I could do the autistic column myself—the material for it is impressively abundant. The above quoted paragraph would be a good start and (Mottron 2009) is practically an entire tone poem in description of autistic perception and cognition. Throw in a couple dubious sentences about local processing and related neuronal theories, and the column is done. But for me, the non-autistic column continues to look mostly blank. Outside some hypothetical musings about non-autistic brain structure and organization, all I can think of to add would be the phrases “global processing” and “non-autistics' mandatory hierarchies of processing,” and of course I would have to put an asterisk next to those terms, because I really don't have a clue as to what they're supposed to mean. Now if someone—the authors, anyone—wants to come along and fill in the rest of the column for me, show me what I've been missing, I would be happy to give them thanks, apologize for the trouble, and go on about my sheepish way. But if on the other hand the non-autistic column can't be adequately filled in—not in the same way that the autistic column can—then my complaint remains legitimate and unaddressed, and I will continue to be vocal about it.

As much as I like and generally agree with the authors' descriptions of autistic perception and cognition, I also believe those descriptions fall flat when there is nothing to contrast them against. And on top of that, I'm also of the firm belief that non-autistic perception and cognition has an affirmative, distinctive richness all its own, a richness that possesses deep inner logic, a richness that has been biologically essential, and a richness that provides ongoing and immense value to the entire human population. It's long past time for that richness to be acknowledged and described.

(Soulières 2009): Soulières I, Dawson M, Samson F, Barbeau EB, Sahyoun CP, et al. (2009) Enhanced visual processing contributes to matrix reasoning in autism. Human Brain Mapping 30: 4082–4107.

Autistics Think Differently, Part 1

2011-10-07T20:48:00.003-04:00

I would encourage everyone to read the recently published paper “The Level and Nature of Autistic Intelligence II: What about Asperger Syndrome?” (Soulières 2011). It appears in the online journal PLoS One (which happily is open access) and although there appears to have been a glitch with the original publication of the paper (wording changes that were made without the permission of the authors), all seems to be rectified now.

I would also encourage a quick glance at this paper's predecessors, (Dawson 2007) and (Bolte 2009). Although there are some subtle variations among these studies, the general theme remains quite consistent, namely that individuals across the autism spectrum evince a markedly different cognitive profile compared to their non-autistic peers, a profile that consistently reveals many affirmative signs of intellectual capacity while also displaying a significant atypicality in the presentation of that capacity.

This is an important finding not just in the world of autism research but also in the world of intelligence research. Intelligence researchers routinely compare individuals by their intelligence performance (as measured by the standard battery of intelligence tests), and these comparisons have been shown to have predictive value in the real world. But until now, such differences have been characterized almost entirely by reference to the level of individual intelligence. With (Soulières 2011), (Dawson 2007), and (Bolte 2009), researchers have been given a clear-cut instance in which individual intelligence differences are more meaningfully characterized by reference to the type of intelligence being displayed. In other words, in the titles of (Dawson 2007) and (Soulières 2011) it is the word “nature” that needs to be emphasized—autistic individuals are displaying an entirely different kind of perception and cognition. That the level of autistic intelligence is also being underestimated is due primarily to the fact researchers routinely assume autistic cognition is little more than a damaged version of its non-autistic counterpart. (Soulières 2011) is helping put another nail in the coffin of that assumption.

(Dawson 2007): Dawson M, Soulières I, Gernsbacher MA, Mottron L (2007) The level and nature of autistic intelligence. Psychological Science 18: 657–662.

(Bolte 2009): Bolte S, Dziobek I, Poustka F (2009) Brief report: The level and nature of autistic intelligence revisited. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 39: 678–682.

The Mathematics of Robison's Males

2011-09-28T18:01:00.001-04:00

I'm not sure if anyone has remarked on this yet (someone should have by now—it's pretty obvious), but John Elder Robison's observation that most families with an autistic child have more boys than girls is almost certainly true. It's not a mystery, it's simple mathematics.

Start with the assumption that on average every newborn has a 50% chance of being male and a 50% chance of being female. Then add the assumption that on average every autistic newborn has an 80% chance of being male and a 20% chance of being female. In the absence of other information, the following two scenarios will emerge as mathematical results:

Given that a family has at least one autistic child, the family will likely have more males than females.
Given that a family has no autistic child, the family will likely have more females than males.

The effect is more pronounced (and thus more readily observable) in the first scenario. But this gets balanced by the fact that the second scenario is far more common.

Note that when we ask questions such as what is the male/female ratio in families given that at least one child has autism, we are in the land of conditional probabilities. A 50/50 male/female ratio is fine if there are no other conditions, but by saying that the family has (or does not have) a child with autism, you are creating conditional probabilities, and in this case those conditional probabilities do not come out to be 50/50.

It's easiest to see the phenomenon in families that have at least one child with autism. Some of those families will have only one child. In that case, we know that the one child has autism and so 80% of those families will have more males than females and 20% of those families will have more females than males.

With two children, we have two cases to consider. In one case, one of the children has autism (80% male/20% female) and one does not (roughly 49.7% male/50.3% female). Put those odds together and you will find that about 39.8% of such families have more males than females, 50.1% have equal sex distribution, and 10.1% have more females than males. The other case is that both children have autism, and in this case it comes out as 64% have more males than females, 32% have equal sex distribution, and 4% have more females than males.

For families with more than two children with at least one of them having autism, the calculations will be similar with similar results: the odds will always be greater that the family has more male children than female children. Again, there is nothing mysterious about this outcome, it's just simple mathematics.

In contrast to all these scenarios, we will have the situations where the family does not have a child with autism. In all those instances, the results will skew slightly towards having more females in the family than males. The numbers aren't as dramatic in these scenarios, but of course we have to keep in mind that these families are far more common than the families who have at least one autistic child.

This example is a good reminder that science is based on a foundation of logic and mathematics. I see an awful lot of scientific work that appears to be fine as far as the scientific technique goes but is utterly abysmal when it comes to the underlying logic and mathematics. In other words, even if you do RCTs out the ass, if the work is still based on lousy logic and lousy mathematics, then the science is going to be lousy too.

Isomorphic Redundancy

2011-09-25T14:28:00.001-04:00

If the material form of intelligence exists inside our neurons, what would be its structure? Well, take a good look around you. How would the neuronal structure of intelligence be any different than the structure you experience each and every day?

The Popular History of Intelligence Gains

2011-09-24T15:18:00.001-04:00

The Flynn effect began just before humans started administering intelligence tests, and ended right after the Flynn effect's discovery—surely any hunter-gatherer would have been able to tell you that.

Neural Damage

2011-09-18T11:36:00.000-04:00

The correctdistinction is between that of intelligent behavior, which isa biological response, and intelligence itself, which is amaterial artifact. Cognitive scientists confuse the two conceptsconstantly, and in particular insist each must be generated frominside the human brain. That misfiring has spawned a tremendousparalysis.

Flynn Effect 104

2011-09-15T01:48:00.003-04:00

A paper recently published in the journal Intelligence, “The Flynn effect puzzle: A 30-year examination from the right tail of the ability distribution provides some missing pieces” (Wai and Putallaz 2011), serves a valuable purpose—it makes it more difficult for scientists to dismiss the Flynn effect.

I think most scientists would agree that the Flynn effect—the persistent, well-documented rise in raw intelligence scores across nearly every measured population—is a phenomenon that has yet to be explained very well; the words “mystery” and “puzzle” frequently get bandied about in association with the Flynn effect. Perhaps uncomfortable with the idea of a mystery or a puzzle sitting right in the middle of all the psychometric progress they’ve been making in recent years, some cognitive scientists seem content to mostly dismiss the Flynn effect, describing it as little more than a twentieth-century anomaly, driven perhaps by some underprivileged populations catching up to the norm and raising the mean, a process that may have already run its course, thereby allowing the Flynn effect to calm down and politely go away. The slightly understated suggestion is, why bother to explain a blip?

But (Wai and Putallaz 2011) shouts a great big No! to all that. (Wai and Putallaz 2011) provides evidence that the Flynn effect holds just as strongly among those of high intelligence and advanced intellectual ability as it does across the remainder of the population, and (Wai and Putallaz 2011) also provides evidence that, at least for the population being studied, the Flynn effect continues to hum along at a significant pace. The unmistakable conclusion from this new study is that the Flynn effect appears to be both ubiquitous and relentless; it shows no evidence of being anything like a blip.

I can't say I'm surprised by that conclusion. By my reckoning, the Flynn effect has been both ubiquitous and relentless for at least the last fifty thousand years.

In considering explanations for the Flynn effect that would possess the necessary characteristics of being both widespread and ongoing, some discussions surrounding (Wai and Putallaz 2011) highlight the impact of an increasing level of environmental complexity. This notion is generally described as a set of fast-paced, highly structured items the population (children in particular) gets routinely exposed to and that helps individuals acquire the kinds of skills that translate well to problem-solving abilities on intelligence tests. The two most commonly cited examples are the increased use of video games and the increasingly complex and multivariate nature of movie and television show plots.

Highlighting increased environmental complexity is certainly a step in the right direction, but it is also clear from the context of these discussions that what’s being made is a small and tentative step, one not quite sure of where it's going. Therefore let me take this opportunity to convince the tentative proponents of environmental complexity that they can take a much larger step, and take it with a good deal more confidence.

The first problem I see with discussions surrounding environmental complexity is that they tend to focus on things in the environment instead of considering the impact of the environment as a whole. No matter what thing or set of things is being contemplated—including video games and entertainment plots—one immediately realizes huge swaths of the population never get exposed to that particular thing or set of things, and yet they too fall under the full sway of the Flynn effect. Indeed, the Flynn effect was working its magic long before there even were video games and television sets, and the Flynn effect continues to be prominent in locales where video games and sophisticated dramas have yet to take much hold. Suggesting alternative candidates for environmental complexity would fail to solve the problem as well: anything (any thing) we might mention is going to betray the same weakness, is going to be not universal or timeless enough to explain the Flynn effect's widespread and nonstop power.

But the repair to this problem is actually quite simple: just put all the things together.

From the beginning of man's great leap forward and across nearly the entirety of this planet's surface, the types of environmental complexity have varied greatly from time to time and from place to place, but the one consistent observation that can be made about environmental complexity is that no matter what time and no matter what place is under consideration, the total amount of environmental complexity is nearly always on the rise. Man has been accumulating an ever-increasing supply of non-biological pattern, structure and form into his surroundings, has been absorbing these surroundings and responding constructively to them, and through these means has exhibited an increasingly sophisticated set of behaviors. As the hypothetical example in Flynn Effect 101 demonstrates, the total quantification of environmental intelligence is all that is needed to drive population-wide raw intelligence gains. No particular piece of environmental complexity need ever be mentioned; it is the accumulative impact of environmental complexity that produces the Flynn effect.

The second problem I see with discussions surrounding environmental complexity is that everyone feels compelled to translate environmental complexity into a lasting physical impression upon the human brain. Playing video games, for instance, is seen as expanding the capacity of working memory; modern movie plots form a larger number of connections within our logical neural circuitry. It's as though environmental complexity is useless as it is; its only purpose is to prompt restructuring inside our neurons, spawn massive rewiring between our ears. This notion is certainly scientifically popular, but it also betrays an extremely poor conception of biology.

At bottom, the human neural system is simply the biological means of stimulus and response, just as it is for all the other animals, just as it was for early Homo sapiens. The human brain can produce behavior, including intelligent behavior, but it cannot store quantities of content, including the content of intelligence. There are three compelling reasons why the material form of human intelligence will not be found inside the human skull:

There is no concrete evidence for it. Although neuroscience has certainly produced a prodigious amount of data, statistics and pictures, it has produced not even the first step towards describing how connected sets of neurons produce anything from a simple hello to the theory of relativity. That description is yet only a distant hope, certainly not an accomplishment.
It would require an evolutionary miracle. Nearly everything man counts as intelligent behavior (nearly everything man measures on intelligence tests) had its human origin within only the last several thousand years. Early Homo sapiens—biological equivalents to ourselves—displayed almost nothing of what we currently describe as intelligent behavior. Thus if the human brain is to be conceived of as both the physical source and the physical location of human intelligence, then the current structure of the human brain must have sprung up all at once population wide, in violation of everything we know about biological evolution.
It would be utterly superfluous. Every aspect of human intelligence can be described by appealing to something material within the human environment. Language, mathematics, logic—every feature of human intelligence has a tangible and lasting form within the physical surroundings, form that thoroughly defines the feature. To repeat that tangible and lasting form within the structures of the human brain would be, to put it mildly, excessively redundant.

The desire to translate the effects of environmental complexity into physical impacts upon the human brain is nothing but the consequence of a scientific prejudice—a prejudice without evidence, likelihood, or need.

In summary, those who are proponents of increasing environmental complexity as an explanation for the Flynn effect are certainly on the right track, but to arrive at their destination, they must learn to be more bold. In particular:

They must stop emphasizing things or sets of things when characterizing environmental complexity. It is the total amount of environmental complexity—that is to say, the landscape-wide accumulation of environmental intelligence—that has been the continuous force driving the Flynn effect.
They must accept that the combined elements of environmental complexity are quite literally the material form of human intelligence itself. They must quit looking for intelligence within our neurons, they must not stop expecting to find intelligence inside our heads.

(Wai and Putallaz 2011): Wai, Jonathan; Putallaz, Martha. 2011. “The Flynn effect puzzle: A 30-year examination from the right tail of the ability distribution provides some missing pieces.” Intelligence (in press).

Flynn Effect 103

2011-09-14T02:24:00.003-04:00

James Flynn, in his book What is Intelligence (Flynn 2007), lists several paradoxes he associates with intelligence and the Flynn effect. One of his paradoxes (labeled as the identical twins paradox) is described by Flynn as follows:

“There is no doubt that twins separated at birth, and raised apart, have very similar IQs, presumably because of their identical genes. Indeed a wide range of studies show that genes dominate individual differences in IQ and that environment is feeble. And yet, IQ gains are so great as to signal the existence of environmental factors of enormous potency. How can environment be both so feeble and so potent?”

In a previous post, Flynn Effect 101, I provide a description of human intelligence that portrays it as consisting of two separate aspects. The first aspect is labeled as environmental intelligence, and is defined to be the amount of non-biological pattern, structure and form tangibly contained within a given physical environment. The second aspect is labeled as individual intelligence, comparable to what gets measured on intelligence tests and defined as an individual's ability to absorb environmental intelligence and respond constructively to it.

One of the merits of this description is that it resolves Flynn's identical twins paradox, by showing that it is not paradoxical at all.

Here is a short summary of the hypothetical example created in Flynn Effect 101 to demonstrate the concepts of environmental intelligence and individual intelligence:

At time 1, the environment contains a certain amount of non-biological pattern, structure and form (environmental intelligence) measured as 200 ei. [Both the number and unit are arbitrary. For the example, all that's required is that the quantified amount be less than it will be at time 2.] Also at time 1, there are three individuals named A1, B1, and C1, who based upon their population-normed performances on intelligence tests display the following set of intelligence results:

Time 1 Environmental Intelligence: 200 ei.

Time 1 Test Performance:

A1: 80% of environmental intelligence mastered (high intelligence)
B1: 70% of environmental intelligence mastered (medium intelligence)
C1: 60% of environmental intelligence mastered (low intelligence)

Time 1 Absolute (Raw) Intelligence Score:

A1: 160 ei (80% times 200 ei)
B1: 140 ei (70% times 200 ei)
C1: 120 ei (60% times 200 ei)

At time 2—assumed to be several generations later—the amount of non-biological pattern, structure and form located in the human environment has increased to the point where it can now be measured at 400 ei. A2, B2 and C2, identified as biologically equivalent descendents of A1, B1, and C1, perform as follows on the time 2 intelligence tests:

Time 2 Environmental Intelligence: 400 ei.

Time 2 Test Performance:

A2: 80% of environmental intelligence mastered (high intelligence)
B2: 70% of environmental intelligence mastered (medium intelligence)
C2: 60% of environmental intelligence mastered (low intelligence)

Time 2 Absolute (Raw) Intelligence Score:

A2: 320 ei (80% times 400 ei)
B2: 280 ei (70% times 400 ei)
C2: 240 ei (60% times 400 ei)

At any given point in time—whether it be time 1, time 2, or any other we might consider—it is individual intelligence, in the form of relative intelligence scores, that dominates the psychometric landscape. Using point-in-time scores alone, cognitive scientists can gather a wealth of information about relative human intelligence, including such statistics as g factor analysis and correlations to academic and career achievement. And as Flynn has rightly noted, in the real world these statistics lead to the inevitable conclusion that individual intelligence differences are produced primarily by genetically-driven biological forces. At any given point in time, environment scarcely gets to play a role at all; it is, as Flynn suggests, utterly feeble.

Furthermore, individual intelligence differences, as seen in both the hypothetical example and in real-world numbers, remain extremely constant over time, precisely as we might expect for a phenomenon being produced from a biological source. The human biological form—genetics, neurons, and all—does not rapidly transform over a stretch of time. And indeed, we have every reason to expect that the human biological factors determining individual intelligence would have been working in much the same way as they do now from as early as tens of thousands of years ago. When it comes to individual intelligence, biology is more than just potent—it is constant and dominant.

And yet … over time, while human biology has remained constant, the absolute level of human intelligence has relentlessly and ubiquitously continued to grow.

Cognitive scientists immediately go off track by trying to attribute this phenomenon known as the Flynn effect to those same biological components underlying individual intelligence, when in fact there is no logically compelling reason to do so. It is only a prejudice that convinces scientists to believe that the material form of human intelligence must be generated inside the human brain. In the hypothetical example above, it is clearly not a biological force that is generating the across-time raw intelligence advances. The increase in absolute levels of intelligence from time 1 to time 2 are driven solely by the increase in environmental intelligence, by the increase in non-biological pattern, structure and form tangibly contained within the physical environment.

The phenomenon of environmental intelligence is not widely recognized, but one can hardly say this is because the phenomenon is unobservable. Just a cursory glance at human history from the time of man's great leap forward, as well as a cursory glance at the rapidly transforming human landscape, should be more than adequate to convince even the greatest skeptic that there has been an ever-increasing amount of non-biological pattern, structure and form being continuously introduced into the human environment. Neural biology is constant—the constant ability to absorb pattern, structure and form—but that constant ability encounters an ever-expanding target. Over time, it is the environment—the entire environment—that becomes the dominant factor driving massive, population-wide intelligence gains. Biology, including genetics, scarcely gets to play a role at all; it is, in this domain, utterly feeble.

There is a simple analogy for the relationship between individual intelligence and environmental intelligence. Think of some ships in a harbor, including lightweight ships such as pleasure craft and heavy duty ships such as battle cruisers. We can take a measurement (relative to a fixed vertical point on land) of the bottommost part of each ship and we'll discover that there are some significant differences. Some ships will sit higher, some will sit lower. Through further analysis of such characteristics as geometric structure and material density (equivalent to psychometric analysis), we can identify ship-based factors that determine relative vertical positions in the water, exactly as we presently determine factors such as genetics that seem to drive intelligence differences among individuals.

If we then move forwards in time, we might discover that a comprehensive measurement reveals all the same relative differences in bottommost positions of the ships (with the same factors driving these relative differences), and yet we also discover that the absolute position of each ship has risen by a significantly large amount. If we make the mistake of trying to explain this increase by appealing to the characteristics of the ships themselves, we will get nowhere; the characteristics of the ships can help explain their relative vertical positions, but they do nothing for explaining their change in absolute vertical position. For that, we must turn to the context (the environment) of these ships, and in this case it is of course the water that is serving (literally) as the rising tide that raises all ships.

Environmental intelligence, the amount of non-biological pattern, structure and form tangibly contained within the physical environment, serves as the universal context of human intelligence—the relentless, ubiquitous increase in environmental intelligence has been the dominant factor driving the Flynn effect. Individual intelligence, defined as the ability to absorb environmental intelligence and respond constructively to it, remains stable in the human population over time, as is to be expected from a genetically-determined, biologically-driven skill. Both components are potent, each in its own domain; and viewed in this light, Flynn's identical twins paradox swiftly disappears.

(Flynn 2007): Flynn, James R. 2007. What Is Intelligence?: Beyond the Flynn Effect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Flynn Effect 102

2011-09-13T00:15:00.003-04:00

James Flynn, in his book What is Intelligence (Flynn 2007), lists several paradoxes he associates with intelligence and the Flynn effect. Two of these paradoxes (labeled as the intelligence paradox and the mental retardation paradox) deal with the problem that people from one time period appear to be too implausibly dumb or too implausibly smart compared to people from a different time period. Flynn describes these paradoxes as follows:

“If huge IQ gains are intelligence gains, why are we not struck by the extraordinary subtlety of our children's conversation? Why do we not have to make allowances for the limitations of our parents? A difference of some 18 points in Full Scale IQ over two generations ought to be highly visible.

“If we project IQ gains back to 1900, the average IQ scored against current norms was somewhere between 50 and 70. If IQ gains are in any sense real, we are driven to the absurd conclusion that a majority of our ancestors were mentally retarded.”

The resolution to each of these paradoxes is to recognize that Flynn is mixing up two different aspects of intelligence; he is mixing up environmental intelligence and individual intelligence. In particular, he is using changed rankings in one aspect (environmental intelligence) to infer that there must be a corresponding change in rankings for the other aspect (individual intelligence). It simply does not work that way.

In my previous post, Flynn Effect 101, I created a hypothetical example to demonstrate the concepts of environmental intelligence and individual intelligence, and to show how these concepts can produce the kinds of intelligence differences we routinely observe in individuals while at the same time producing the Flynn effect. Here is a short summary of that example:

At time 1, the environment contains a certain amount of non-biological pattern, structure and form (environmental intelligence) measured as 200 ei. [Both the number and unit are arbitrary. For the example, all that's required is that the quantified amount be less than it will be at time 2.] Also at time 1, there are three individuals named A1, B1, and C1 who based upon their population-normed performances on intelligence tests display the following set of intelligence results:

Time 1 Environmental Intelligence: 200 ei.

Time 1 Test Performance:

A1: 80% of environmental intelligence mastered (high intelligence)
B1: 70% of environmental intelligence mastered (medium intelligence)
C1: 60% of environmental intelligence mastered (low intelligence)

Time 1 Absolute (Raw) Intelligence Score:

A1: 160 ei (80% times 200 ei)
B1: 140 ei (70% times 200 ei)
C1: 120 ei (60% times 200 ei)

Time 2 Environmental Intelligence: 400 ei.

Time 2 Test Performance:

A2: 80% of environmental intelligence mastered (high intelligence)
B2: 70% of environmental intelligence mastered (medium intelligence)
C2: 60% of environmental intelligence mastered (low intelligence)

Time 2 Absolute (Raw) Intelligence Score:

A2: 320 ei (80% times 400 ei)
B2: 280 ei (70% times 400 ei)
C2: 240 ei (60% times 400 ei)

Let's begin by concentrating on the individual named A1. At time 1, A1 is assessed to be a smart person. He is able to absorb and constructively respond to about 80% of the environmental intelligence to be found around him, an ability he demonstrates through his performance on intelligence tests—tests which are composed out of representative examples from that same environmental intelligence. And as A1 navigates through his time 1 world, we can expect relatively high achievement compared to that of, for instance, B1 and C1.

But if we take A1's absolute (raw) intelligence score of 160 ei and compare it to those who live in the time 2 world, A1 suddenly doesn't look so smart. 160 ei is well below the 240 ei score of C2, a person assessed to be of low intelligence at time 2. If 240 ei is considered to be of low intelligence at time 2, then A1's score of 160 ei must make him out to be a borderline imbecile.

So which is it, is A1 a smart person or an imbecile? The answer is that A1 is a smart person, no matter what time period is being considered.

It is a logical mistake to think that A1's relatively low score of 160 ei at time 2 has anything to do with A1's intellectual ability, has anything to do with A1's individual intelligence. A1 has the capacity to absorb around 80% of the environmental intelligence around him, no matter what that environment might happen to be, and so if we could magically transport A1 forward in time and raise him in a time 2 world, he would absorb and constructively respond to about 80% of the time 2 environment. That means he would score at an absolute level of 320 ei, which at time 2 is pretty darn good. A1's score of 160 ei at time 1 is produced not just by his individual ability, it is produced also in concert with the amount of environmental intelligence existing at that time. His raw score of 160 ei looks low at time 2 solely due to the fact that the level of environmental intelligence has so dramatically increased from time 1 to time 2.

If we concentrate on the individual named C2 and contemplate going backwards in time, we'll witness the same phenomenon at work in reverse. At time 2, C2's absolute (raw) score of 240 ei puts him in the category of low intelligence, suggesting life circumstances that can be expected to be more difficult than for his cohorts A2 and B2. But if we take C2's score of 240 ei and place it in the time 1 context, C2 suddenly comes across as a Mensa candidate, and we might be wondering if C2 could have been a high achiever, if only he had had the good fortune to be born at time 1.

So which is it, is C2 a person of low intelligence or a Mensa candidate? The answer is that C2 is a person of low intelligence, no matter what time period is being considered.

Just as in the analysis of A1's circumstances, the relative positioning of C2's raw intelligence score at times 2 and 1 has nothing to do with C2's intellectual ability (individual intelligence). It is solely a consequence of the difference in environmental intelligence between the two time periods. If C2 could be magically sent back and raised at time 1, he would score at an absolute level of 120 ei and be judged once again to have low intelligence. The timing of his birth cannot alter his personal intellectual ability.

Allow me to tackle a non-hypothetical example that Flynn mentions in his book: the learning of baseball rules. After noting that the average raw intelligence score from about 1900 would translate to an IQ of about 50 to 70 on today's scale, Flynn raises the specter of the following tableau:

“Jensen relates an interview with a young man with a Wechsler IQ of 75. Despite the fact he attended baseball games frequently, he was vague about the rules, did not know how many players were on a team, could not name the teams his home team played, and could not name any of the most famous players.

“When Americans attended baseball games a century ago, were almost half of them too dull to follow the game or use a scorecard? My father who was born in 1885 taught me to keep score and spoke as if this was something virtually everyone did when he was a boy. How did Englishmen play cricket in 1900? Taking their mean IQ at face value, most of them would need a minder to position them in the field, tell them when to bat, and tell them when the innings was over.”

This is a perfect example of taking a change in raw intelligence scores as evidence for a change in individual intelligence, when in fact it is evidence for a change in environmental intelligence.

Think about putting some questions dealing with baseball rules on an intelligence test. If you had put those questions on a test administered in 1800, absolutely no one would have answered the questions correctly, including the smartest people who then lived. On the other hand, if you had put such questions on a test administered in 2000, lots of folks, including those of average intelligence, would have been able to answer the questions correctly—by then baseball and its rules had become an established part of the human environment. Following Flynn's anecdote, you would have had to drop down to those with an IQ of about 75 before you might have consistently expected to get wrong answers on basic baseball questions in the year 2000.

So does this imply that the smartest people in 1800 had about the same intellectual capacity as Jensen's young man? Flynn would like us to ponder that question as though it were a genuine paradox, but in fact the question itself is based upon nothing but a logical fallacy.

If you had placed problems about baseball rules on an intelligence test administered in 1900, you would have gotten a mixed set of results. Some people would have been able to solve them correctly, but others would not, including folks of otherwise average to high intelligence, since baseball had not yet become widely entrenched in the human environment (in 1900, the game was just then catching on). But let's take one of those folks of average to high intelligence who had just failed to solve the problems correctly (because of having never been exposed to baseball), and let's buy that person a ticket and take him to the ballpark. Let's sit with him in the grandstands, go over some of the basic rules, offer him a scorecard and pencil. How do we expect him to perform? Keep in mind that this is a person of average to high intelligence, he has the capacity to absorb quite a bit from what the environment has to offer, there is really nothing amiss in his individual intellectual ability. He will pick up the rules of the game quite easily, he will hardly give them a second thought. And around 1900, this is a scene that would have been repeating itself again and again and again.

The increase in raw intelligence scores from 1900 to 2000 has everything to do with the increasing amount of environmental intelligence (including the addition of baseball rules) and it has nothing to do with individual intellectual abilities.

Allow me just one more example, this one dear to both Professor Flynn and myself. Allow me to consider the intelligence of an ancient Greek named Aristotle.

If an intelligence test appropriate for the classical Athenian environment had been administered to Aristotle, I'm certain he would have scored quite well on it, likely among the top tier of his fellow citizens; Aristotle left behind ample evidence he could absorb a very large portion of the classical Athenian surroundings. But if on the other hand the equivalent of a modern intelligence test had been administered to Aristotle, he would have found nearly all its questions to be utterly incomprehensible. Aristotle had no notion of the number 0. His arithmetic and algebraic skills were crude at best. He had been speaking a language with a more limited vocabulary and simpler grammar than our own. (Not to mention, his baseball knowledge was completely nil.) Almost the entirety of a modern intelligence test would have looked unfamiliar to Aristotle, and his raw score by necessity would have registered exceptionally low.

Does this mean Aristotle was intellectually inferior to us? As I hope the reader must realize by now, it does not mean that at all.

Aristotle's low raw intelligence score on a modern intelligence exam would be driven entirely by the difference in amounts of environmental intelligence existing between classical Athens and the modern world. There would be nothing defective about Aristotle's individual intelligence, and indeed if we could magically transport Aristotle forwards in time and raise him in modern Athens, his ample intellectual capacity would no doubt allow him to absorb as much of the current intellectual environment as do the smartest among us. Dare I say, he might even blossom into a modern-day genius.

As all these examples demonstrate, the Flynn effect is being driven entirely by the ever-increasing amount of non-biological pattern, structure and form existing within the human environment. The Flynn effect has everything to do with environmental intelligence and has nothing to do with individual intelligence. In particular, the Flynn effect has nothing to do with our biological intellectual capacity. It has nothing to do with the neurons inside our head.

(Flynn 2007): Flynn, James R. 2007. What Is Intelligence?: Beyond the Flynn Effect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Flynn Effect 101

2011-09-09T03:11:00.003-04:00

A new study on the Flynn effect (Wai and Putallaz 2011) is providing evidence that the Flynn effect has similar impact across the entire range of human intellectual ability (from low IQ folks to high IQ folks) and the Flynn effect continues to be prominent in the U.S. school-aged population through the present day. No matter when, where or how we look at the Flynn effect, it continues to sit there stubbornly as a cold hard ubiquitous fact.

An unexplained cold hard ubiquitous fact.

Let me take this occasion to describe once more the concept of intelligence from a new perspective, a perspective that apparently has never been considered before but a perspective that has the merit of making some sense out of the Flynn effect.

I think most scientists struggle to explain both intelligence and the Flynn effect because they have prematurely convinced themselves these are brain-based (neural) phenomena. At best, this is only partially true, and it’s not the most important part. The brain plays only a secondary role in human intelligence (an essential role, but secondary nonetheless). The primary source, the primary location, of human intelligence is the human environment.

So as not to confuse concepts, let me dub this primary source of intelligence as environmental intelligence. As such, environmental intelligence can be defined as the amount of non-biological pattern, structure and form that has been tangibly introduced into a given physical environment. In the current human environment, covering nearly the entirety of the Earth’s surface, that would encompass a very broad list of items—the structure in our languages, the way our streets are laid out in grids, the funny-looking but rule-based markings in arithmetic books, the symmetry and repetition of ceiling fans, and so on.

The Earth’s surface once had none of these items that form the corpus of environmental intelligence, but is now literally covered in them, with more plasterings arriving every day. And that observation is the simple key to understanding the Flynn effect.

If you accept that the amount of environmental intelligence is the measure of intelligence, then the Flynn effect becomes, if you’ll pardon the pun, a no-brainer. No one would question that the amount of environmental intelligence has been steadily increasing over the years—the physical world today contains far more non-biological pattern, structure and form than it did in previous times. And this steady increase would date all the way back to man’s great leap forward, meaning that the Flynn effect, at least as measured by environmental intelligence, is not just a twentieth-century phenomenon, and there is no reason to expect it will end anytime soon.

In contrast to environmental intelligence, the other concept that plays a role (the secondary role) in this new perspective on intelligence is a concept I will dub individual intelligence. Individual intelligence is much closer to what people traditionally think of when they consider intelligence, and like environmental intelligence, individual intelligence can be provided with a definition. Here is what I propose:

Individual intelligence is the ability to absorb environmental intelligence and respond constructively to it.

The merit in this definition is that it corresponds almost precisely to what we measure with intelligence tests. If you look at the content of any intelligence test, you’ll see that it consists almost entirely of the types of items that fall under our given definition of environmental intelligence—that is, we pose problems regarding such things as the structure of our languages, the geometry of our surroundings, the workings of our arithmetic, the recognition of symmetry and repetition, and so on; we ask questions based upon the non-biological pattern, structure and form that generally exists within our surrounding environment. (Note that we do not measure an individual’s ability to mate, gather food or run the 100-meter dash. When it comes to measuring intelligence, our biological capabilities are mostly irrelevant.) For a person to do well on an intelligence test requires first that he understand and recognize the context of the problems (that is, he has to absorb something about their environmental intelligence) and next that he respond accurately to them (which is to say, constructively, not destructively or randomly). Intelligence tests are of course not perfect—they serve only as a proxy for individual intelligence, but by and large they are considered to be a fairly decent proxy.

As the definition says, individual intelligence is an ability (as opposed to environmental intelligence, which is an artifact). This ability varies from person to person, and therefore it’s not unreasonable to assume an assortment of genetic, neurological and developmental factors could be driving this variableness. Indeed, if individual intelligence were the only aspect of intelligence to consider, then perhaps I might understand science’s preoccupation with the human brain. But as it turns out, individual intelligence is not the only aspect to consider, and when it comes to the Flynn effect, individual intelligence is not even the consequential aspect.

Armed with these definitions of environmental intelligence and individual intelligence, let’s examine what happens when humans take intelligence tests across a range of time. Let’s begin with a hypothetical moment in time we’ll number as 1. At time 1, we can consider three individuals who are taking the standard battery of intelligence tests for that moment, and we’ll name these three individuals A1, B1, and C1.

Keep in mind that these intelligence tests are serving as a proxy for measuring individual intelligence, which by definition means they are measuring the amount of environmental intelligence each test-taker is able to absorb and to respond to correctly. As such, we can state the test-takers’ results as a percentage of environmental intelligence that each has accurately handled (as contained in and measured by the test):

· A1: 80% of environmental intelligence accurately handled.
· B1: 70% of environmental intelligence accurately handled.
· C1: 60% of environmental intelligence accurately handled.

These results can then be compared to those of other test-takers and normed (as is done routinely in the non-hypothetical world), and based upon such statistics, we might come to the conclusion that A1 is displaying high intelligence (high individual intelligence), B1 is displaying medium intelligence, and C1 is displaying low intelligence.

Note that everything quantified and assessed so far is only a relative measure of intelligence (no absolute measure of anyone’s intelligence has yet been stated). Even so, nothing is preventing scientists from taking the details of these results and performing all sorts of psychometric analyses, including such things as g-factor analysis, intellectual disability analysis, and so on (and of course in the non-hypothetical world, that is precisely what gets done). No one needs an absolute measure of intelligence to perform all the currently popular forms of psychometric intelligence analysis; everything is based solely upon relative measures of intelligence. That is the nature of individual intelligence—it is premised strictly upon relative abilities.

What would it take to obtain an absolute measure of the intelligences of A1, B1, and C1? Note that even though the contents of the intelligence tests are based upon the artifacts composing environmental intelligence, and even though the results are stated as a percentage of environmental intelligence accurately mastered, and even though the comparison of these percentages allows scientists to obtain a wealth of information regarding individual intelligence, still, an assessment of absolute intelligence can only be obtained by going back and quantifying environmental intelligence. By definition, an individual’s absolute level of intelligence consists of two separate inputs: one, the individual’s ability to master environmental intelligence (measurable by intelligence tests), and two, the amount of environmental intelligence that exists to be mastered.

As a practical matter, quantifying environmental intelligence would not be an easy task, but as a theoretical matter, there should be no objection—environmental intelligence simply consists of tangible aspects from the physical world. In my hypothetical example, I’m going to assume someone has surmounted the practical difficulties at time 1 and has measured the level of environmental intelligence to be about 200 (200 ei, if you need a unit). Keep in mind that this quantity represents the amount of pattern, structure and form that can be found in the human environment at time 1.

Using this quantification of environmental intelligence at time 1, we can now state the intelligences of A1, B1, and C1 in absolute terms:

· A1: 160 ei (80% times 200 ei)
· B1: 140 ei (70% times 200 ei)
· C1: 120 ei (60% times 200 ei)

Interestingly enough, this effort actually produces nothing of psychometric significance for time 1. Everything scientists would need to study individual intelligence is already available in the relative scores—the addendum of absolute scores serves as little more than an adornment. Still, we will be glad to have gone the extra mile, for the possession of these absolute scores will soon prove to be invaluable, when we make the leap forward to time 2.

To set the stage for time 2, we’re going to assume we’ve crossed the temporal range of a handful of generations. The world has changed a bit. Transportation has improved—now more widespread and somewhat faster. Languages are a bit richer, mathematics has added a few discoveries and insightful techniques. The architectural arrangement of the everyday world has become just a little more complex and a little more structured—you know, the usual improvements. Those with the tools and the know-how have taken a measurement of all these external changes, and at time 2 they quantify the total amount of pattern, structure and form existing within the physical human world to be approximately 400 ei, twice what it was at time 1.

A1, B1 and C1 are no longer with us, but we have the next best thing, some of their descendents, namely A2, B2 and C2. Because it’s been only a handful of generations, A2, B2 and C2 are genetically and neurologically quite similar to their time 1 ancestors; in fact, we can assume that biologically they are nearly exact equivalents. Even better, A2, B2 and C2 have retained the exact same intelligence strengths relative to one another and relative to the general population (as measured by performance on intelligence tests). Here’s a chart that highlights this equivalence:

· A2: 80% of environmental intelligence accurately handled (high intelligence).
· B2: 70% of environmental intelligence accurately handled (medium intelligence).
· C2: 60% of environmental intelligence accurately handled (low intelligence).

When a psychometric analysis is made of these individuals and their population cohorts, the results come out essentially unchanged from time 1. Factor analysis and correlation statistics look quite similar, all relative measures have the same relativity, and everything is pointing to the unmistakable conclusion that as far as individual intelligence goes, time 2 is no different than time 1.

On the other hand, there is one remarkable thing to note about those intelligence tests. (Well, at least Professor Flynn would have found it remarkable—he might have been inclined to make my hypothetical world more aware of its existence.) The first set of intelligence tests that were given to A2, B2, and C2 were the exact same tests that had been given to their ancestors, A1, B1 and C1. And wouldn’t you know it, A2, B2 and C2 found those tests to be laughably easy! In fact, the tests were so laughably easy and everyone did so well on them, they were no longer useful for making relative comparisons. The test-givers had to throw them out and come up with new tests.

More difficult tests. Tests containing a larger amount of pattern, structure and form.

It doesn’t take much investigation to figure out why the time 1 tests are no longer useful in the time 2 world. Although A2, B2 and C2 have not changed one iota in their relative intelligence to one another and in their relative intelligence to the extant population, and although A2, B2 and C2 have remained exact equivalents to their ancestors in all neurological aspects, nonetheless their absolute intelligence has taken a quantum leap. And this is solely due to the fact that environmental intelligence has taken a quantum leap as well:

· A2: 320 ei (80% times 400 ei)
· B2: 280 ei (70% times 400 ei)
· C2: 240 ei (60% times 400 ei)

An intelligence test given at any particular moment in time must reflect (must consist of) the environmental intelligence that exists at that same moment. A2, B2 and C2 are prepared to face an intelligence test that reflects the time 2 environment because that is precisely the environment they have been absorbing. There will be individual differences of course, but the overall environmental influence remains primary and impacts each individual nearly the same, and since the time 2 structural environment is essentially an augmentation over the time 1 structural environment, the inevitable consequence is that anyone raised at time 2 will find himself making relative mincemeat out of a time 1 test.

And that, my friends, is the Flynn effect in a nutshell. Of course this description requires we give up our old notions regarding intelligence, requires first and foremost we quit insisting intelligence must be found inside our neurons. That scientific dogma is certainly quite popular, almost to the point of unanimity, but I’m convinced it will do nothing for helping explain the Flynn effect.

No, the primary source of human intelligence, the primary driver of the Flynn effect, is to be found in the increasing amount of environmental intelligence that can be readily witnessed all around us. Cognitive scientists are certainly free to keep searching for intelligence within the neuronal tangles of the human brain, but I’m afraid they will be looking long and hard without result. If scientists really want to see the material form of human intelligence, then I would suggest they do something quite different, something quite radical.

I would suggest they open their eyes.

Change of Aspect

2011-09-08T00:25:00.001-04:00

Let the Flynn effect tell us something about the nature of intelligence instead of the other way round. Once we approach intelligence with inquisitive eyes—instead of with neural prejudice—we can begin to understand why Aristotle would have been far less intelligent than us, without being nearly so dumb.

Concocted Paradox

2011-09-07T22:39:00.001-04:00

No concept of the number zero. Scarcely any awareness of basic arithmetic or algebraic technique. Spoke a semantically, structurally, word-count poorer language than our own. Couldn't have worked a computer if his life depended on it. But just for kicks, let's assume Aristotle would have been a whiz-bang on modern intelligence tests—at least that will put Professor Flynn's sensitivities at ease.

More Much Ado about Nothing

2011-09-05T11:08:00.001-04:00

Studies like this (and their accompanying press releases) have become a dime a dozen. The real question we should be asking ourselves is how many more of these “breakthroughs” do we need to see before we begin recognizing them as more con job than science. You think we would have learned by now.

If anything, the persistent drumbeat of promising announcements should be alerting us to how completely bankrupt autism science has become. Fields in which there is true understanding and true progress being made would not have time for such a steady stream of traveling medicine shows.

Missing Link

2011-09-04T14:07:00.001-04:00

How does a species that has unveiled nearly all its intelligence in just the last several thousand years come to the conclusion it must have evolved it? That's not very intelligent.

Feeling Their Way Along

2011-09-02T00:25:00.001-04:00

Boy I tell you, the phrenologists have nothing over the current crop of neuroscientists.

Autism, Genetics, and Species

2011-09-01T01:12:00.001-04:00

If you naively raise a chimpanzee infant as a human child, you'll eventually come to the conclusion it must be autistic (severely autistic). But that same chimpanzee infant reared among other chimpanzees would be assessed as quite normal.

To some degree, all individual organisms differ genetically from one another, but organisms tend to clump together into tight genetic categories we recognize as species. Within a tolerance of difference, each organism becomes a member of, and develops alongside, the other organisms who also exist within that same tolerance of difference.

What happens when the tolerance is exceeded? The chimpanzee infant raised as a human child would be an extreme example, but each case need not be so extreme.

Scientists En Masse

2011-08-30T23:03:00.002-04:00

In Janet Stemwedel's latest infomercial for scientific orthodoxy, she makes a pregnant observation:

"… the grade-schooler’s ambition to be a scientist someday is significantly more attainable than the ambition to be a Grammy-winning recording artist, a pro-athlete, an astronaut, or the President of the United States."

No question about it. In fact, if anything Ms. Stemwedel is understating the current situation, for it seems to me that with scientific methodology so freely available and so effectively recruited for, we're practically standing on the doorstep of that promised land—the glorious day when everyone is a scientist. Just as Kierkegaard once remarked upon the warm, fuzzy convenience of being a nineteenth-century Dane, when everyone became a Christian merely by being born within the country's borders, today we can celebrate a further two centuries of warm, fuzzy progress by noting that everyone is becoming a scientist simply by being born at all. Ah, the sweet, communal utopia! All of us as warm, fuzzy members in the norm-of-universalism club.

Well, not quite all of us: I know of at least one individual who insists on opting out.

Catching Up on My Reading

2011-08-29T01:02:00.003-04:00

I just got back from a week's vacation during which I had limited Internet access (a surprisingly refreshing experience, by the way). Catching up on my reading, I came upon two informative and contrasting views of autism.

The first is from Noah Egler, thirteen years old and diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome:

“Two signs that you have Asperger's. You can't find your planner and when you do, it has Boolean logic written on it.”

I've seen many attempts to capture the essence of autism, but I'm not sure any can top that.

But for an entirely different perspective, we can turn to David Amaral's Report on Progress within the scientific community to understand autism as a disorder. Here are a couple summarizing sentences:

“The bottom line from the current genetics of autism is that it is very complex.”

“… the neuropathology underlying the disorder is subtle.”

Not quite as delightful as Noah Egler's observation, and certainly not as accurate. “Complex” and “subtle” are what are known in the rhetorical world as weasel words. They are a not-so-honest way of not quite admitting that after spending hundreds of millions of dollars and decades worth of research into assessing autism as a disorder, scientists today still don't have the first clue as to what is going on. But then again, why would they? Not when nearly the entirety of their effort is going into discovering what is wrong with Noah Egler.

And that pretty much sums up the current state of autism knowledge. One thirteen-year-old autistic boy understands his condition far better than the entire autism research community. I wouldn't expect those circumstances to change very soon. I wouldn't expect them to change until the research community begins listening to Noah Egler, instead of trying to fix him.

By the way, I came across both these articles—as I do many others—by perusing Michelle Dawson's Twitter feed. If you don't follow it, I encourage you to do so. Ms. Dawson has a keen eye.

Cheap Fabric

2011-08-18T00:47:00.001-04:00

Scientific method serves the purpose (not to be undervalued) of spreading science to the masses; it fosters the dissemination of science, and thus it is perfectly understandable we emphasize the methodology's social aspects. But make no mistake about it—this is not the science of Newton, Darwin, Einstein. This is the science of S. Baron-Cohen, G. Dawson, A. Klin, and millions of others just like them. Rub your finger across the results and you'll quickly feel the difference.

The One Versus the Many

2011-08-17T01:16:00.001-04:00

Scientific methodology serves as the veneer-like copy of science—functional, perhaps more immediately satisfying, suitable for the masses—but not inspired enough to create lasting effect. Science can't be reduced to methodology any more than religion can, and science must remain the province of the individual, the individual acting ruthlessly alone.

An Empty Glass

2011-08-15T12:25:00.003-04:00

Sally Ozonoff, discussing her recent study in Pediatrics that demonstrates the chances of developing autism are about 1 in 5 for the younger siblings of those already diagnosed with autism, makes it all too clear where she and her fellow researchers stand on the relative value of autistic individuals:

"These findings are much higher than any of us anticipated, but the flip side is that over 80% of these children did not develop autism," says Ozonoff. "That is really important for these families to hang on to. The glass is still more than half full."

Sally Ozonoff has spent nearly the entirety of her adult life demonstrating that the one subject she does not understand is autism, and yet she feels qualified enough to opine to the entire world that autistic individuals are worth less than their non-autistic peers. Arrogance is too weak a word to describe what is going on here.

Autism research is by and large a good thing. Autism researchers, however, are mostly evil.

The Problem with Animal Intelligence

2011-08-11T00:06:00.001-04:00

In nearly all instances, we're observing behavior which is based upon human context or human support—in which case it isn't animal. Or we're observing behavior that is completely biological and natural—in which case it isn't intelligence.

Another Casualty of Neuroscience

2011-08-06T22:46:00.000-04:00

The Flynn effect is right in front of everyone's eyes, not behind everyone's eyes.

Neanderthal Genes

2011-08-01T00:04:00.001-04:00

More evidence has recently appeared stating that many modern Homo sapiens carry a small percentage of Neanderthal-derived genes, possibly as the result of interbreeding that occurred around the time of man's great leap forward. Although these results are still subject to further investigation, the data does provide some confirmation of earlier findings, suggesting that a consistent picture is beginning to emerge.

Near the end of my essay Reflections on the Work of Richard Klein, I engage in some speculation that these Neanderthal-derived genes could be the material source of autism everyone is looking for. The idea is that beyond a certain threshold, a large enough presence of Neanderthal-derived genes would make it difficult for an individual to recognize and attach to the other members of Homo sapiens around him, and this lack of species recognition and species-focused perception would in turn engender the broad array of autistic behaviors so frequently observed.

If this speculation is going to have any legs, what we might expect to see next—probably within the next couple years or so—is the emergence of studies highlighting a significant correlation between a larger presence of Neanderthal-derived genes and the occurrence of such conditions as schizophrenia, bipolar, and autism. If such studies do begin to appear and if they turn out to be accurate, this would have the effect of raising my idea from one of mere speculation to intriguing possibility.

Nonetheless, I'm not exactly married to the idea—the material cause of autism could easily end up being found elsewhere. What I do want to point out, however, is that right or wrong this idea does demonstrate that there are legitimate means of examining genetic difference besides just assuming genetic defect. The current fervor within the autism research community to presuppose that every barely significant genetic difference must result inevitably in synaptic damage or connectivity dysfunction (or whatever happens to be the neurological affliction flavor of the day)—well, let's just say that this approach has betrayed both a bankruptcy in results and a bankruptcy in vision. Autism researchers have been demonstrating that they understand almost nothing about the mechanics of genetics, and have been demonstrating very little else.

One more thing. Even if it turns out that the presence of Neanderthal-derived genes are correlated with the presence of autism, this does not mean that Neanderthals possessed autistic-like characteristics and that these characteristics are somehow being expressed through the genes. This is another poor way of looking at the mechanics of genetics, and even worse, it is a poor way of looking at anthropological history. We have only limited archaeological information regarding Neanderthals, but what little information we do have suggests a very primitive, quite animal-like existence, not dissimilar from that of early Homo sapiens. It is an overly romantic and all-too-common fallacy to ascribe modern human behaviors to our ancient ancestors, not recognizing that almost the entire panoply of modern human behavior was developed only quite recently, and this would hold true for most autistic behaviors as well. Ancient humans—that is, humans prior to man's great leap forward—are not described best as either autistic or non-autistic. They are described best as animal-like. And to recognize the massive scale of the intervening transformation is to recognize why all these questions and speculations are so terribly important.

Sunk Costs

2011-07-30T12:57:00.001-04:00

Hundreds of millions of dollars in autism research leading collectively nowhere is still valuable evidence—evidence that we're getting nowhere. So why is that never the stated conclusion?

An Empty Meal

2011-07-25T20:51:00.001-04:00

Listen to how those who propose an environmental cause for autism highlight the lack of evidence for a specific genetic cause—the hungry stealing from the hungry.

History Lesson

2011-07-17T17:38:00.002-04:00

Scientific method used to be the means of getting away from typical thinking. Now scientific method is the means of typical thinking.

This Is Getting Ridiculous

2011-06-25T20:09:00.001-04:00

Pre-fatherhood I used to run quite a bit, and for an amateur I could post some fairly decent times. Thus it's always been interesting for me to keep an eye on the running performances of Alex Bain, who would occasionally post times approaching some of my best. I kept wondering if he would progress to the point of being faster than I had been.

Little did I know.

Alex has been on a proverbial tear this summer, shredding past personal bests and posting numbers I could have only dreamed of. His latest impressive feat is a 1:28 half-marathon, which is nothing short of phenomenal.

My heartiest congratulations to Alex for his elite summer of running!

The Dreams of a Software Consultant Who Needs a New Job

2011-05-25T21:19:00.000-04:00

You're given a task:

“The client's toilet is overflowing. They've contracted you to fix it.” It dawns on you that you're a plumber in this scenario and you have plumbing skills and experience. You think you can do the job.

When you arrive, it's an enormous building, one of the largest you've ever seen. A man meets you in the lobby.

“The broken toilet is on the 72^nd floor.”

You walk over to the elevator and push the button. Nothing happens.

“Are the elevators working?”

“No. None of them are.”

“When will they be fixed?”

“Isn't that your job?”

“I don't know anything about elevators.”

He looks at you funny, like you're stupid or lazy or both. You glance at the stairwell. Seventy-two floors is an awfully long ways to climb. But you want to do the job, so you walk on over. The door is locked.

“Can I get in the stairwell?” you ask.

“We have tight security here.”

“Is there any other way up?”

“You can fix the elevator.”

You don't know what to say. He pulls a crumpled paper from his pocket. “The last plumber scaled the side of the building. He left instructions. They might not be complete.”

Just then, a stream of dirty water trickles past on the floor.

“You need to hurry,” he says. “That toilet is our number one priority.”

The alarm goes off. It's time to go to work.

Mirror Symmetry

2011-05-24T05:02:00.003-04:00

I'm afraid I have very little time for autism discussions these days, but I do want to make a few quick and unstructured remarks about the Mottron team's recent paper on mirror symmetry (Perreault et al. 2011). [And please note, I am using the term “Mottron team” simply as a rhetorical shortcut to reference the various people associated with Laurent Mottron and his research labs; as far as I know, there is no such thing as a formal Mottron team.]

First off, (Perreault et al. 2011) is one of the more well-crafted papers I have seen in recent history. Concise, well-written, with an extremely instructive and informative Discussion section. Although I still object to multiple-author papers on principle, the inclusion of a forthright Author Contributions section helps ameliorate some of the concerns. (I sure would like to see some of the hundred-author goliaths make a similar attempt at explaining who contributed what—that might be eye-opening.) More wonderful yet is that the paper has been published in an open access journal, so that everyone can read it without having to beg, borrow or steal a copy. Thoughtful science that can be reviewed by the public at large—now there's a radical idea!

This study is fairly straightforward and simple. It uses a series of pixel-based images to measure recognition of symmetry around various axis orientations. In short, the study reports two major findings: 1. both autistics and non-autistics are more capable of recognizing vertical symmetry than symmetry around other axis orientations; and 2. as a group, autistics are more capable of recognizing symmetry (around all axis orientations) than non-autistics are.

This is yet another result indicating that autistic perception seems to be geared towards recognizing various forms of structure and pattern to be found in the surrounding sensory environment. Similar results have been reported in for instance (Klin et al. 2009) and (Annaz et al. 2011), and of course the most eloquent discussion of this idea can be found in (Mottron, Dawson, Soulières 2009). What makes the members of the Mottron team unique in this regard is that apparently only they recognize that this characteristic of autistic perception is not a defect to be treated, but is instead a trait that can be valuable and profound. It would be difficult to overstate the importance of that recognition, or to overstate the blindness of researchers who fail to make a similar recognition.

As much as I like (Perreault et al. 2011), I do have a couple criticisms to make. The first is a criticism I have made in the past regarding the Mottron team and its efforts. For a team that does such an exceptional job of providing detailed, thoughtful, inventive, evidence-based descriptions of autistic perception, I am utterly astounded at how little effort is made towards providing a corresponding description of non-autistic perception. In this paper for instance, the complete discussion of non-autistic perception can be found in the statement “such parallel access would be less likely in non-autistic individuals, whose ability to use local information from early visual areas would be diminished due to typical globally-biased processing hierarchies.” Come to think of it, that is about thirty words more devoted to the subject than in past Mottron team papers. Indeed, if you were to fill in the persistent blanks from (Perreault et al. 2011) and most other Mottron-team articles, you would have to arrive at the following conclusion: non-autistic perception is simply a deficient form of autistic perception, completely lacking in local processing strength, utterly bereft of adequate perceptual processing and clearly defective at recognizing environmental structure and pattern. Heck, the Mottron team has even managed to perform some comparative brain imaging studies so that we can see in full glorious detail which sections of the non-autistic brain must be tragically miswired!

Of course, having had experience with this type of argument before, I feel fairly confident in saying that there is nothing deficient or defective about non-autistic perception at all—non-autistic perception is simply a different form of perception, with its own set of strengths and weaknesses, and should be valued as such. If it turns out that autistics do indeed possess enhanced perceptual functioning—as the Mottron team likes to suggest—then I assert that non-autistics must also possess an enhanced something. But ask the Mottron team what that enhanced something is and you will apparently get nothing in return but silence. That annoys me. All the excellent work the Mottron team has put into accurately and thoroughly describing autistic perception is going to go to waste if not accompanied by a similarly accurate and thorough description of non-autistic perception. The two shed light and contrast on each other.

I have many times suggested that the enhanced something of non-autistic perception is the keen ability to be species-aware or species-focused, to be perceptually sensitive to the species-related features to be found in the surrounding sensory environment. The Mottron team is perfectly free to disagree with that point of view, to provide alternatives, to weigh in with evidence, etc. But to remain silent on the subject—that I find hard to comprehend.

My other criticism has to do with the argument that sensitivity to vertical symmetry can serve as a proxy for global processing. It may be that I'm misunderstanding the argument, but if I'm reading it correctly it seems to run something like this:

Non-autistics, who tend to be good at global processing, are more sensitivity to vertical symmetry.
Perhaps non-autistic sensitivity to vertical symmetry is driven by biological experience, such as the awareness of human faces (which evince vertical symmetry).
Since autistics are more sensitivity to vertical symmetry than symmetry around other axis orientations, autistics must also possess some of the same global processing abilities and biological awareness as non-autistics do.
But in addition, since autistics are more sensitive than non-autistics to symmetry in all orientations, autistics must also possess local processing and other perceptual strengths. (Thus, autistics can see both the forest and the trees, as the authors would have it.)

To be honest, I'm not sure any of that argument scans logically, but even putting that concern aside, I have a much bigger objection to the use of vertical symmetry as a proxy for global processing, and I can sum that objection up in one word: gravity.

On the surface of this planet, the main line of force runs straight up and down. Indeed, that's what vertical means—it's the axis of orientation in line with gravity's effect. In an environment in which there were no primary line of force, the assignment of vertical would be an arbitrary choice. But it's not arbitrary around here.

For various biological and physical reasons all relating to gravity, the primary form of symmetry to be found on the Earth's surface is vertical symmetry. Many plants and animals have evolved in concert with vertical symmetry, because fighting the effects of gravity is not biologically economical. This preference for vertical symmetry has also carried over to man's many constructions—the Parthenon for instance is an orgy of vertical symmetry, because otherwise it would fall down. And not only are most of the objects being perceived oriented around vertical symmetry, the entities doing the perceiving are also oriented in the same way. Look at the position of the eyes, ears and hands and tell me that we (and most other animals) are not naturally geared towards the perception of vertical symmetry. Vertical symmetry is the rule on this planet; everything else is the exception.

Thus as a surmise, I could take autistics and make the assumption that they have no global processing abilities whatsoever and no biological recognition at all, including the recognition of human faces, and yet I would still expect them to have more sensitivity to vertical symmetry than to any other orientation. Whatever autistics are perceiving in their environment the chances are still extremely high that it is mostly oriented around vertical symmetry. That is just a natural consequence of being an inhabitant of the Earth's surface.

To be honest, I'm not sure I even understand what global processing is supposed to mean. But when it comes to explaining perceptual sensitivity to vertical symmetry, I don't need to understand global processing. Gravity makes for a far simpler explanation.

Criticisms aside, (Perreault et al. 2011) is yet another instructive work from the Mottron team. That team's continuing emphasis on autistic perception and the team's recognition of the importance of symmetry and pattern to autistic perception have provided a consistent, positive way forward to understanding autistic individuals, valuing their contributions, and helping them to succeed. As usual, I find myself both rewarded and inspired by these thoughtful efforts.

(Perreault et al. 2011): Perreault A, Gurnsey R, Dawson M, Mottron L, Bertone A. 2011. “Increased Sensitivity to Mirror Symmetry in Autism.” PLoS ONE 6(4): e19519.

(Klin et al. 2009): Klin, Ami; Lin, David J.; Gorrindo, Phillip; Ramsay, Gordon; Jones, Warren. 2009. “Two-year-olds with Autism Orient to Non-Social Contingencies Rather than Biological Motion.” Nature 459: 257–61.

(Annaz et al. 2011): Annaz, D.; Campbell, R.; Coleman, M.; Milne, E.; Swettenham, J. 2011. “Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Do Not Preferentially Attend to Biological Motion.” Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders (ePub ahead of print).

(Mottron, Dawson, Soulières 2009): Mottron L, Dawson M, Soulières I. 2009. “Enhanced perception in savant syndrome: patterns, structure and creativity.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 364: 1385–1391.

Core Deficit

2011-05-07T20:59:00.004-04:00

Here is a brief abstract that recently popped up on PubMed:

Preferential attention to biological motion can be seen in typically developing infants in the first few days of life and is thought to be an important precursor in the development of social communication. We examined whether children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) aged 3-7 years preferentially attend to point-light displays depicting biological motion. We found that children with ASD did not preferentially attend to biological motion over phase-scrambled motion, but did preferentially attend to a point-light display of a spinning top rather than a human walker. In contrast a neurotypical matched control group preferentially attended to the human, biological motion in both conditions. The results suggest a core deficit in attending to biological motion in ASD. (Annaz et al. 2011)

I don't have access to the paper, just the abstract, so the usual caveats apply. But it would appear this study is in much the same vein as (Klin et al. 2009), which I have commented on previously and which gives what would appear to be a similar set of results. In fact, I'll repeat what I said about (Klin et al. 2009) since it seems to apply equally well to (Annaz et al. 2011). These studies are revealing that:

Non-autistic children respond preferably to (mostly human) biological motion, and do not respond preferably to non-biological pattern and structure.
Autistic children respond preferably to non-biological pattern and structure, and do not respond preferably to human biological motion.
Neither population responds preferably to random sensory noise.

Predictably, (Annaz et al. 2011) commits the same stupidity as (Klin et al. 2009) by interpreting these results as somehow disastrous for autistic individuals, inexplicably judging autistic perceptual characteristics as evidence of a “core deficit.” I'm sure I must be sounding like a broken record by now, but given the astounding amount of scientific blindness on display here, I feel obligated to highlight at least one more time the “core deficit” behind these shallow interpretations:

Nearly every species on this planet shows a preference for and a dexterity with biological motion, particularly biological motion associated with the species itself. But there is only one species on this planet that displays any preference for and dexterity with such things as spinning tops (and all the other patterned- and structure-based artifacts that are the hallmarks of modern civilization). Before we go off mindlessly describing the characteristics of autistic perception as a core deficit, we might want to stop and consider for a moment where this species would be without the benefit of that core deficit.

Scientific Fraud

2011-04-14T21:17:00.003-04:00

The recent indictment of Danish researcher Poul Thorsen seems to have uncovered an instance of massive scientific fraud, but I don’t mean the kind of fraud Thorsen is being accused of.

In response to the many vociferous arguments from the anti-vaccine throng that the MMR- and Thimerosal-based studies Thorsen co-authored are now tainted and suspect, a common defense from the anti-anti-vaccine throng has been to declare that Thorsen actually played little or no significant role in the preparation of these studies and papers. For instance, this defense has been argued in some detail (and several times) by Orac over at Respectful Insolence. Highlighting Thorsen’s middling position in the authorship lists and noting various timeline and logistical details, Orac concludes that Thorsen was probably little more than a bit player in the production of these papers, and thus his involvement and subsequent alleged fraud do not warrant a scientific re-evaluation of the works themselves.

Here is what I find unsettling about that argument (well, more than just unsettling—sickening is probably a better word): I actually think Orac is probably correct in his analysis, all the way from beginning to end, but then Orac and all his scientific-minded colleagues fail to ask the obvious question that undoubtedly must come next:

If Poul Thorsen did not make a significant contribution to these studies, then what the hell is his name doing on the authorship list?

Of course I’m afraid we all know the answer to that question (wink-wink, nudge-nudge), and we all know why scientific-minded colleagues are so reluctant to ask it. They’re reluctant to ask because unfortunately this kind of scientific fraud is a little too widespread and hits a little too close to home.

There are 7 authors listed on the Thimerosal study in question, and there are 8 authors listed for the MMR study. Ask yourself this question: how many of those authors actually made a significant contribution to these studies?

If you do a PubMed search for autism and G. Dawson, you will find that Geraldine Dawson—who I must point out already holds a high-paying, supposedly full-time job as Chief Science Officer for Autism Speaks—has somehow managed to also appear as an author on more than twenty autism-related papers published within just the last two years alone. Ask yourself this question: how many of those papers do you think G. Dawson actually make a significant contribution to?

When the extent of Andrew Wakefield’s fraud began to come to light, several of his co-authors distanced themselves by pointing out how uninvolved they were with Wakefield’s study and how little they contributed to the preparation of the paper itself. Ask yourself this question: does that admission somehow make them look better?

A listed co-author is either making a significant contribution to the science or he is not. You can’t argue it both ways.

If the facts support the accusations being made against Poul Thorsen, then he is indeed guilty of fraud and deserves to have the book thrown at him. But just as importantly, if scientists are regularly claiming authorship for studies and papers for which they have contributed little or nothing of importance, then they also are committing fraud and should have the book thrown at them too—no matter how many scientists we’re talking about or how prominent they may be. In fact, in some prominent instances, that might mean throwing the book many many times.

Eloquence

2011-04-05T18:20:00.002-04:00

Many thanks to Jonathan Mitchell for alerting me to the following jewel:

“When we try to turn an autistic toddler into a non-autistic toddler, it’s painful, it’s expensive and it does not work.”

That statement comes from Laurent Mottron in a Vancouver Sun article, and although the statement seems a bit out of context within the article itself, it is a gem nonetheless.

And note how counter that statement runs to the assumed wisdom of almost the entire autism community—one voice on the side of acceptance and understanding against the nonstop cacophony crying for intensive early intervention. But as happens so often in such situations, it is the lone voice that conveys simple eloquence, while the crowd remains … well, just a crowd.

Autistic Songs

2011-03-22T21:50:00.002-04:00

I have written a book called Autistic Songs and it is now available in its final version. Roughly speaking, the book is a selection of posts from this blog, tidied up and loosely organized.

Autistic Songs is available in its entirety from www.autisticsongs.com, which is indeed the desirable place to access the book’s contents, since the price is tough to beat. However, for anyone who prefers a more traditional package, the book is also available for purchase from iUniverse and Amazon.

So High Up I Can Hardly See

2011-03-16T20:38:00.001-04:00

It was just a matter of time. Now we have an Overview of Meta-Analyses on Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention for Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Just a few more overviews and we can move up to the next level. Which reminds me: I call dibs on writing the first survey of the reviews of the summaries of the overviews of meta-analyses on early intensive behavioral interventions for young children with autism spectrum disorders.

I wonder if the autistic kids actually being subjected to early intensive behavioral interventions appreciate all these meta-efforts being made on their behalf.

Learning and Memory in Autism

2011-02-24T16:19:00.003-05:00

I am long overdue to provide some comments on two works from Laurent Mottron’s autism research team. The first is Learning in Autism (Dawson et al. 2008), and the second is A Different Memory: Are Distinctions Drawn from the Study of Non-autistic Memory Appropriate to Describe Memory in Autism? (Mottron et al. 2008). Neither work in its official form is what I would call reasonably available (more on that later), but a bit of diligent searching on the Internet might lead you to a full copy of each. Please make the attempt to do so—the results will ultimately reward your efforts.

(Dawson et al. 2008) is a fairly clever work with an excellent thesis, although I must admit it is a bit of a slog to read. The reason for the difficulty is that (Dawson et al. 2008) is in the form of a research literature review—without a doubt the most soporific rhetorical device ever concocted. But if you can keep your eyes open long enough, you will realize that a bit of a subversive trick is being played with this form, a trick intriguing enough to pique some genuine interest. Rather than using the device of a literature review to arrive at the usual lukewarm, averaged-out conclusions about the current state of autism science, (Dawson et al. 2008) instead uses the form to demonstrate that the current state of that science is almost entirely wrong-headed.

The current state of autism science generally focuses on the difficulties involved in getting autistic individuals to learn in traditional, non-autistic ways, but (Dawson et al. 2008) reveals again and again that such efforts lead almost invariably to frustration, inconsistencies and poor outcomes—results that the researchers themselves often remain blind to because of their preexisting bias. I imagine that more than a few of the cited authors must have found themselves rather shocked and appalled at the way (Dawson et al. 2008) turned some of their studies’ conclusions seemingly upside down; but the turnabout is both fair and accurate, for it derives from a simple source—namely, that there is an alternative way of looking at autistic learning that can provide far more productive results.

Instead of requiring autistic individuals to learn in traditional, non-autistic ways, a good deal of evidence suggests that outcomes are generally better, more satisfying and less contradictory when we allow autistic individuals to learn in autistic ways. That is, autistic learning is generally enhanced when we encourage autistic individuals to be more autistic, not less. This is the informative and subversive theme that begins to emerge from the pages of (Dawson et al. 2008), and it is that theme that makes the work both fresh and innovative.

(Mottron et al. 2008) is actually quite enjoyable to read, one of the more rhetorically pleasing works the Mottron team has penned—the paper’s delicately amusing use of sea creatures, for instance, is an especially delightful touch. There is also something deft and inspired about the overall approach of the work, which might be summarized roughly as follows: An ethical argument would say that autistic competence should always be assumed as a starting point in research, but since autism scientists do not seem to be swayed by the ethical argument, a pragmatic argument can be made instead that ends up leading to the exact same result. Thus, in effect, the entire paper serves as a kind of gentle, back-door shaming of the scientific community into being more ethical in its assumptions regarding autistic individuals. Not your standard autism research fare.

And along the way, the reader picks up useful information about memory and autism, in such areas as savant memory, surface versus deep memory, and categorization. In each instance, despite the scientific community beginning with the assumption that autistic abilities are impaired, the research has invariably led—slowly, but surely—to the more useful and informative conclusion that autistic cognitive abilities, while different than the norm, are viable and valuable in their own way. In this manner, the overall lesson of (Mottron et al. 2008) manages to transcend the subject matter of memory alone, clearly and respectfully pointing the way to a more productive—and more ethical—approach for all autism research. Not too shabby for a paper that makes such liberal use of squid.

If I have a reservation about these two works, it can be crystallized by referring to where they can be found—each work is essentially buried inside the kind of large, dry, overpriced and mostly uninformative academic tome that, along with the onslaught of large, dry, overpriced and mostly uninformative academic journals, has become the standard and approved means of presentation for autism science. And although it is certainly not my place to suggest to the Mottron team how it publishes its work, still I must admit to a certain amount of conflicted feeling when I see that team’s work so deeply ensconced within the customary confines of the autism science community. It makes me wonder in the end, who is influencing whom?

Understand that if it were not for the Mottron research team, I would be able to write off the autism science community in its entirety. For me, without the slightest doubt, autism science—minus the Mottron research team—serves one purpose and one purpose only: to be the foremost example of how incredibly far astray science can actually go. One day, scientists will be looking back on this chapter in their history with the utmost shame, because here is an entire scientific community that has managed, in tremendously large numbers, to match its complete arrogance by an equally complete incompetence.

In truth, the Mottron team has been the only reliable oasis within that vast desert. By serving as the one research team that consistently begins with the assumption that autistic individuals are valuable and interesting as they actually are, the Mottron team has been able to provide at least a moderate amount of useful and productive scientific insight. But because the Mottron team insists on remaining part of the autism science community, ostensibly for the purpose of influencing that community, it appears to me that the team’s message too often becomes hopelessly engulfed in the sandstorms of ignorance swirling all around it.

Listen, science does not come with a guarantee of nobility, and there is such a thing as guilt by association.

I could of course be wrong about all this, and for the sake of autistic individuals I hope that I am. But my fear is genuine. My fear is that the image of being buried as the next-to-last chapter in a large, dry, overpriced and mostly uninformative autism research tome will in the end become the defining metaphor for the Mottron research team. And that outcome would be more than just poor—it would be, in the true sense of the word, tragic.

(Dawson et al. 2008): Dawson, Michelle; Mottron, Laurent; and Gernsbacher, Morton Ann. 2008. “Learning in Autism.” In Learning and Memory: A Comprehensive Reference, J.H. Bryne (series editor) and H. Roediger (volume editor). New York: Elsevier.

(Mottron et al. 2008): Mottron, Laurent; Dawson, Michelle; and Soulières, Isabelle. 2008. “A different memory: Are distinctions drawn from the study of non-autistic memory appropriate to describe memory in autism?” In Memory in Autism, J. Boucher and D. Bowler, editors. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Social Progress

2011-02-12T15:07:00.004-05:00

The following paragraph forms the abstract for a new autism article, Autism as a Natural Human Variation: Reflections on the Claims of the Neurodiversity Movement (Jaarsma and Welin 2011), a report written no doubt by some highly privileged researchers:

Neurodiversity has remained a controversial concept over the last decade. In its broadest sense the concept of neurodiversity regards atypical neurological development as a normal human difference. The neurodiversity claim contains at least two different aspects. The first aspect is that autism, among other neurological conditions, is first and foremost a natural variation. The other aspect is about conferring rights and in particular value to the neurodiversity condition, demanding recognition and acceptance. Autism can be seen as a natural variation on par with for example homosexuality. The broad version of the neurodiversity claim, covering low-functioning as well as high-functioning autism, is problematic. Only a narrow conception of neurodiversity, referring exclusively to high-functioning autists, is reasonable. We will discuss the effects of DSM categorization and the medical model for high functioning autists. After a discussion of autism as a culture we will analyze various possible strategies for the neurodiversity movement to claim extra resources for autists as members of an underprivileged culture without being labelled disabled or as having a disorder. We will discuss their vulnerable status as a group and what obligation that confers on the majority of neurotypicals.

Allow me to make a small (and admittedly ugly) revision to that paragraph, and let’s assume now that it has been written by some highly privileged caucasians:

The civil rights movement has remained a controversial concept over the last decade. In its broadest sense the concept of civil rights regards non-white skin color as a normal human difference. The movement’s claim contains at least two different aspects. The first aspect is that being black, among other racial conditions, is first and foremost a natural variation. The other aspect is about conferring rights and in particular value to different racial conditions, demanding recognition and acceptance. Being black can be seen as a natural variation on par with for example homosexuality. The broad version of the civil rights claim, covering extremely dark-skinned blacks as well as mulattoes, is problematic. Only a narrow conception of civil rights, referring exclusively to mulattoes, is reasonable. We will discuss the effects of Jim Crow laws and the segregation model for mulattoes. After a discussion of being black as a culture we will analyze various possible strategies for the civil rights movement to claim extra resources for mulattoes as members of an underprivileged culture without being labelled sub-human or as having a disorder. We will discuss their vulnerable status as a group and what obligation that confers on the majority of whites.

You see, that is the amazing thing about human ignorance and arrogance—no matter what happens in the world, those characteristics can always find a new home.

(Jaarsma and Welin 2011): Jaarsma, Pier; Welin, Stellan. 2011. “Autism as a Natural Human Variation: Reflections on the Claims of the Neurodiversity Movement.” Health Care Analysis (in press).

Autism as Offense

2010-12-31T13:41:00.002-05:00

“The moment when an individual is unwilling to subordinate himself to the established order or indeed even questions its being true, yes, charges it with being untruth, whereas he declares that he himself is in the truth and of the truth, declares that the truth lies specifically in inwardness—then there is the collision.” (Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity)

The autism industry is both popular and large. From autism scientists (all too happy to promote their latest breakthrough, treatment or cure) to autism charity groups (all too happy to raise the next dollar for their "non-profit" coffers) to government officials (all too happy to sponsor namesake legislation credited with easing autism's burden)—every direction one turns, one can find yet another crowd jumping onto the autism-as-blight bandwagon. And who would dare blame them? Because if anything stands as an affront to normalcy, it would have to be autism—that paragon of abnormality. If anything stands as an outrage against the status quo, it would have to be autism—that epitome of deviation. If anything stands as an insult to the bandwagon-jumping crowd, it would have to be autism—that apex of going it alone. Thus we hear the mantra being repeated incessantly throughout the land: autism is a disease, autism is a disorder, autism is a tragedy, autism must be stopped. Many reputations and livelihoods now depend upon that mantra and upon its incessant repetition.

But should an autistic individual defy this established order, confront this multitude, set himself up as one against the many, shout loudly enough to be heard against authority's command, “No, you are all wrong, completely wrong. I am not diseased, not disordered, not a tragedy, I will not be stopped. Autism's truth is to be discovered by listening to those like me, because autism's truth is within me, from me, of me. Let me show you what this condition can be, let me demonstrate what autism can do.” Should this individual be so defiant as to draw attention to himself, he will be met by the bandwagon-jumping crowd with derision, with intervention, with demands he be treated and cured. He will damn near be crucified.

Autism is a rebellious god, and thus continues to offend.

II.

“He wants to save all, but in order to be saved they must go through the possibility of offense—ah, it is as if he, the savior who wants to save all, came to stand almost alone because everyone is offended at him.”

Not that long ago humanity lived as little more than animal, a cognitive and behavioral slave to survival and procreation alone, and left to the typical forms of species-driven perception, man would still be living as little more than animal to this day. But come hither, my friend. Come hither and hear the good news, for autism has brought forth a miraculous transformation. With their perceptions not dominated by species-specific focus, with their perceptions now liberated to recognize the pattern, structure and form of the surrounding, non-biological world, autistic individuals have brought forth the power of atypicality, have brought forth the splendor of paradigm-shifting vision, have brought forth the majesty of rebellious upheaval, have brought forth the miracle of continuous human surprise. In a mere sliver of time—a sliver of time so short it must have left evolutionary history gasping with awe—man has ridden the strength of these strange new perceptions straight in off the hunter-gatherers grassy plain, straight forwards in search of an entire universe.

But should an autistic individual make proud note of these achievements, appeal to these autistic merits, herald these autistic strengths, announce pressingly the good news to a disbelieving, rejecting public, “But don't you see, it has always been the atypical vision that has advanced human understanding, forwarded the human condition. Just look at all the great innovators—Archimedes, Michelangelo, Newton, Beethoven, Turing—not a typical individual among them, only those who have lived far outside the human norm. Do not look to your commonest neighbor, look instead to the unusual one standing apart—there you will find the key to humanity's unprecedented turn.” Should this individual be so pressing as to draw attention to himself, he will be met by the disbelieving, rejecting public with strong words of their own: “Foolish lout! Deluded bastard! Arrogant lunatic!” They will practically spit the words right into his face.

Autism is an accomplished god, and thus continues to offend.

III.

“That a human being falls into the power of his enemies and does nothing, that is human. But that the one whose almighty hand had done signs and wonders, that he now stands there powerless and paralyzed—precisely this is what brings him to be denied.”

Autism presents grave challenges. Because autistic individuals do not readily perceive and attach to other humans, because they cannot easily organize their experiences around the species itself and around what other people do, autistic individuals find themselves detached from the human population, right from a very early age. Deprived of the typical means of development, autistic individuals of necessity mature slowly and awkwardly. Deprived of the typical means of sensory organization, autistic individuals must struggle through an assortment of sensory difficulties. The non-autistic population—so easily in tune with one another, so naturally aware of what other people do, so effortlessly imitative of nearly everyone around them—judges autistic detachment to be a sign of sickness, evidence of a tragic defect. Stubbornly unconvinced that autistic individuals can organize their perceptions in an entirely different manner (a manner which has created profound benefit for the entire human population), the non-autistic population demands of autistic individuals that they learn to perceive and behave exactly as everyone else, and when this effort ultimately fails (as fail it must), autistic individuals are written off as broken, written off as a burden, written off as completely without hope.

But should an autistic individual request a modicum of understanding, ask that his progress be measured by his own standard, seek permission to mature at his own pace, beseech desperately for an ounce of approval from the disapproving throng, “But please, be charitable—my atypicality is not just my strength, it is my weakness as well. Allow me more time, offer me some patience, give me the opportunity to raise myself by my own unusual means.” Should this individual be so beseeching as to draw attention to himself, he will be met by the disapproving throng with a shake of its collective head, with the back of its collective hand: “Your unusual means are the evidence of your sickness, they are what prevents you from being competent just like us. If not so, then prove yourself, heal yourself, support yourself—make your so-called grandeur evident at this very moment, make your powerful abilities apparent so that all can plainly see.” In the silence that immediately follows, both the disappointment and the mockery are ready made.

Autism is a humbled god, and thus continues to offend.

Reflections on the Work of Richard Klein

2010-12-18T20:23:00.002-05:00

Richard G. Klein is a paleontologist and currently a professor at Stanford University. His work and his writings have done much to provide evidence for and to popularize the out-of-Africa theory of human evolution (known more scientifically as the recent single-origin hypothesis). This theory postulates that Homo sapiens—who have been anatomically indistinguishable from modern humans since about 150 to 200 thousand years ago—experienced a sudden and decisive change in behavior beginning around 50 thousand years ago; and concurrent with this change, Homo sapiens undertook a major migratory expansion out of Africa, soon swamping and extincting the similarly lineaged populations Homo neanderthalensis and Homo erectus, eventually becoming the overwhelming biological force we now can witness all around this planet. Over the last two decades, this theory has been supported by a growing accumulation of archaeological and genetic evidence, so much so that the theory is now accepted almost universally, and unless and until new contradictory evidence comes to light, the out-of-Africa theory must be considered as the definitive framework for describing recent human evolution.

Richard Klein seems to be a rare beast among modern scientists. He is plain spoken, more attracted to evidence and theory than to academic politics, and—note this especially—he tackles large scientific questions, not the mere trivialities that pad most curriculum vitae. In fact, the central question of Klein's work—what were the circumstances that prompted man to cross that great conceptual divide from simple primate to complex cultural being—stands as perhaps the most important unanswered question currently facing modern science. And if anyone has made more progress in shining a clarifying light on that question than Richard Klein has, I have yet to see it.

Much of Klein's summarization of human evolution can be found inside his two books The Human Career: Human Biological and Cultural Origins and The Dawn of Human Culture. However, for the purpose of the central question of Klein's work, there are two short and readily available presentations that encapsulate most of his essential ideas. The first is a lecture entitled Behavioral and Biological Origins of Modern Humans, delivered to the California Academy of Sciences in 1997. The second is a paper published in 2008, Out of Africa and the Evolution of Human Behavior, which can be regarded as an update to the evidence presented in the earlier lecture with Klein's views still essentially intact. These two presentations are both excellent examples of scientific clarity and honesty (so much so that many academicians might have a hard time recognizing them as scientific), and I urge anyone not already familiar with Klein's ideas to devote an hour or so to reading through these two documents—it will be time well invested on what is a fundamental and extremely important topic.

Although there are several scientists who have contributed to our understanding of the out-of-Africa theory, the area where Klein has most distinguished himself is in the painting of a clear, evidence-backed portrait of how sudden the Homo sapiens transformation was beginning around 50 thousand years ago and how overwhelming was its impact and expansive reach. Pointing to the fossil and archaeological evidence, Klein describes three distinct Homo-based populations that existed just prior to 50 thousand years ago: 1. the remnant lineage from Homo erectus, the successors from an earlier (over 1 million years ago) exodus from Africa, living primarily in the habitable areas of Asia; 2. Homo Neanderthalensis, a branch that had been occupying parts of Europe and the Middle East since around 400 thousand years ago; and 3. Homo sapiens, still in Africa and evolved into the anatomical form of modern humans by around 150 to 200 thousand years ago.

Although these three populations were geographically distinct and possessed distinguishing anatomical features, they were also remarkably alike in many fundamental respects. For one, they all had similar brain size, and perhaps more importantly, they all had similar behavior—behavior that could be captured in a single word … unremarkable.

Klein takes great pains to demonstrate that in site after site dating prior to 50 thousand years ago, there is no evidence to be found of form-based tools, artwork, jewelry, clothing, weaponry, etc., artifacts that soon will be making a sudden and explosive appearance on the human stage. He underscores that although Homo-based populations had certainly undergone behavioral changes since branching off from the other primates some seven million years earlier, the behaviors prior to just 50 thousand years ago were still far more comparable to older primate behaviors than to the modern behaviors that were about to emerge. Indeed, one can surmise that if an alien intelligence had visited this planet just prior to 50 thousand years ago, it would have found nothing remarkable about any of these Homo-based populations—these were simply primates scratching out their subsistence, indistinguishable bit players in the massive Earthly chorus of survival and procreation. Considering their meager numbers, and looking dispassionately at the fossil and archaeological evidence that Klein presents to us, we would have to conclude there was nothing in the circumstances of these Homo-based populations that would mark them as anything more than animal.

And then suddenly everything changed. And it has not stopped changing since.

The astonishing alteration first appeared near East Africa, right around 50 thousand years ago. In that location—and quickly expanding from there—you suddenly could find ostrich shell beads, form-based tools such as needles and awls, evidence of fishing technology, female figurines, clothing, burial displays, weapons galore. These suddenly innovative Homo sapiens soon began reaching into Europe and Asia, leaving behind a trail of newfound abilities literally everywhere along the path. They quickly overwhelmed and extincted the Neanderthals (Klein passionately describes the profound effect it had on him to see the sophisticated remnants of Cro-magnon culture (Homo sapiens) layered right on top of the less sophisticated artifacts of the Neanderthals, evidence of no intervening gap), and although the archaeological record is less complete in Asia, in part due to the ongoing interference of modern governments, it would appear Homo erectus also suffered a similar fate at the hands of these rapidly moving invaders. Their new mastery allowed Homo sapiens to boat to Australia by as early as 40 thousand years ago. Their unprecedented trapping, textile and construction techniques enabled them to inhabit colder climates, including Siberia, thus leading the way across the then dry Bering Straits and straight into the Americas. By ten thousand years ago, humanity had become so technologically adept it could begin trading its hunter-gatherer existence for domesticated animals and crops, and by six thousand years ago the species was building enormous civilizations and recording for posterity its burgeoning feats. By five hundred years ago, man could … well, you already know what man could do by then—just take a good look around.

It is hard to say which has been the more impressive: the suddenness of man's transformation, or the power of his planet-conquering reach. One thing is for certain: compared to the accomplishments of the previous 50 thousand years (or the previous 5 million years for that matter), these post-transformation exploits of Homo sapiens can only be described as stunning—stunning to an infinite degree.

But you need not take my word for it. Richard Klein has already laid out this entire tableau in exquisite detail, and he has seen all the evidence first hand.

As certain and insistent as Klein sounds about the immediacy and effectiveness of the Homo sapiens revolution, he sounds equally uncertain about the reasons why.

Klein has put forth—quite tentatively, I might add—what he describes as the most “economic” explanation for man's great leap forward, positing a sudden genetic mutation, one powerful enough to produce significant and immediate neurological impact, such as the kind that would induce rapidly spoken language. Against this thesis, it is commonly asserted within the academic community that the buildup to the Homo sapiens transformation must have been far more gradual than that, with various kinds of social and cultural evolutionary change—such as additional reliance on the nuclear family, an altered diet, theory of mind acquisition, a budding adaptability to change—all serving as the necessary forerunners to the dramatic upshot still to come.

Klein easily and quite rightly dismisses such counter proposals. In the first place, these explanations would need to be counted as tautological at best, since they are essentially positing that Homo sapiens behavior changed because Homo sapiens behavior changed. But even disregarding that obvious logical weakness, Klein demonstrates with the stubborn insistence of cold hard facts that such explanations are completely at odds with the fossil and archaeological record. Any slow evolutionary accretion of dramatically unique cultural and social conduct—including behaviors that would have been dependent upon a sophisticated use of language—could not have conceivably taken place without leaving behind a conspicuous trail of evidence. But what little (and mostly questionable) evidence has been offered in support of these evolutionary precursors ends up looking paltry and sparse next to the abundantly rich artifacts associated with the post-transformation epoch. Klein recognizes such vague explanations as not based upon the preponderance of evidence but instead as the type of fuzzy, non-committal solution generally favored by academicians—academicians who cannot be bothered by either logic or facts.

Klein is a scientist who insists on being bothered by logic and facts, which is why I suspect he is being so hesitant—for his explanation has myriad problems of its own.

The challenge of uncovering the catalyst behind Homo sapiens' sudden transformation must seem like a type of lock to Klein, one for which he has gauged its characteristics with a painstaking accuracy. He knows the contours of the many tumblers, has measured the keyhole for size, understands all too well the quick-releasing mechanism. He can dismiss the vague academic solutions as scarcely qualifying for keys at all—perhaps more than anyone else he can recognize the need here for something more tangible and immediate. Yet economically speaking, how many reasonable solutions actually exist? After all, Klein seems to be wanting to convince us—and to convince himself—is there not only one? A genetic mutation holds the promise of suddenness; a significantly altered neurological structure carries the potential for effective power. But in appealing to the genome and human brain for explaining mankind's astonishing transformation, Klein falls victim to that same fatal illness now plaguing the entirety of modern science—he has infused both genetics and neurology with an implausible human magic.

Intelligence, language, memory, numeracy, artistry, technological tool-producing vision—the scientific literature is now chock-full of genetic and neurological descriptions accounting for this entire host of impressive cognitive and behavioral skills. In genetic paper after genetic paper, you will find the microarray analysis protocols, the sequence-based samples, all lined up impressively along one side, and matched against that glorious detail you will find the list of unparalleled traits and attributes that have cast Homo sapiens as distinctively modern. Voilà, the genetic scientists all seem to say, and we break into terrific applause. But should an inquiring voice call out from the back of the room and wonder what connects transcription to observable behavior, what bit of mechanism links nucleotide to lyric poem, that voice will be greeted with an uncomfortably lengthy pause. Marvelous genetics here, astonishing behavior there, but in between … not one single connecting step.

The human brain has fared no better. In neurological paper after neurological paper, you will find entire albums of fMRI photographs, brilliant diffusion tensor pictures, all plastered across their pages in a technicolor glory, and matched against that vivid detail you will find the list of unparalleled traits and attributes that have cast Homo sapiens as distinctively modern. Voilà, the cognitive scientists all seem to say, and we break into terrific applause. But should an inquiring voice call out from the back of the room and wonder what connects resonance image to actual behavior, what bit of mechanism links synapse to third root of pi, that voice will be greeted with an uncomfortably lengthy pause. Vibrant images here, rational behavior there, but in between … not one single connecting step.

These connecting steps are not some mere trivial detail, not the mop-up work for a graduate student assistant; and yet even those scientists who can appreciate the importance of such linkages will speak as though their discovery is simply a matter of time. The secrets of human genetics and human neurology must emerge, these scientists all seem a little too willing to assure us, because in fact the scientific community has already accepted genetics and neurology as the driving force behind mankind's cognitive and behavioral splendor—no demonstration is apparently required.

But that state of affairs must seem a bit awkward for Richard Klein, whose mutation hypothesis, perhaps more than anything else, needs precisely that demonstration. Because without it, Klein's hypothesis does not even rise to level of relevance.

Intelligence, language, memory, numeracy, artistry, technological tool-producing vision—the scope and potency of that list can only be regarded as downright shocking, for there is no evidence any of these skills existed prior to 50 thousand years ago. The scene Klein lays before us is extraordinarily surprising, nothing at all like what might have been predicted. Its timeline defies every temporal characteristic of evolutionary history, its details contradict all expectation of species. So unique is the story of the Homo sapiens transformation that it might be more prudent to think evolution and biology must have played no role at all. In any typical approach to animal domains and behavior, genetic mutations would be expected to do their work only gradually, stepwise upon the species—their transmittal spread out across many generations, if not across entire ages. In any typical approach to animal domains and behavior, neurological restructurings would be expected to produce their impact only locally, specific to particular function—not fostering a cognitive reformulation extending from ear to ear.

But there is economy to consider after all, along with the confident assurances from modern science, and so rather than pursuing any unusual solutions to this preeminently unusual story, what could be more pragmatic than to turn to the typical approaches, and just give them a little anthropocentric boost.

In many respects, Klein's mutation hypothesis and modern science's genetic-neurological certainty are now the ideal soul mates, the perfectly matched couple. Klein's hypothesis receives from the promises of genetic and neurological science all the cognitive and behavioral power that his theory so desperately needs, while in turn, modern science gets from Klein's extraordinary anthropological story all the permission it could possibly want in order to study human genetics and neurology with an entirely different approach, with the license, with the justification—no, with the requirement—to ignore and break all the typical biological rules.

But tell me this: with each of these constructs leaning so heavily against the other, and resting apparently upon nothing else, why have we become so certain that they cannot collectively fall?

I think in some sense Richard Klein must already know all this, must feel the reasonable doubt somewhere deep within his tentative bones. I can admire his adamant courage, the plain-spoken insistence that the Homo sapiens transformational lock must have been opened only by a specific and tangible key, and I can understand his pragmatic desire to turn to the common and widely accepted mechanisms, resting comfortably on the assurances of modern science. But even Richard Klein must realize—must realize somewhere deep within his tentative bones—that in casting human genetics and the human brain into the role of Homo sapiens' transformational unlocking key, he must first bend and twist genetics and neurology all out of any recognizable, usable, or plausible shape.

An economic explanation—or should I say a scientifically magical explanation—is not worthy of Klein's extraordinary story.

So where does that leave us?

In recent years, I have been making the suggestion that there is an alternative way of looking at Klein's tableau, as well as looking at almost every facet of human behavior associated with it. I have become convinced that Klein's unusual anthropological story has in fact an unusual anthropological solution, a solution that defines—no, actually is—human atypicality. This solution is of course nothing like the cultural evolutionary theories favored by the vague academicians, and it is also nothing like the sudden genetic/neurological mutation hypothesized by Richard Klein. In the context of the entire out-of-Africa discussion, it must seem like an idea that comes from straight out of the blue, if not from straight out of nah-nah land. I understand all that, but must insist on making my suggestion all the same, because nearly everything in Richard Klein's peerless anthropological work points invariably in its direction.

My suggestion of course is autism. Autism is the key that fits that lock.

If we are going to understand the role autism must have played in man's great leap forward (and continues to play in man's ongoing transformation today), it becomes necessary first to see autism for what it truly is, a task made nearly impossible in recent years due to the debilitating grip of modern science. Modern science has already made its pronouncement upon autism, despite not knowing yet exactly what autism is—but never mind that, because the pronouncement has been made and the pronouncement is exceedingly grim. Autism is an illness. Autism is a developmental disaster. Autism is the incomparable tragedy of parents, the unspeakable burden of all mankind. If you listen carefully enough, you will hear inside that pronouncement an unflinching confidence and assurance—it is a confidence and assurance we have already encountered.

In a reversal of ironic proportions, that same collective mindset that has already accepted genetics and neurology as the undoubted catalyst behind all modern human behavior, now becomes the collective mindset demanding of autism that it be the foremost example of genetics and neurology gone bad. In autism study after autism study, you will find the fragmented copy number variants, the brittle axon-fiber connections, all lined up lugubriously along one side, and matched against that woeful detail you will find the list of traits and attributes that have cast autistic individuals as purportedly broken. Voilà, the autism scientists all seem to say, and we break into a respectful applause. But should an inquiring voice call out from the back of the room and wonder what connects fractured genome to unusual behavior, what bit of mechanism links fraying neuron to rhythmically flapping hand, that voice will be greeted with an uncomfortably lengthy pause. Research findings here, atypical individuals there, but in between … not one single connecting step.

The failure to supply these steps was, in the case of human intelligence, language, artistry and the like, an unfortunate circumstance, because along with the unjustified assurance that such steps would soon be found, it has prevented scientists from considering an alternative course. But in the case of autism, this same failure to supply these connecting steps, along with the undemonstrated certainty that autistic individuals are medically doomed—this practice has become the foremost example of unbridled cruelty. This practice denounces, without the first shred of understanding, nearly one percent of the human population as waste—the vast majority of whom must be working quietly and productively among us. This practice denounces, without the first effort towards acceptance, nearly the entire autistic population as pariah—when that population might be better described as mankind's deliverance. Modern science's confident assurance regarding autism is in fact a massive instance of scientific blindness, one that has rendered nearly the entire human population utterly oblivious to who autistic individuals actually are, and utterly oblivious to what they have amazingly done.

Autism can be accurately depicted without resorting to science's insistence on genetic disorder and neurological disease—without resorting to any cruelty. The key concepts are species, recognition and perception. Autism's fundamental description goes essentially like this: autistic individuals, to a significant degree, do not readily recognize or attach to the human species, and thus cannot easily organize their experiences or perceptions around that species and its members (as is the case for non-autistic individuals). In consequence, autistic individuals organize their sensory world instead by an entirely different form of perception, a perception engaged primarily by the symmetry, structure and pattern that inherently stands out from the surrounding, non-biological world.

It is that different form of perception—the autistic form of perception—that has launched Homo sapiens off the East African plains and straight into the modern world.

The Homo-based circumstances Klein describes from prior to 50 thousand years ago are circumstances typical of nearly every animal species. Prior to man's great leap forward, the human cognitive focus would have been directed towards survival and procreation alone, and human perceptual recognition and attachment would have been centered upon the species itself, exclusively upon its own members and behaviors. This intense species recognition and attachment is an evolutionary trait that must run deeply throughout the entire animal kingdom—biologists can see evidence of it nearly everywhere—and this trait of course has been critically important in helping hold species together, keeping their members gathered near sources of shelter, food and sex. The perceptual characteristics behind an intense intra-species focus help account for the behaviors of the genus Homo over many millions of years, and the same perceptual characteristics help explain also the behaviors of the species Homo sapiens for the largest portion of its existence. Intense species recognition and attachment is the primary reason that for a substantially long period of time—right up to 50 thousand years ago—man remained behaviorally indistinguishable from the rest of the animal world.

This intense species recognition and attachment has not disappeared from the human species—not in the slightest. Despite mankind having now undertaken a complete overhaul to its environmental circumstances, an overhaul of nearly breathtaking proportions, and despite humanity having reassembled nearly all its former survival and procreative needs into a more distinctively modern garb, still, for the vast majority of the human population, its primary perceptual focus continues to be directed to all the old familiar targets—food, power, politics, safety, sex. Man still gathers gregariously around what he perceives of as popular; man continues to take his foremost comfort in the presence of others. When you examine carefully the preferred behaviors of nearly every typical human being (non-autistic human beings), you will quickly realize that man has not abandoned in the slightest his intense focus on his own species, has not shed one bit the innate ability to recognize and attach to other humans. For a large percentage of the human population, these species-focused perceptions have been carried forward essentially intact, right into modern times.

Furthermore, this intense species recognition and attachment has not been without value in advancing the human cultural transformation. A key component behind both the widespread nature and the swiftness of human behavioral and environmental change is that most humans continue to be profusely imitative of their own kind. This replicative effect is ubiquitous, but is most critical during the developmental years of children, guaranteeing that each new generation will readily adopt the current circumstances of species—no matter what those circumstances might happen to be. When humans were once hunter-gatherers, their children became hunter-gatherers too. When humans began building civilizations, their children joined right in without skipping a beat. When adults spoke Latin, their children spoke Latin as well, and when adults moved on to modern Italian, their children fell right into imitative line. Just as it once held the human species together for strictly survival and procreative purposes, this trait of intense species recognition and attachment now holds humanity together while it cascades forward through an accelerating, mostly non-biological revolution.

And yet as powerful as these strong species-specific perceptions can be in keeping a species assembled, this trait is also extraordinarily conservative with respect to a species' current circumstances—no matter what those circumstances might happen to be. The evidence of this conservatism is abundant, it can be found in the static circumstances of nearly every animal species. The effect of this conservatism hits extremely close to home, for it cemented the static circumstances of the genus Homo over many millions of years. To catalyze sudden and massive behavioral change would require a crack to appear in this intense intra-species recognition and attachment, would require that a species be able to perceive beyond just survival and procreation, beyond just itself. But if we take into account the ongoing, long-lasting, extremely static circumstances of nearly every animal species—every animal species, that is, except for modern man—we would have to conclude any alternative form of perception not strongly focused upon the species itself would have to be a form of perception exceedingly rare, would have to be a form of perception that, biologically speaking, could only be described as exceptionally atypical.

If autism is, at its root, a significant inability to recognize and attach to other members of the species, as well as to their extant behaviors and conditions, then autism already carries within itself all the difficulties frequently reported for autistic individuals—that is, any of their so-called disabilities are circumstantially earned. Development in typical individuals is heavily influenced by species attachment and imitation, and therefore any corresponding development in autistic individuals is bound to be slow, frustrating and at odds with all the rest. Social adeptness in the non-autistic population is simply the natural result of the common recognitions and attachments within the species, and thus it is not at all surprising that autistic individuals, lacking these common recognitions and attachments, are viewed to exist in a world apart, are judged to be socially disconnected. In fact, the real mystery regarding autism is that it ever managed to take hold within the human population at all, given that its fundamental characteristic runs so counter to a basic support of survival and procreation. But take hold autism has; and thus it would not be unreasonable to ask of scientists that they pause for a moment and contemplate the consequence.

Without a strong species recognition and attachment to help organize their experiences and perceptions, autistic individuals, especially young autistic individuals, are faced with the daunting task of overcoming a nearly complete sensory chaos. Typical individuals organize their experiences around other people; typical individuals organize their perceptions around what other people do. But autistic individuals, significantly detached from the other members of the population, cannot organize their sensory experiences in quite the same way (with a variety of sensory difficulties naturally resulting). Fortunately for autistic individuals, and fortunately for the entire human race, the non-biological world seems to have supplied an alternative form of perceptual organization, one that has remained apparently untapped right up until around 50 thousand years ago.

It would be difficult to describe at its most fundamental level the nature of these self-organizing environmental features, or to explain what it is about them that causes them to inherently stand out. But for the purposes of this discussion it is enough to note that humans have recognized and distinguished these organizing features through the use of such names as symmetry, repetition, mapping, pattern, structure and form. From the sensory chaos that would otherwise be their fate, autistic individuals, especially young autistic individuals, focus on and organize their sensory experiences around these surrounding, mostly non-biological elements of symmetry, structure and pattern. This becomes most evident while observing the characteristic autistic behaviors, often called restricted or repetitive behaviors—lining up toys, spinning wheels, turning on and off switches, rhythmically flapping hands—behaviors abundantly steeped in pattern, behaviors profusely intent on form. Although the autistic perceptual focus will often broaden with age, even to the point of eventually incorporating species and social interests, when we examine carefully the preferred behaviors of nearly every atypical human being (autistic human beings), we will quickly realize that instead of organizing their experiences around other people and around the species itself, autistic individuals gravitate more frequently to those perceptions organized around the various structures that naturally emerge from the surrounding, non-biological world.

And it is not just in the preferred behaviors of autistic individuals that we can witness the influence of these non-biological, self-organizing concepts. Intelligence, language, memory, numeracy, artistry, technological tool-producing vision—at the core of each behavioral element on that list, at the core of each behavioral element marking the sudden human transformation, you will find a deep foundational reliance upon these very same concepts, the concepts of symmetry, repetition, mapping, pattern, structure, form. Autistic individuals, through the needful circumstances of their rather precarious biological condition, have opened a perspective onto a world that goes far beyond immediate biological need, goes far beyond the tightly gripping focus of survival and procreation alone. By bringing their unique perspective to Homo sapiens itself, autistic individuals have spawned an unprecedented biological revolution—they have jarred the human species entirely from its former animal course.

Much like Klein's mutation hypothesis, my suggestion regarding autism is a theory not easily falsifiable, not if falsifiability requires measuring the autistic presence and influence of 50 thousand years ago. For the moment, we must remain content with weighing evidence that is more indirect, such as those studies demonstrating that non-autistic children are more naturally drawn to human-derived biological images, while autistic children are more attracted to non-biological contingencies possessing pattern and form (Klin et al., 2009). But perhaps an even more compelling reason for considering autism as the likely catalyst behind man's great leap forward is to recognize that autism-inspired behavioral and environmental change continues apace all around us, even at an accelerating rate. The great leap forward did not come to an end on the East African plains, it was not just a solitary event from 50 thousand years ago. That same transforming phenomenon exists right before our very eyes, we can witness its ongoing impact nearly each and every day.

To take just one instance from many—a prominent instance—we can consider the case of Isaac Newton and his inspired laws, along with the resulting industrial, scientific revolution. Here we find a single individual—an individual known for his unusual demeanor, an individual known for being socially detached—filled suddenly with a strange new perspective upon his surrounding, mostly non-biological world, drawn deeply into the patterns and structures no human had ever perceived before. By reconstructing the form of his unique vision through the use of such tools as language and mathematics—tools which themselves are richly steeped in form and pattern, tools which themselves were greatly augmented by Newton's innovative perception—by reconstructing the form of his vision into the human environment itself, Newton made his surprising perceptions accessible to nearly all. From there, humanity's gregarious, imitative, self-preserving nature took care of the matter of dissemination, and in less than two hundred years time man's cognitive, behavioral and material world had become entirely transformed. The unusual perceptions of one atypical man, followed swiftly by an overwhelming human revolution—it is a narrative that might sound remarkably familiar.

The discovery of Newton's laws of motion, gravitation and optics were obviously not the result of a genetic mutation; the resulting industrial, scientific revolution was clearly not brought about by a universal synaptic rewiring (although I certainly would not put it past modern scientists to attempt those foolish claims). The only plausible, sufficiently pliant location for human intelligence, language, artistry and the like is within the human environment itself. Only there can the features of human revolutionary change be creatively introduced, innovatively modified, by individuals with an unusually broadened eye. Only there can these same features be imitatively multiplied, spread rapidly from place to place, by a species focused on one another, by a species focused on enhancing its self-preserving interests. In this mechanism we see the elements of both suddenness and power, we see the two essential ingredients at the heart of Klein's out-of-Africa story.

If you search the Internet you can find a web site devoted to something called the Neanderthal theory of autism—what appears to be a very loose mixture of dubious anthropology alongside vague suggestions that autism reflects distinctive Neanderthal behaviors passed along through interbred human genes. I will let the dubious anthropology speak for itself, but as for the notion there were any distinctive Neanderthal behaviors that could have been passed along in any particular way, Klein's paleontology sounds the death knell to all of that. Nowhere in the fossil or archaeological record can there be found the slightest indication that Neanderthals behaved in ways differently than those of simple primates; Neanderthals exhibited an unremarkable lifestyle that continued unabated right up to the point of their extinction. The Neanderthals were overrun by the human big bang; they were not its participants.

There is one aspect to this notion, however, that has potentially productive merit. Recent genetic analysis (Green et al. 2010; very preliminary, still subject to verification) indicates there may be a small amount of Neanderthal-derived DNA currently within the human genome, with a strong indication this likely resulted from species intermixture that occurred prior to the Homo sapiens revolution. Such intermixture would not be entirely surprising; the different Homo-based populations shared fluid geographical boundaries, and interactions between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens could have taken place on numerous occasions, with gene flow possible in either or both directions. If so, such an intermingling of genetic material could provide a conceivable mechanism for explaining the characteristics of a species non-recognition. That is, it could be surmised that beyond a certain threshold, the presence of intermixed species genes might produce in certain individuals a difficulty in recognizing and attaching to the other members of the population around them—precisely the characteristic described above as the fundamental basis of autism.

All this would be highly speculative of course, with a good deal still to be explained, and the most that could be suggested for now is that as genetic information continues to be gathered from autistic individuals, Neanderthal fossils, and the entire human species, a comparative analysis is possibly warranted. It should be noted, however, that even if it were true that moderate species intermixture provides a mechanism for a species non-recognition, that explanation would only give rise to a still larger and perhaps more difficult question since such a mechanism would not be uniquely human. Over Earth's vast history we would expect to see thousands, if not millions, of similar inter-species events; but as far as we know, it has been only in Homo sapiens that autism has taken hold. Autism's intrinsic survival and procreative disadvantages do provide some expectation that autism would only rarely gain species traction; but still, it must be answered why the outcome was entirely different some 50 thousand years ago. What was it that uniquely turned that particular moment into such a stunningly explosive event?

Through his stubborn insistence on appealing to the evidence of the archaeological and fossil record, and through his stubborn insistence in arguing for both the suddenness and the power of mankind's remarkable turn, Richard Klein has presented humanity with an exquisite challenge—the challenge of explaining the species' own shocking history. Klein's proposal for how that unprecedented transformation might have come to be—a sudden and rare genetic mutation producing significant neurological effect—it remains true to the parameters of Klein's presentation, but falls victim to the anthropocentric failings of modern science.

Klein's anthropological work has been far too extraordinary, far too clarifying, to be cast as victim; Klein's exquisite challenge deserves an equally exquisite solution. Thus it is that I suggest autism as the key to the out-of-Africa story. Autism—quirky, fragile, misunderstood, too often cruelly treated—autism represents that form of human perception not focused upon the species itself but instead upon the symmetry, pattern and structure to be found in the surrounding, non-biological world. It is that atypical form of perception that has driven humanity's atypical turn, and it is that atypical form of perception that continues to catalyze human change right through the present day.

Gazing into the Marvelous Human Brain

2010-11-18T00:41:00.001-05:00

You know, the luminiferous ether had potent properties too: vibration frequencies, spatial orientation, saturation limit. It was really quite the impressive thing.

Shock and Awe

2010-11-14T00:03:00.001-05:00

It might seem like ancient history to those who are jostling shoulders in the laboratory halls, but it was not that long ago—not even a third of Kierkegaard's eighteen hundred years—that science was the province of the near lunatic only, that rare soul born so lonely into his experienced world he could not help but be drawn to its beckoning call. And although even in those former times there were many well established, codified, standardized means for exploring one's experienced world—for instance, one could pray to God and wait for helpful reply—such techniques tended to require infinite patience, and alas, near lunatics are not known for their infinite patience. Thus it was that a few of these miscreant souls began taking matters into their own hands, and how was humanity to have known, there on its knees before God, that the world would not be averse to divulging its dazzlements and amazements directly, even by unapproved, nonstandard means.

How much of that iconoclastic spirit remains alive today? Well, ask the tens of millions of scientists who now live and work among us, but while you are asking, notice how undazzled and how unamazed they all appear to be. Peer review and standards. Funding and credentials. Mind-numbing technique. What science has become—in less than a third of Kierkegaard's eighteen hundred years—is little more than a warm and safe profession, the methodologized, codified road map that runs cowering from shock and awe. As far as modern science is concerned, we might as well return to praying to God.

Neurocantation

2010-11-12T00:38:00.001-05:00

The philosophers' stone or the human brain, which holds the greater magical power?

The alchemists might be forgiven, for they knew very little of the Earth's enormous history, or of the sliver of human history within it. But the cognitive scientists—with all their years of education and their fancy degrees—how are we supposed to forgive them?

Targeting the Right Species

2010-10-28T00:05:00.001-04:00

Since its autistic mice studies have apparently crapped out (who could have predicted it?), Autism Speaks has decided to take the inspired step of ordering up a batch of autistic rats instead. And to think, people were worried the organization might be a hindrance to fruitful research.

On a related note, Autism Speaks also announced today that it is canceling its order with SAGE Labs for the production of some illogical, narrow-minded primates—Autism Speaks discovered it already had an abundant supply running around in the corporate offices.

Mwmpxsmwekcawcsk

2010-10-27T00:11:00.001-04:00

Here's an excerpt courtesy of Olga Solomon, in Sense and the Senses: Anthropology and the Study of Autism:

“[This review] considers the production of knowledge about autism as a clinically relevant category at the intersection of sense as culturally organized competence in meaning making and the senses as a culturally normative and institutionally ratified sensory and perceptual endowment.”

Is that a sentence? Please don't tell me that's a sentence from the English language. Because if that's a sentence from the English language, I'm going to have to go back to first grade and start over. To be honest, it's a downright shame I felt the need to substitute “[This review]” for “It” in the excerpt, because as far as I can tell “It” was the only word that actually had a referent.

Yes, folks, this is what a postgraduate education can do for you too. Be forewarned.

Tsunami

2010-10-26T00:37:00.001-04:00

As harmful as bad science has been to autistic individuals (and that harm has been considerable) it is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the damage inflicted under the heading of good science. Good science has been the tsunami washing across every autistic land, leaving behind an ever expanding legacy of destruction and mayhem.

What autistic peace was disturbed when good science crashed ashore?

Embarrassment of Riches

2010-10-24T00:43:00.001-04:00

So now we have best-selling books decrying “bad science,” do we? Hell, I think I would give my left arm and half a fortune to meet a bad scientist—just as Kierkegaard no doubt would have relinquished the entirety of his inheritance for the off chance to encounter a bad Christian, or a Christian of almost any persuasion for that matter, just as long as he or she was not a good Christian. Those, Kierkegaard realized with utter dismay, could not be avoided.

Bad, vicious, grumpy, lazy—yes, I will accept a scientist of almost any ilk, just as long as for God's sake he or she is not another good scientist. I cannot seem to walk across the street without stumbling over another one of those.

Universal

2010-10-19T23:27:00.002-04:00

Tripping off Turing's
Tape, like words from human tongue,
Foreground emerges.

To Infinity and Beyond

2010-10-16T22:26:00.002-04:00

As regards to the work of John Ioannidis and his colleagues, I have little doubt that it is accurate and revealing, but I remain far less optimistic about where this trend will lead. If our best researchers are now pouring their best efforts into analyzing the methodologies of our worst researchers, then who, might I ask, is actually attending to the science?

And think about what is bound to happen next. Meta-research, now widely regarded as successful and informative, will soon blossom into a distinctive and popular field of its own. How long before the launch of the new and prestigious journals Meta-Science and Meta-Nature? (Might I suggest the latter begin with a thousand-author study on the exponentially increasing trend of co-authorship within the pages of Nature.) Perhaps a Scandinavian committee of committees can begin awarding meta-Nobels for outstanding research into the increasingly trivial results of Nobel prize winners (a surprisingly fertile domain).

But of course as this new field becomes ever more popular and draws in more and more practitioners, the day inevitably comes when the majority of meta-scientists begin doing shoddy work as well, and then how much longer before some enterprising young team, with apparently nothing better to do, begins meta-analyzing the meta-analysis—and so on, to infinity and beyond.

Does anyone remember why humanity turned to science to begin with? I very much doubt it was so that we could learn more about science itself. When the carpenter becomes obsessed with his tools, he forgets to build the house.

Prosopagnosia

2010-10-13T00:17:00.001-04:00

Mistaking the current breed of autism researcher for a scientist is like mistaking an all-thumbs carpenter for a brilliant architect—it demeans the value of both brilliant architects and competent carpenters.

Limbo Dancing

2010-10-09T00:27:00.001-04:00

Publication—the new standard of scientific evidence.

Statistics software—the new standard of scientific effort.

Postdoctoral fellowship—the new standard of scientific courage.

Peer review—the new standard of critical thinking.

Questionnaire—the new standard of scientific measurement.

Experimental design—the new standard of scientific insight.

Co-authors—the new standard of reproducibility.

Grant proposal—the new standard of scientific innovation.

Grant approval—the new standard of scientific achievement.

Good science—the new standard.

Eloquent Words

2010-10-06T21:08:00.001-04:00

Be sure to catch the recent interview of Ari Ne'eman in Wired magazine. While I do not agree with everything Mr. Ne'eman has to say, he does present an eloquent and positive message about the aspirations of autistic individuals, while at the same time being realistic about their ongoing needs.

I have previously noted some concerns about ASAN's methods and policies, and in many ways, Mr. Ne'eman's interview in Wired demonstrates the importance of Mr. Ne'eman and ASAN being open to such questions and criticisms. Mr. Ne'eman and his organization are clearly capable of being a catalyst for constructive change in the community, and thus it is essential that they accept these abilities and responsibilities with courage, wisdom and honesty. When ASAN's actions consistently match the eloquence of Mr. Ne'eman's words, autistic individuals will then have a valuable advocate indeed.

The Uninspired Profession

2010-10-05T23:34:00.001-04:00

When modern scientists begin talking process, design and methodology, that's when I know that science has left the room.

Taxonomy

2010-10-02T22:06:00.001-04:00

If it were up to me, those who are commonly called modern scientists would instead be classified by their more accurate name—technicians. That would not make them any less valuable—indeed, the work of technicians is often precisely what is called for and can often be the most valuable. For instance, as scientists, Michelson and Morley were not in the same league as Lorentz and Einstein, but where might Lorentz and Einstein have been without the clever experiments of Michelson and Morley helping to light the way. Credit must always be given where credit is due.

But these days, both taxonomic groups—scientists and technicians—find themselves gravely damaged by the insistence of the tens of millions of technicians among us on calling themselves the only true scientists, a total eclipse of the former upon the latter. If one truly understood the nature of science, if one truly thought about it for a moment, then the idea of tens of millions of scientists walking among us would of course be laughable. But this is a joke that never occurs to the gathering throng.

When Ben Goldacre exposes the characteristics of bad scientists, what he is actually describing are the characteristics of bad technicians—science in fact never enters the discussion. Indeed, that's the main problem in nearly every instance of this so-called modern age of science—science never enters the discussion.

In an era in which being a good technician is both stubbornly and somewhat obnoxiously mistaken for being a good scientist, count me as one proud to be instead a bad scientist.

Angling for Trouble

2010-09-29T22:10:00.001-04:00

The autism buzz fest du jour is the nearly universal outcry against Sharron Angle's recent remarks regarding autism insurance mandates. Let me state from the outset that I have no sympathy for Ms. Angle—her apparent use of quotes around the word “autism” was uncalled for and off point, and her understanding of actual autism issues appears to be pretty much non-existent. Of course, this distinguishes her from most other public officials, and nearly all autism scientists, only in the sense that Ms. Angle has committed the error of making her ignorance both public and obvious.

On the underlying issue, however—that of autism insurance mandates—the situation is far more murky than the many critics of Ms. Angle would have us blithely believe. As I have stated previously, autism insurance mandates are a clear instance of placing the cart before the horse, because the treatments being mandated for coverage—mostly ABA and pharmaceutical interventions—are not only undemonstrated as effective, they carry considerable risk of actually doing more harm than good. Everyone needs to stop and remember that expense is not a synonym for value, and that intervention is not a synonym for efficacy. Mandating insurance coverage for costly treatments that might be ineffectual at best, and harmful at worst, is certainly not in the best interest of autistic individuals. Ironically enough, what clearly would be in the best interest of autistic individuals, yet are often mandated against—acceptance and understanding—these things cost nary a cent.

Adding further confusion to the matter, we now have ASAN weighing in on the issue, in the form of an online petition calling for an apology from Ms. Angle. Unfortunately for ASAN, it has lost all its credibility on this issue by jumping headlong onto the bandwagon of insurance reform, turning a willfully blind eye to the unscientific and illogical nature of its policy. If ASAN really wants to help autistic individuals, then I think it should be far less concerned with Ms. Angle's remarks than with the potentially harmful effects of the dubious treatments ASAN now publicly and vigorously supports. Indeed, if this is going to become a battle between Ms. Angle and ASAN, then I hope it is a battle both sides lose, because trust me, no matter how ignorant and illogical Ms. Angle's remarks and attitudes might happen to be, the remarks and attitudes on the other side of the autism insurance mandate issue—including those of ASAN—sound no less ignorant and illogical.

Some Housekeeping

2010-08-20T00:32:00.002-04:00

A couple quick notes, while I have the chance:

In addition to the posts from Kerry Magro that I have mentioned previously, Autism Speaks has published in recent weeks a near rash of additional accounts coming straight from autistic individuals. There have been at least two posts by Lydia Wayman and another by Dave Beukers. All have been well written and highly informative about the autistic experience, and I greatly recommend them.

With these recent posts and a few other small initiatives involving autistic individuals, I'm almost beginning to believe that it has suddenly dawned on Autism Speaks what “in their own words” actually means. Of course, none of this quite atones for the rest of Autism Speaks' many sins, but I do want to give the organization credit where credit is due.

On a more personal note, there has been little blogging here of late (not to mention, all my other writing has come to a halt as well), and that likely will continue for at least another month or so. My most recent work assignment has become intense, taking more time than usual, and until matters ease I'll have to remain content with being a quiet spectator in the world of autism debate, rather than the surly participant I would much rather be. In the mean time, however, please have a good end to the summer.

In Their Own Words

2010-07-25T22:14:00.002-04:00

I want to draw attention to another post made by Kerry Magro on the Autism Speaks blog. Mr. Magro, who apparently is interning for Autism Speaks and will be a senior at Seton Hall this coming year, outlines some of the challenges involved in obtaining “reasonable accommodations” in a college setting. During his description, he provides many helpful insights from his own experience of striving towards independence, with and without support.

Mr. Magro's post is straightforward, accurate and informative, which puts it in stark contrast to nearly all the other posts made on the Autism Speaks blog, including many posts made by non-autistic individuals under the banner of “In Their Own Words” (oh, the irony of it all). These other posts have dealt primarily with such matters as the challenge of being a parent to an autistic individual, the challenge of being the sibling of an autistic individual, the challenge of being an autism researcher working with mouse models, and the challenge of baking autism advocacy cookies. But when it comes to addressing the actual challenges and rewards of autism itself, that mantle is successfully assumed only when Autism Speaks resorts to that rarest of events, publishing the words that come straight from an autistic individual (oh, the doubled-back irony of it all).

It would be hard for me to overemphasize how much this culture can actually learn about autism simply by allowing autistic individuals to speak for themselves and in their own words. Hey, Autism Speaks, are you really listening?

Shocking Words

2010-07-17T00:46:00.001-04:00

In a certain sense I of course agree with the many responses given to my recent post that expressed extreme displeasure with that post's choice of words. The use of words such as “cure” and “eradication” to describe individuals and their characteristics is always offensive, insulting, and inexcusable. Count me as guilty. Express your outrage. It's a reasonable thing to do.

But of course I did not choose either those words or the target of those words idly. Ms. Stagliano, her supporters and Autism Speaks all routinely employ words such as “cure” and “eradication” to describe autistic individuals and their characteristics, and the application of those words against autistic individuals is no less offensive, insulting and outrageous than in any other instance. I only wish that those who are so quick to take umbrage at my remarks about Ms. Stagliano would be as equally quick to take umbrage when she and others apply such terms to autistic individuals. If that were to happen more frequently, I would gladly accept any humbling that is my due.

It is interesting to note that a similar course of events has already played out for the most part in the homosexual community. Forty to fifty years ago it was a routine practice to describe homosexuals as in need of a cure and to target their characteristics for eradication. Homosexual individuals quite rightly took offense to such terms and ideas, fought long and hard to overcome them, and today such phrases and efforts have all but disappeared from the culture. The few holdouts who continue to spew mindless invective against homosexuality are now widely recognized as being bigoted and narrow-minded; they are actively spoken out against, they are no longer tacitly approved. (And if someone were to suggest to these homophobic individuals that they were the ones in need of a cure and it was their intolerance that was in need of eradication, you can be sure it would be they and their supporters who would be the first to holler about being insulted and offended.)

If one wants to be treated with respect and dignity, then the place to begin is by treating others with respect and dignity—all others. This is a lesson the autism advocacy community is badly in need of learning, because the number one issue facing that community is its ongoing lack of respect and understanding for autistic individuals. The whole point of my original post was to impress upon the members of that community their need to treat autistic individuals with more acceptance and to see the situation more often from the perspective of autistic individuals. My rhetoric might seem a little too shocking and harsh at times, but if this culture is ever going to rise to the level of treating its autistic members with the dignity and respect they deserve, the autism advocacy community is going to have to be disturbed out of its currently offensive, insulting, and mindless ways. Maybe I go too far at times, but sometimes it's of more value to be a prod than to be polite.

The Ugly Face of Autism

2010-07-10T12:45:00.002-04:00

I agree with Kim Stagliano absolutely. Her latest post, in its entirety, would make an excellent choice for an Autism Speaks advertisement. All the essential ingredients are there:

A picture of a beautiful autistic child engaged in an interesting, meaningful and no doubt productive activity for her—clearly delighted to no end.
A hovering, disapproving parent describing the entire tableau as “pain,” bemoaning the family's autism fate to the entire world, and wishing for someone—anyone—to do something—anything—to bring this horrible ordeal to an end.

Yes, that captures the ugly face of autism in a nutshell, and Autism Speaks would do well to consider it for its next public service announcement. Now if we could only get Autism Speaks to sponsor some form of cure against the Ms. Staglianos of the world (it can be biomedical, pharmaceutical or behavioral—I really don't care) I might find myself supporting that organization's eradicating mission.

The Cup Half Full

2010-07-08T01:05:00.002-04:00

I want to comment quickly on two positive Internet posts that have appeared today in two very negative Internet locations.

The first post is a brief essay entitled Coming Out: Autism in College, written by an autistic individual, Kerry Magro. It appears under the heading In Their Own Words on the Autism Speaks blog, which is something of a doubled-back irony since it is an extremely rare event for the In Their Own Words section to actually incorporate the words of autistic individuals. (Autism Speaks seems to think that phrase means non-autistic individuals speaking for autistic individuals, which although par for the course for Autism Speaks, is both illogical and offensive under the heading In Their Own Words.) And Mr. Magro's post demonstrates quite effectively why it is such a terribly bad idea to have non-autistic individuals speaking for autistic individuals, because Mr. Magro—speaking quite capably for himself—demonstrates that autistic individuals—when allowed to speak for themselves—can be uncommonly articulate, insightful and courageous. Addressing both the challenges and the triumphs of his condition with a precision an outsider could never dream to muster, Mr. Magro manages to expose the relentless pity- and fear-mongering of Autism Speaks as little more than an outrageous lie.

I don't always agree with what autistic individuals have to say. I undoubtedly would not agree with everything Mr. Magro might have to say. In some instances (Jonathan Mitchell comes readily to mind), I might not agree with much of anything at all. But I can't stress strongly enough how important it is that we actually hear those autistic voices and that we provide autistic individuals with every possible opportunity to speak for themselves. It is an atrocity—an offensive atrocity—to have non-autistic individuals speaking as mouthpieces on behalf of autistic individuals. I would note that Mr. Magro is described as a staffer for Autism Speaks. He might want to consider questioning his organization about why that organization seems so intent on putting words into his own mouth, when Mr. Magro is so clearly capable of speaking eloquently and rightfully for himself.

The second positive post coming from a negative location arrives courtesy of Mark Blaxill and the Age of Autism web site. In his lengthy report New Autism Consortium Study Proves (Again) that Inherited Genes Don't Cause Autism, Mr. Blaxill outlines the many reasons for his skepticism regarding the recently publicized report in Nature regarding autism genetics. Mr. Blaxill has done this kind of thing before (and I have commented upon it), and as hard as it might be to believe, he's actually getting better at it. This most recent post is detailed, well researched, sanely reasoned, and even manages to avoid (for the most part) Mr. Blaxill's rather unfortunate and common tendency to descend into ad hominem and other lazy forms of argument. Although I wouldn't go so far as to say his use of logic and scientific analysis rises to the standards of say a Michelle Dawson, it does come within a reasonable shouting distance, and it makes a telling contrast to the commentary supplied for instance at Respectful Insolence, a blog for which I have a much greater philosophical affinity in general, but which seems, at least in this instance, to be willing to take traditional scientists at their word instead of looking more carefully at their data. (A skeptic who is skeptical only of opposing points of view is not really a skeptic).

It's not lost on me of course that this is Mark Blaxill we're talking about. It remains utterly dumbfounding to me that someone who can be so thorough and insightful in criticizing a report on autism genetics can also be so willfully dense when it comes to analyzing his own perspective. For instance I shudder to imagine what gobs of illogical and non-scientific drivel will most likely ooze out of Mr. Blaxill's forthcoming book The Age of Autism: Mercury, Medicine, and a Manmade Epidemic (co-authored with Dan Olmsted). Or to consider it another way, if we could only take Mr. Blaxill's post and substitute the word “vaccines” for “genes” and the phrase “environmental toxins” for “copy number variants,” I am sure we would have the perfect outline for an accurate criticism of Mr. Blaxill's own form of autism science.

As I have suggested in other places, what both Mr. Blaxill and many autism research scientists need to do is take a step back from their entrenched positions and find out what they actually have in common. Because in point of fact everyone is beginning from the same place. Neuroscientists assume that autism is the evidence of something gone horribly wrong and begin looking all over the place for brain dysfunction—and get essentially nowhere. Genetic researchers assume that autism is the evidence of something gone horribly wrong and begin looking all over the place for genetic defects—and get essentially nowhere. Mr. Blaxill and his supporters assume that autism is the evidence of something gone horribly wrong and begin looking all over the place for environmental toxins—and get essentially nowhere. My question is, how long do we allow these groups to get essentially nowhere before we begin wondering if perhaps autism is not the evidence of something gone horribly wrong?

Which brings us back to Mr. Magro and his post at Autism Speaks. It is clear from his words (his own words, not the words of others) that it has been impressed upon him quite frequently that his autism is the evidence of something gone horribly wrong. But there remains something defiant in Mr. Magro's words (his own words, not the words of others). There is a defiance in his content, in his tone, in his execution. It is almost as if Mr. Magro is forcing us to address that question, what can possibly be so horribly wrong about an individual who is so hopeful, insightful, courageous and eloquent? And the answer of course is obvious: there is not one damn thing wrong with that individual.

Perhaps it is time to consider autism as the evidence of something gone remarkably right.

Genetic Litany

2010-06-20T17:03:00.003-04:00

Chromosome 7q36, engrailed homeobox 2(EN2), the 16p11.2 region, 15q11.2, 15q13.3, 16p13.11; four regions located on 18q (MBD1, TCF4, NETO1, FBXO15); the PON1 gene; MECP2, TM4SF2, TSPAN7, PPP1R3F, PSMD10, MCF2, SLITRK2, GPRASP2, and OPHN1; encoding methyl CpG-binding protein 2; the SHANK2 synaptic scaffolding gene; the 5-HT(2A) receptor gene; neurexin-1 (NRXN1), chromosome 17p13.3, the two genes TUSC5 and YWHAE.

Cell adhesion molecule 1 (CADM1); RELN and GRIK2; MKL2 and SND1; chromosome Xp22.11-p21.2 that encompasses the IL1RAPL1 gene; the GABA receptor gamma 3 (GABRG3); neuroligin (NLGN4X); the FMR1 gene; region 10p14-p15, 7p22.1, the Q6NUR6 gene, JMJD2C gene at 9p24.1, 1p21.1, 6p21.3 and 8q21.13; Mecp2-null microglia; R1117X and R536W; SHANK3 mutations, GABA(A) receptor subunits, ASMT, MTNR1A, MTNR1B; RORA and BCL-2 proteins; DOCK4 microdeletion on 7q31.1, 2q14.3 microdeletion disrupting CNTNAP5; chromosome 2q24.2-->q24.3, telencephalic GABAergic neurons, position 614 of diaphanous homolog 3 (DIAPH3), 22q13.3.

Chromosome 2q37, 4q35.1-35.2, 8p23.2; chromosome 8p and 4q, P-glycoprotein gene (MDR1/ABCB1); glutamate transporter gene SLC1A1, IL1RAPL1 gene mutations, neuroligin mutants; SCAMP5, CLIC4 and PPCDC; fatty acid-binding protein (FABP7), 5-HT transporter gene (HTT, SERT, SLC6A4); proteins neurexin1 and PSD95; Cav3.2 T-type channels, chromosome 7q22-31 region; neuroligin-4 missense mutation; ADRA1A, ARHGEF10, CHRNA2, CHRNA6, CHRNB3, DKK4, DPYSL2, EGR3, FGF17, FGF20, FGFR1, FZD3, LDL, NAT2, NEF3, NRG1, PCM1, PLAT, PPP3CC, SFRP1, VMAT1; SLC18A1, microcephalin 1 gene (MCPH1).

Genetic polymorphisms of cytochrome P450 enzymes, 2p15-16.1, neurobeachin (Nbea); rs1858830 C allele variant, 3q26.31, serotonin receptor 2A gene (HTR2A); 1q42 deletion involving DISC1, DISC2, and TSNAX; alpha4beta 2 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, adenosine A(2A) receptor gene (ADORA2A) variants; chromosome 1p34.2p34.3, synaptic vesicle gene RIMS3; microdeletions at 17q21.31, linkage loci on chromosomes 7 and 2; 2q37.3 deletion, neuroligin-3 R451C mutation; 2q24-2q31, 7q, 17q11-17q21; synaptic genes NLGN3, NLGN4, and CNTNAP2; dysfunctional ERK and PI3K signaling, ribosomal protein L10 (RPL10) gene, glutamate decarboxylase gene 1 (GAD1) located within chromosome 2q31.

Breakpoints on chromosomes 5 and 18; short arm of chromosome 20, chromosome 20p12.2, serotonin receptor genes HTR1B and HTR2C; genes at 3q25-27, deletion of chromosome 2p25.2, chromosome 10, chromosome 1q21.1; Joubert syndrome gene (AHI1), deletion in 6q16.1, including GPR63 and FUT9; duplication of 8p23.1-8p23.2, NLGN4Y gene, inverted duplication of proximal chromosome 14; SYNGAP1, DLGAP2, X-linked DDX53-PTCHD1 locus; interstitial deletion 9q31.2 to q33.1, methyl-CpG binding protein 1; balanced de novo translocation between chromosomes 2 and 9; contactin 4 (CNTN4), chromosome 2q24-q33 region, PAX6 gene; deletion on 18q12, chromosome 5q31, PTEN, 13q21.

Microdeletions at 7q11.23, chromosomes 1p, 4p, 6q, 7q, 13q, 15q, 16p, 17q, 19q, 22q; FMR1 protein, FOXP2 gene; 2q35 and 8q21.2 breakpoint, sodium channels SCN1A, SCN2A and SCN3A; paternally derived chromosome 13, somatostatin receptor 5 (SSTR5) on chromosome 16p13.3; terminal 11q deletion and a distal 12q duplication, APOE protein, allelic variants of HOXA1/HOXB1; notch4 gene polymorphisms, AVP receptor 1a (AVPR1a), mitochondrial aspartate/glutamate carrier SLC25A12 gene; Arg451Cys-neuroligin-3 mutation, language loci on chromosomes 2, 7, and 13; de novo translocation t(5;18)(q33.1;q12.1), p11.2p12.2.

Mu-opioid receptor gene, chromosome 16p13.3, trisomy 15q25.2-qter; 14q32.3 deletion, autism loci on 17q and 19p, linkage at 17q11-17q21, linkage on 21q and 7q; 3q29 microdeletion, haplotypes in the gene encoding protein kinase c-beta (PRKCB1) on chromosome 16; 6p25.3-22.3, SLC25A12 and CMYA3 gene variants; chromosome 3q25-27, inversion inv(4)(p12-p15.3), partial trisomy of chromosome 8p; locus in 15q14 region, terminal deletion of 4q, duplication at Xp11.22-p11.23; SEMA5A expression Tachykinin 1 (TAC1) gene SNPs, TPH2 and GLO1; biallelic PRODH mutation, recurrent 10q22-q23 deletions, neuropilin-2 (NRP2) gene polymorphisms.

Yes, I know—it might have taken less space to list the genetic features scientists have not implicated in autism's etiology.

A Different Perspective on a Likely Mirage

2010-06-12T14:04:00.001-04:00

One more thought regarding the report recently published in the journal Nature, Functional impact of global rare copy number variation in autism spectrum disorders (Pinto et al., 2010):

If someone wanted to put forth the hypothesis that rare copy number variation has no causal relationship whatsoever to autism, he would be hard pressed to find a more supportive set of evidence than the data supposedly backing the claims being made in (Pinto et al., 2010). Desperate people often see fantastic visions.

A Futuristic Vision

2010-06-12T00:52:00.001-04:00

I can see where this co-authorship thing is heading. One day in the not too distant future a paper will appear entitled Today, consisting of a single sentence: “We did some stuff.” The authorship list will comprise the names of the six billion some human inhabitants of this planet, and the paper will be published in the journal Nature, which seems to have a hankering for these things. Everyone can then go about their business of applying for tenure, comfortable in the knowledge it will not be denied.

I hope that day comes soon; in fact, it cannot arrive fast enough. Because then maybe someone—anyone—will finally feel free enough to develop an idea on his own.

How To Talk Like a Modern Scientist

2010-06-11T14:41:00.003-04:00

Humans were once curious as to why certain homes had an address of Toledo, Ohio while most homes did not. Modern scientists, attracted by some sizable grants, decided to look into the matter. Here is what a few of them had to say about their findings:

“We compared furniture arrangements of a large set of Toledo homes versus controls and found that if we focused on unusual furniture arrangements (those found in less than 1% of the homes), we could get some interesting and hopefully publishable results. At first we were disappointed to discover that both Toledo and non-Toledo homes were equally likely to have unusual furniture arrangements, but when we cast our statistical eye further we noticed that for unusual furniture arrangements involving television sets (rare televisionic furniture arrangements), Toledo homes were somewhat more likely to have such arrangements than controls. This is a major breakthrough.”

“We discovered novel candidate furniture arrangements that significantly increase the risk of having a Toledo address. This will allow us to develop home decorative intervention strategies and get furniture therapists to front doors much quicker—in some instances preventing homes from ever appearing in Toledo, Ohio.”

“Our results substantiate the importance of unusual furniture arrangements in Toledo homes, and this is likely to change how home decoration is viewed in the Toledo area. Most people in the field believed that Toledo homes shared common furniture arrangements perhaps in just a few rooms. But in fact most Toledo homes are probably decoratively quite unique—each having their own form of furniture arrangement.”

“You and I may have just as many unusual furniture arrangements in our homes, but since they don't involve television sets, we don't live in Toledo, Ohio.”

“Of great significance to us was the finding that in seven of the Toledo homes there was an unusual furniture arrangement involving a Go Mud Hens pennant, whereas this unusual furniture arrangement did not show up in any of the controls. We double checked against a broad population of Canadian homes and confirmed that those also did not have any Go Mud Hens pennants. This is consistent with earlier findings of high risk Toledo furniture arrangements—such as those involving cheap bowling trophies.”

“The findings, to some extent, are not unexpected. These unusual furniture arrangements are turning up in a number of other cities so it is no surprise that they may be involved in Toledo, Ohio as well. How significant they are will await further testing as to how sensitive and specific these furniture arrangements are as well as what percent of Toledo, Ohio is involved.”

“We have been trying to put together a very large jigsaw puzzle without having the benefit of a nice colorful picture on the box. The unusual furniture arrangements are like the edges, you might say, and they give us an idea of what the picture may look like. With these findings, we are starting to find some of the edge pieces, and that may provide us with some sort of framework for looking at how these decorative schemes work in Toledo, Ohio, leading to cartological features and how these might work in collaboration with the geography, thus producing some of the Toledo houses that we can see around us.”

“The exciting thing about the findings of this study is that it highlights fashionable pathways that can be targets for renovation.”

“Even with these findings, we are able to explain only about 10 percent of the homes in Toledo, Ohio. What causes the other 90 percent of Toledo homes to be located where they are is still on the table. Every little victory is important, but it's still amazing how little we know.”

Indeed.

Questions Unasked

2010-06-11T00:57:00.003-04:00

One of the advantages of being an outsider to autism science is that I get to ask simple questions. Take for instance autism's latest hullabaloo, the paper recently published in the journal Nature, Functional impact of global rare copy number variation in autism spectrum disorders (Pinto et al., 2010). There are questions about this study that the media will not ask, nor apparently will any of the study's nearly two hundred authors. I, on the other hand, have no such reservation:

If particular types of rare copy number variants (CNVs) are only slightly more likely in autistic individuals than in non-autistic individuals (which is what the study indicates), and if the ratio of autistic individuals to non-autistic individuals is approximately 1:99, then aren't the vast majority of instances of these particular CNVs going to be found within the non-autistic population? And if so, how distinctive for autism can these CNVs possibly be?
How is it that only the CNVs which are more likely in autistic individuals can produce significant consequence, whereas the hundreds of other CNVs (from both populations) are apparently benign? Is this science—or wishful thinking?
How is it that the broad variety of CNVs more likely in autistic individuals (which are apparently the only ones that can produce significant consequence)—how is it that this diverse hodge-podge of CNVs can all lead to the same diagnosable condition? Is this science—or an amazing coincidence?
If the purpose of this study was to uncover a genetic signature underlying autism, shouldn't the major conclusion of this study be that there isn't one?

There are reasons that simple questions go unasked, but those reasons seldom have anything to do with the actual results. I have heard the spin being placed on this study in the media, and I have also listened to what the study's authors have had to say, but I can tell you without hesitation that the study's raw data imparts an entirely different story. Let me put it this way: if you are one of the nearly two hundred scientists who has managed to finagle your name onto the authorship list, then the publication of this study is a positive result; otherwise, it is a whole bunch of nothing.

The Unique Accomplishment of Laurent Mottron

2010-06-09T18:39:00.002-04:00

I have written previously on this blog about the many innovative and original contributions made by Laurent Mottron and the members of his autism research team, but it would appear this time Dr. Mottron has gone and completely outdone himself in the new paper appearing in the journal Nature, Functional impact of global rare copy number variation in autism spectrum disorders (Dalila Pinto, Alistair T. Pagnamenta, Lambertus Klei, Richard Anney, Daniele Merico, Regina Regan, Judith Conroy, Tiago R. Magalhaes, Catarina Correia, Brett S. Abrahams, Joana Almeida, Elena Bacchelli, Gary D. Bader, Anthony J. Bailey, Gillian Baird, Agatino Battaglia, Tom Berney, Nadia Bolshakova, Sven Bolte, Patrick F. Bolton, Thomas Bourgeron, Sean Brennan, Jessica Brian, Susan E. Bryson, Andrew R. Carson, Guillermo Casallo, Jillian Casey, Brian H.Y. Chung, Lynne Cochrane, Christina Corsello, Emily L. Crawford, Andrew Crossett, Cheryl Cytrynbaum, Geraldine Dawson, Maretha de Jonge, Richard Delorme, Irene Drmic, Eftichia Duketis, Frederico Duque, Annette Estes, Penny Farrar, Bridget A. Fernandez, Susan E. Folstein, Eric Fombonne, Christine M. Freitag, John Gilbert, Christopher Gillberg, Joseph T. Glessner, Jeremy Goldberg, Andrew Green, Jonathan Green, Stephen J. Guter, Hakon Hakonarson, Elizabeth A. Heron, Matthew Hill, Richard Holt, Jennifer L. Howe, Gillian Hughes, Vanessa Hus, Roberta Igliozzi, Cecilia Kim, Sabine M. Klauck, Alexander Kolevzon, Olena Korvatska, Vlad Kustanovich, Clara M. Lajonchere, Janine A. Lamb, Magdalena Laskawiec, Marion Leboyer, Ann Le Couteur, Bennett L. Leventhal, Anath C. Lionel, Xiao-Qing Liu, Catherine Lord, Linda Lotspeich, Sabata C. Lund, Elena Maestrini, William Mahoney, Carine Mantoulan, Christian R. Marshall, Helen McConachie, Christopher J. McDougle, Jane McGrath, William M. McMahon, Alison Merikangas, Ohsuke Migita, Nancy J. Minshew, Ghazala K. Mirza, Jeff Munson, Stanley F. Nelson, Carolyn Noakes, Abdul Noor, Gudrun Nygren, Guiomar Oliveira, Katerina Papanikolaou, Jeremy R. Parr, Barbara Parrini, Tara Paton, Andrew Pickles, Marion Pilorge, Joseph Piven, Chris P. Ponting, David J. Posey, Annemarie Poustka, Fritz Poustka, Aparna Prasad, Jiannis Ragoussis, Katy Renshaw, Jessica Rickaby, Wendy Roberts, Kathryn Roeder, Bernadette Roge, Michael L. Rutter, Laura J. Bierut, John P. Rice, Jeff Salt, Katherine Sansom, Daisuke Sato, Ricardo Segurado, Ana F. Sequeira, Lili Senman, Naisha Shah, Val C. Sheffield, Latha Soorya, Ines Sousa, Olaf Stein, Nuala Sykes, Vera Stoppioni, Christina Strawbridge, Raffaella Tancredi, Katherine Tansey, Bhooma Thiruvahindrapduram, Ann P. Thompson, Susanne Thomson, Ana Tryfon, John Tsiantis, Herman Van Engeland, John B. Vincent, Fred Volkmar, Simon Wallace, Kai Wang, Zhouzhi Wang, Thomas H. Wassink, Caleb Webber, Rosanna Weksberg, Kirsty Wing, Kerstin Wittemeyer, Shawn Wood, Jing Wu, Brian L. Yaspan, Danielle Zurawiecki, Lonnie Zwaigenbaum, Joseph D. Buxbaum, Rita M. Cantor, Edwin H. Cook, Hilary Coon, Michael L. Cuccaro, Bernie Devlin, Sean Ennis, Louise Gallagher, Daniel H. Geschwind, Michael Gill, Jonathan L. Haines, Joachim Hallmayer, Judith Miller, Anthony P. Monaco, John I. Nurnberger Jr, Andrew D. Paterson, Margaret A. Pericak-Vance, Gerard D. Schellenberg, Peter Szatmari, Astrid M. Vicente, Veronica J. Vieland, Ellen M. Wijsman, Stephen W. Scherer, James S. Sutcliffe and Catalina Betancur, 2010).

There you can see it for yourself, in plain black and white, defying what must have been nearly insurmountable odds—Laurent Mottron has somehow managed to get himself not included in the list of contributing authors. What else can I say—this is clearly a unique accomplishment within the current field of autism research.

Indeed, Dr. Mottron's feat is so unusual and amazing that it leaves me wondering how he possibly could have pulled it off. My suspicion is that Geraldine Dawson, panicked at the thought of perhaps being excluded from the authorship list (which would itself be a unique and amazing event), during her mad, entreating rush to track down the head author must have knocked Dr. Mottron over and rendered him totally unconscious for a considerable period of time, thus leading to his name not appearing on the roll. But little matter. In an accomplishment like this—where one has so definitively set himself apart from all his peers—the means are merely a secondary consideration, the accomplishment is the thing. My heartiest congratulations!

Memetic Residue

2010-06-06T01:34:00.001-04:00

Can we assume that Richard Dawkins has plunged headlong (and superciliously) into his anti-religion career mostly because the biology gig did not work out?

Bright Dissent

2010-06-06T01:31:00.001-04:00

I was thinking of fostering an Atheists Against Richard Dawkins movement, but unfortunately, its first commandment would have to be, “Thou shalt not be so fatuous as to foster a movement.”

The Takeaway from Autism Science

2010-05-29T14:58:00.001-04:00

If you cannot conceive the context, and if you have no grasp of the concept, then all the material data in the world will serve only to feed your blindness—even good information turns rancid in the oppressive heat of ignorance.

Linguistics for Autistics

2010-05-14T22:03:00.003-04:00

Language is the use of a biologically immediate artifact to represent something not biologically immediate.

Almost any material artifact can serve the purpose of conveying language—gestures, sound, nudges, smears in the mud. The larynx was convenient, but not essential.

Since the locus of language is the external, material world (not the inside of our human skull) language remains open to any life-form. If a species does not use language, it is because that species has nothing to say.

Humans had nothing to say for an incredibly long period of time—this species passed the better part of its existence locked inside its biological immediacy.

What is crucial about language is not its material form, but rather its representational form. That is what connects biological immediacy to conceptual distance.

If you are aware of a pattern, then you are aware of time. If you are aware of symmetry, then you are aware of space. But how do you inform your neighbor?

Among other things, language was a solution to autistic loneliness.

One cannot deceive within one's own biological immediacy. Deception is a consequence of language.

Not only is deception a consequence of language, it is an essential feature of language. The means by which one conveys biologically removed events are also the means by which one conveys biologically removed non-events.

As with nearly every other autism-inspired invention, non-autistics quickly co-opted language for their own use and bent it to their own purpose; and as with nearly every other instance of non-autistic pilferage, the twisted results have been stunningly and humanly prodigious.

Chomsky was doing just fine when he approached linguistics as a branch of logic. He only went awry after he began approaching linguistics as a branch of science.

The underlying structure of language (Chomsky's universal grammar) reflects the structure of the non-biological world: space and time, stasis and change, mass and energy. The underlying structure of language arises from autistic perception.

Language always acts (represents) in the here and now. Persistent forms of language—such as writing—convey the material of language across space and time, but the sending and receiving still occur inside someone's biological immediacy.

Although autistic perception launched human language and gave it its underlying structure, non-autistic perception soon provided a hefty adornment—language gained its biological and social girth practically overnight.

Pronouns are superfluous to language, as is gender—but try convincing the ninety-nine percent who would feel empty without them.

What value is you and I, we and they, he, she and it, when a proper noun would serve just as well? (That is a question asked by someone not strongly attached to the species.)

Small talk is a reminder of this species' former days, when language itself was superfluous. Subtext was once all we had, and all we needed.

Autistic children grow up to a language that has been corrupted—the biological and social adornments constantly throw them off.

Autistic and non-autistic individuals are both exceedingly logical—just not in the same way.

Mathematics, logic, science—these are all salves against deception, and as such belong under the umbrella of language, not the umbrella of the objective world.

An artifact of language can be used to represent language itself, but it is almost never wise to do so. Meta-language is a misuse of the tool.

Language is not an instinct. Even less so is it a human instinct. What most children have an instinct for is to do what other humans do.

There are no language modules inside the human brain, just the magical thinking modules of linguistics professors and cognitive scientists.

Together with self-reflecting mirrors and obsessive masturbators, Steven Pinker reminds us that expansive vision is possible only because cognitively diverse people have the wherewithal to get beyond themselves.

What Self-Constructed Means

2010-05-03T08:06:00.001-04:00

Let me be clear: when Harold Doherty uses the latest CDC autism prevalence reports to support his oft-repeated claim that 75-80% of individuals with Autistic Disorder have an intellectual disability, he is fabricating that statistic. The CDC reports show no such thing.

Mr. Doherty “arrives” at his number by taking statistics applied to the entire autism spectrum, then waves his magic wand over the number of Asperger's cases that should be excluded, and voilà, out pops the 75-80% figure. That's a self-constructed (fabricated) statistic.

As I have offered to Mr. Doherty before, he can show me to be wrong (and earn my apology) simply by providing two items—his math and the data he used from the CDC prevalence reports. So far Mr. Doherty has declined to do either. Anyone want to take a guess as to why?

Autism and Intellectual Disability

2010-05-01T00:30:00.001-04:00

Since Harold Doherty can't seem to stop repeating, ad nauseam, his self-constructed statistic about autism and intellectual disability, I thought I would counter with a real story about autism and intellectual disability, one involving some actual facts and one requiring a little more thought and attention than needed for just making up numbers or repeating the made-up numbers of others. This is a story about my own son.

Although I don't think our part of the country is typically included in the biennial CDC autism prevalence reports, if it were, this is the year from which Brian's records would be examined and tallied towards the total—he turns eight in a few months and thus he is part of the 2002 birth cohort to be counted as of 2010. And if Brian's records were to be included as part of that study, they would show him falling under the following two categories: Autistic Disorder and intellectual disability. In other words, in Mr. Doherty's narrow-minded view of the situation, Brian would officially qualify as one of the more dire autism cases—the cases Mr. Doherty wants everyone to focus on exclusively. So let's do just that. Let's focus on Brian's case.

Both those categorizations—Autistic Disorder and intellectual disability—result from the occasion of Brian's official diagnosis, received shortly after his fourth birthday. They are essentially the only evidence in Brian's records that the CDC would have to go on. When receiving his official diagnosis, Brian was given a thorough battery of tests, enough to extend over the course of two days, with the cognitive tests being given near the end of the second day. My wife was actually present with Brian as he was administered those tests, because someone was needed to help keep him seated and to help keep him focused long enough to be given the questions. Thus she was in a perfect position to report on how the entire episode turned out to be something of an unmitigated disaster.

There were several less-than-stellar moments, but the most telling incident came when the examiner asked Brian to count out loud from 1 to 10, to which Brian replied with complete silence and a little more squirming in his chair. After a brief period of time, the examiner repeated the question, to which Brian answered with still more silence and still more squirming, until finally the examiner noted the result on her chart and moved on to the next question. Needless to say, given this and several similar exchanges, Brian's overall cognitive score turned out to be significantly low.

But here's the thing:

This boy, who among other inabilities was being marked as unable to count from 1 to 10 at four years of age, was also the same boy who had been regularly entertaining himself from around the time of his third birthday by counting backwards from 100 to 1—cheerfully, voluntarily, and without mistake.

Like many autistic children, Brian does not like to sit still for very long, and he does not like to be barraged with an endless stream of questions. Even today, I would be hesitant to predict his performance on an IQ exam, because I'm not sure he would have enough patience to sit all the way through it. But I can tell you this much: anyone who has spent more than an hour with him would laugh hysterically at the notion of him being classified as intellectually disabled. He now reads at the third grade level. He does multiple-digit addition and subtraction. He is eerily adept at logic and probability puzzles. Plus he can talk up a linguistic storm as long as the subject is one that intrigues him (Disney and ceiling fans, for instance, would currently net you at least a ten-minute monologue). There has never been any doubt for those who actually know Brian: he may be highly atypical, but he is also highly intelligent.

Of course, the CDC will never know that.

Administering cognitive tests to any child under the age of about eight is a dubious procedure, but it becomes especially doubtful when applied to autistic children. There are many reasons autistic children will perform poorly and erratically on intelligence tests, with a good number of those reasons having nothing to do with the child's actual level of cognitive skill. If we are going to accumulate valid statistics on the relative intelligence of the autistic population, then the first thing we must do is focus on tests administered at older ages—exactly the opposite of what is currently being done.

And there are other factors to consider. For instance, as Michelle Dawson and her colleagues have been demonstrating, autistic individuals tend to evince a different kind of intelligence than do non-autistic individuals, an intelligence that often leaves behind an erratic trail across the range of standard cognitive tests, but an intelligence which nonetheless remains highly correlated to the types of cognitive skills often valued within the current culture. If we continue to compare autistic intelligence only to the norm, then we are going to continue to overlook many of the more valuable cognitive contributions autistic individuals have to make.

On the other hand, I don't want to be entirely pollyannish about the situation either. Clearly, there are also a significant number of autistic individuals who do experience various kinds and degrees of cognitive difficulty—difficulties that can often extend throughout a lifetime. The reasons for this phenomenon remain poorly understood and are a genuine cause for concern; and indeed, when one surveys the entire landscape of autism and intellectual ability—both the promises and the problems—what emerges is an extremely complex and puzzling picture. Autistic intelligence is different; it is also highly variable. Autistic intelligence is full of intriguing possibilities; it also gives rise to a surfeit of unanswered questions. Whatever else one might say about autism and intelligence, at the very least one must admit that these are fertile grounds for further study and exploration.

And in the end, I think that is what bothers me the most about Mr. Doherty's repetitive fictions. That he makes up his numbers and passes along the concocted platitudes of others—well, that is something I can deal with, because those activities simply mark Mr. Doherty as another nondescript member of the autism advocacy throng. But the facileness—that is what I found so hard to swallow. It can be only pure cognitive laziness that would prompt Mr. Doherty to fabricate statistics, thereby obscuring a wealth of valuable and potentially helpful information about autism and intelligence. And in my opinion, it is that cognitive laziness that needs to be classified as autism's true intellectual disability.

Upcoming Schedule

2010-04-27T21:56:00.001-04:00

I want to let everyone know that the blog entries here will be somewhat less frequent and more erratically spaced throughout the remainder of 2010. Part of the slowdown can be chalked up to some blog fatigue and of course the ever present demands of parenthood and a full-time job. But the bigger reason is that I want to devote more time to a new project:

What I essentially am going to do is take a subset of these blog posts from the last two years, clean them up, add a few items to them, and reassemble the lot into a more cohesive, publishable-friendly format—probably something along the lines of what I did with Autistic Symphony. My expectation is to have the project completed by the end of the year.

ASAN's Reply to My Open Letter

2010-04-13T00:21:00.002-04:00

I was tempted to leave the body of this post blank, but let me state more straightforwardly that ASAN has simply chosen not to reply to my open letter regarding the organization's honesty and integrity. That is of course ASAN's right, and nothing unusual need be inferred from its exercising of that right.

For me personally, however, the silence is disappointing. Keep in mind that ASAN, through regular email requests and at no prompting from me, frequently asks for my support, and keep in mind that I have been generally desirous of giving that support. ASAN has done good work in the past—for instance, its rallying of support against the Ransom Notes campaign. And the stated goals of ASAN are ones that, generally speaking, I believe would be beneficial for nearly all autistic individuals.

Nonetheless, I refuse to hold ASAN to any lesser standard than I would hold any other organization that asks for my support, and that includes standards of transparency, honesty and integrity. Speaking bluntly, I have never found ASAN to be a very transparent organization, and as I think this latest incident has demonstrated, ASAN appears to have some work ahead of it if it is going to meet consistently the principles of honesty and integrity.

Going forward, I remain willing to keep an open mind and a tentative eye for ASAN, but that organization needs to realize that if it is going to continue to ask for my support, then in return I am going to seek evidence that it is meeting the highest organizational standards. Lately, that evidence has been very difficult to find.

One final matter: political expediency. I have never myself heard directly from ASAN that it is willing to place political expediency above principles of accuracy and openness, but I have heard far too often from ASAN apologists that various forms of political expediency are at times necessary and valid tactics to be employed against the so-called opposing forces. To that line of reasoning, my reply is unqualified, and it goes like this:

What autistic individuals need more than anything is accurate information, along with acceptance, support and understanding based upon that information. Autistic individuals need accurate information more than they need treatments, more than they need funding, more than they need laws; for without accurate information, all those efforts would be pointless. What autistic individuals do not need is more political and personal expediency. Autistic individuals have suffered a long history of burden from organizations all too happy to practice political and personal expediency at the expense of accurate information—Autism Speaks, DAN, FEAT, Generation Rescue, ASA, the Judge Rotenberg Center—the list goes on and on. Thus it is important to state with unqualified clarity that autistic individuals do not need the burden of suffering from one more such organization—even if that organization happens to be run by autistic individuals.

Treasures

2010-04-06T21:56:00.001-04:00

On what I hope is a more productive note than my previous entry, I would like to draw attention to a series of posts being made on parenting over at Brett's Waste Blog. These posts generally highlight the value of celebrating what is unique in each child and of encouraging children to pursue individual interests and strengths—no matter how unusual those interests and strengths may seem. Such ideas should be applied to all children of course, but they are particularly important for autistic children, many of whom are not celebrated and not encouraged for being who they are.

One day, I hope to record a few thoughts and observations about my own son. I think I have held back so far simply because I do not have the rhetorical skills to do him justice, but what I can report today is that as he approaches his eighth birthday, he remains both obviously autistic and extraordinarily delightful. In many respects my son serves as the perfect counterexample to those who insist that only intense treatments and early intervention can help an autistic child progress; for having experienced none of these, my son has developed into an individual full of warmth, joy, skill and complexity, an individual with a unique and valuable perspective upon his world. I stand in complete awe of him, and I also stand aghast at the thought of anyone wishing for him to be any other way than the way he actually is.

It is my firm conviction that when we approach autistic children as medical problems in need of being fixed, we end up throwing away one of humanity's greatest treasures.

An Open Letter to ASAN Regarding Its Honesty and Integrity

2010-03-31T17:22:00.003-04:00

To the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN):

I would like to request clarification on the matter of the Cat in a Dog's World blog and its affiliation to an ASAN Chapter Director. In particular, I would like to know the following:

Is ASAN aware that ASAN leaders are blogging pseudonymously in support of ASAN and its policies?
Does ASAN condone or encourage this practice?
If ASAN does not condone or encourage this practice, would ASAN be willing to speak out publicly against this practice and remind its leaders that they are expected to conduct themselves with honesty, openness and integrity at all times?

This is not a small matter for ASAN. Undisclosed pseudonymous blogging in support of ASAN and its policies reflects poorly on both the individual and the organization. This practice, to put it quite simply, is dishonest. I am willing to accept that the original intentions were simply a question of poor judgment, but the indications are that the individual involved wishes to continue this practice even after being made aware of its unethical nature. Furthermore, ASAN's silence on the matter makes it unclear if the organization itself understands the consequences of these actions.

I look forward to ASAN's reply regarding these questions and concerns.

Respectfully,

Alan Griswold

The Emergence of Early Behavioral Signs of an Autism Research Disorder

2010-02-20T01:29:00.003-05:00

It looks as though I will to need to interrupt my blogging break before it has had much of a chance to begin:

The occasion for this interruption is the online publication of A Prospective Study of the Emergence of Early Behavioral Signs of Autism (Ozonoff et al., 2010). Note that I have recently posted my thoughts regarding a different paper from this same general group of researchers, Play and Developmental Outcomes in Infant Siblings of Children with Autism (Christensen et al., 2010), a paper I generally decried as containing too much researcher bias and too much reliance upon the use of concocted measures. But as luck would have it, Christensen et al. (2010) was apparently only the warm-up act: when it comes to researcher bias and concocted measures, surely nothing can hold a candle to Ozonoff et al. (2010).

And I am starting to worry. Observations of infants and toddlers who are at high risk for autism (because they have older siblings who have already been diagnosed with autism) carry the potential of providing some valuable insight into the nature of the condition; but this will only happen if those observations arrive mostly unfiltered. Based upon what I have seen so far in Christensen et al. (2010) and Ozonoff et al. (2010), and given that a good portion of the research wherewithal directed towards at-risk children has been entrusted to this one tight-knit, rather homogeneous group of researchers, it appears as though these observations are not only going to arrive filtered, they are going to arrive after having been passed through a very distorting lens.

Let me begin by summarizing my complaints and concerns about Ozonoff et al. (2010).

1. The study is based almost entirely on made-up measures—measures designed to give the appearance of science when in fact those measures are not scientific at all. And as if that were not bad enough, those measures are then used, quite falsely, to create the illusion of comparable data, when in fact no such comparison is warranted. The findings of Ozonoff et al. (2010), while not entirely without merit, are based far too much upon a constructed fiction.

2. This particular group of researchers has been displaying a consistent bias in how it regards autism—etiology, preferred treatments, etc.—a bias that is strongly coloring the group's research methodology, and more importantly, is causing the group to overlook and dismiss data that does not fit into its preconceived notions. The findings of Ozonoff et al. (2010), while not entirely without merit, have been rendered needlessly incomplete through researcher bias.

3. For a so-called prospective study, Ozonoff et al. (2010) seems to have had a good portion of its structure retrospectively decided. While this is not sinister in and of itself, given the background of the researchers and given their potential interest in having the findings of these studies turn out in certain ways, it would seem that a greater premium would be placed upon methodological transparency and fair-mindedness. The findings of Ozonoff et al. (2010), while not entirely without merit, raise questions about general approach and about potential conflicts of interest.

Made-up Measures. There is a reason that much of science has been built up around the consistency of the yardstick and stop watch. I realize not all experiments can be conducted with quite the same degree of measurement consistency as is provided by distance and time—including within the field of autism research—and thus some leeway towards the use of broader techniques can at times be tolerated. But that leeway should not extend to complete freedom in making up measurement tools on an as-needed basis.

The measures upon which Ozonoff et al. (2010) relies are spelled out in the section “Measures Used to Track Behavioral Symptom Emergence,” a section surely deserving of a creativity award, but just as surely not deserving of the name science. Although I cannot do justice to the section myself—it really needs to be read to understand just how much measurement construction is actually going on—let me say that in essence it lays out various observer count and judgment statistics that are re-grouped and massaged together into categories freely labeled as face gazes, social smiles and directed vocalizations—“yardsticks” that I doubt have ever been employed in quite this way before, and quite likely will never be used this way again. True, these methods do allow for some crude observational comparisons between autistic and non-autistic individuals at similar ages—and so they are not completely worthless—but think about trying to repeat this experiment. Think about another research group having to train a set of observers to count face gazes or different types of vocalizations in precisely the same way as in Ozonoff et al. (2010), and you will realize there are no legitimate means by which to replicate this study, because the study has been based almost entirely on measures more fuzzy than a cotton ball.

But it gets much worse. Note that these made-up measures are applied to the study subjects at 6 months of age, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months, and 36 months, with the researchers then implying, straight faced, that these measurements can then be directly compared across all these ages. This is just the height of folly! Take face gazes for instance. Think about what might be counted as a face gaze coming from a six month-old, and then think about what might be counted as a face gaze emanating from a 36 month-old. I am not an expert on infants and toddlers, but I do not hesitate to say that the quality and characteristics of a face gaze from a six month-old are not going to be anything like those from a 36 month-old. That does not stop the Ozonoff et al. (2010) researchers, however—not one bit. There you can find them, plotting out these measurements across all ages in the graphs of Figure 1, alongside corresponding conclusions about how autistic and non-autistic children have “gained” or “lost” skills over time; there is never the slightest hint that these across-age comparisons are instead a massive instance of placing 6 month-old apples next to 36 month-old oranges. And if you have the slightest doubt about the non-comparability of face gazes over time, think about how much more absurd are the comparisons of directed vocalizations. These are the summation of nonverbal vocalizations, word verbalizations and phrase verbalizations that can be corresponded to face gazes. But tell me, exactly how many word and phrase verbalizations do we expect from a 6 month-old, and in contrast, how many word and phrase verbalizations might we expect from a 36 month-old? Once again, the so-called directed vocalizations of 6 month-olds are demonstrably nothing like the directed vocalizations of 36 month-olds, and yet the researchers act as though giving these measurements the same name is all that is needed to justify their direct comparison.

This research behavior is inexcusable, because after all it was the Ozonoff et al. (2010) researchers who made up the measures in the first place. They as well as anybody would know that comparing these measurements across child ages is ludicrous, and I would have to seriously question the intelligence or integrity of anyone who would insist on doing so. But note that this is precisely what happens when scientists start relying on measurement schemes that stray too far from objectivity—it is not all that large a step from made-up measures to made-up use of those measures. As I said in my comments regarding Christensen et al. (2010), concocted measures are the calling card of a concocted science.

Researcher Bias. There is never much doubt about where this research group stands in its description of autism. Both Ozonoff et al. (2010) and Christensen et al. (2010) are literally littered with phrases describing autism as a social deficit disorder, one best approached through early intervention directed towards getting autistic children to adopt social behaviors more in line with those of non-autistic children. This philosophy precedes any attempt at observation.

Of course, there is nothing unusual or wrong about researchers having a point of view. But when that point of view colors nearly every aspect of their research methodology, and when that point of view causes the researchers to consistently overlook important pieces of information that do not fit neatly into their preconceived notions, then there is indeed a problem. My comments regarding Christensen et al. (2010) already noted that these researchers' dismissive attitude towards autistic-like behaviors in infants and toddlers has caused them to turn a blind eye to the characteristics of these behaviors, and thus the researchers are overlooking valuable information, namely that early autistic behaviors are indeed quite structured, predictable and purposeful, characteristics that would be obvious to anyone willing to take a closer look. But this theme of willful blindness is continued unabated right through Ozonoff et al. (2010). First, note the influence of the researchers' point of view on research design: all the measures these authors decide to use are directed solely towards their theory of autism as a social deficit disorder—face gazes, social smiles, directed vocalizations, examiner ratings of social engagement. This would be a lovely set of statistics if all we were interested in is what the authors want to tell us, but surely a much broader set of statistics would be more helpful if we what we are interested in is what the infants and toddlers have to tell us.

And then there is the curious case of the unused statistic. The researchers start out by measuring a category called gaze to objects, but note the problem already contained within the description of that measure—“infant's gaze is directed toward an object that the examiner is presenting to the child or to another object visible in the frame”—anyone with even a modicum of understanding about autism could tell you that there is a world of difference between attention paid to an object presented by another person and attention paid to an object through independent motivation. But this research group, so caught up in its social deficit model, fails to untangle that distinction, and when its further efforts to fit this already mangled statistic into its thesis fail to gain significance, the authors decide to drop all further mention of the measure. Thus orientation to objects and structure, potentially one of the more valuable pieces of information that might have been gathered from this study, ends up getting so messed up by researcher bias that there ends up being no information at all. This is clearly a disservice to science, and a disservice to autistic individuals.

It is easy to see what one wants to see, but the trick in science is to overcome this tendency long enough to see instead as broadly as one can. Ozonoff et al. (2010) does not rise to the level of that standard.

Questions about Approach. Although Ozonoff et al. (2010) does not spell out its overall approach in great detail or with much clarity, one can still piece together enough information from its pages to realize that what was prospective about this study was the gathering of much raw data from a rather large group of participants, while what was retrospective about this study was the harvesting of subsets of this data—as well as subsets of participants—from the initial study group. Of course, this approach raises some key questions about the timing and purpose of various study technique decisions, but these questions go largely unanswered.

I would not mention this but for the fact it must be realized that the circumstances of these at-risk infant studies, as well as the circumstances of the researchers who have been entrusted to conduct them, by necessity invite greater scrutiny. Lists of researchers given the means to conduct at-risk infant studies reveal a consistent and like-minded set of names: names such as S. Rogers, S. Ozonoff, M. Sigman and G. Dawson are associated with these studies again and again. These are researchers who are close colleagues, and who have built careers around a similar social-deficit view of autism, and who are holding mostly high-paying positions at organizations that espouse nearly identical views of autism, and who have been associated with a self-promoted and perhaps proprietary intervention technique (the Early Start Denver Model); so I do not think I am revealing any state secrets in suggesting that this group of researchers might have a vested interest in having the results of their at-risk infant studies turn out in a certain way. There is nothing necessarily sinister in this, and I certainly do not see any evidence of fraudulent results, but under these circumstances, and given the rather narrow focus of both study methodology and study results we have been seeing so far from this group, I think some healthy skepticism and a polite call for greater transparency are certainly warranted.

And I would also think the autism research community might want to reconsider the wisdom of entrusting such a new and potentially valuable line of research to such an homogeneous-minded set of researchers. While there is no easy way to eliminate conflicts of interest entirely from the autism research community, at the very least, if we had some competing interests engaged in conducting some of these studies, we might be more successful in broadening our view.

Allow me to borrow a page from these researchers' storybook and suggest that early diagnosis of their autism research disorder is actually a good thing, because it opens the door to some early intervention. The intervention need not be all that intensive in this case—I think some straightforward occupational therapy will do. For instance, we might try a few sessions where when the researchers attempt to invent novel and fuzzy measures by which to conduct their studies, they are immediately re-directed to consider measures a bit more objective, broadly scoped and possibly repeatable. When the researchers begin to perseverate on their biases, we might present them with a series of PECS cards, for instance, that demonstrate how data and information can get easily overlooked when scientists walk around with blinders on. And when the researchers insist on arranging their studies to suit only their particular interests, we might enroll them in some structured play dates—friendship classes, if you will—opportunities for these researchers to practice taking turns, sharing, playing by the rules, opportunities to experience the good feeling that comes from allowing others to express their interests too.

I am half tempted to package this form of intervention and market it under a catchy phrase—say, the Early Start Indianapolis Model. But of course I know I would never get away with such a scheme, everyone would see at once through my ruse. After all, I am only suggesting that these researchers associated with Ozonoff et al. (2010) and Christensen et al. (2010) merely follow what has actually been available to them all along, merely follow the well understood principles of logic, mathematics and science.

Ozonoff, S., Iosif, A., Baguio, F., Cook, I.C., Moore Hill, M., Hutman, T., Rogers, S.J., Rozga, A., Sangha, S., Sigman, M., Steinfeld, M.B., & Young, G.S. (2010). A Prospective Study of the Emergence of Early Behavioral Signs of Autism Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry DOI: 10.1016/j.jaac.2009.11.009

Christensen, L., Hutman, T., Rozga, A., Young, G.S., Ozonoff, S., Rogers, S.J., Baker, B., & Sigman, M. (2010). Play and Developmental Outcomes in Infant Siblings of Children with Autism Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders DOI: 10.1007/s10803-010-0941-y

Early Spring Break

2010-02-14T11:38:00.002-05:00

It's time to recharge my batteries, so I'm going to be taking another break from blogging—probably until around early April or so. Feel free to check back then.

The Autistic Perceptual Difference

2010-02-06T16:08:00.004-05:00

I want to draw your attention to a paper recently published online in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders: Play and Developmental Outcomes in Infant Siblings of Children with Autism (Christensen, Hutman, Rozga, Young, Ozonoff, Rogers, Baker, Sigman, 2010; hereafter referred to as PDO). There is much I might criticize about this paper—for instance, its prejudicial insistence on describing everything autistic as an impairment, and also its abundant use of pseudo measures to create the veneer of science (that is, an observer “counting” the number of functional play activities in a four minute session is not the same thing as measuring the distance from Mars to Neptune, no matter how much statistical massaging is applied thereafter—concocted measures are the calling card of a concocted science). In truth, however, these criticisms would apply to almost every instance of current autism research, so they do not of themselves distinguish the paper. What does distinguish the paper is that after one filters out all the fuzzy science, and after one overlooks all the prejudicial assumptions emanating from the paper's authors, the residue that remains still provides some useful insight into the nature of autism, including strong evidence for what I believe to be the nearest thing we currently have to that much sought-after prize, an actual cause of autism. Since the paper's authors have preemptively blinded themselves to these fertile possibilities (because of their prejudicial insistence on seeing everything autistic as an impairment), allow me to step in and try to shed a more productive light on their work.

The study described in PDO centers on observational data of infant siblings of autistic children, alongside similar observational data of non-autistic controls. Since a fair portion of these infant siblings will later be recognized as autistic themselves, these observations allow for a relatively large number of comparisons of autistic and non-autistic behaviors at early ages, well before outside interventions and influences begin to obscure the source of such behaviors. This particular study observed children at the age of eighteen months, and although both autistic and non-autistic behaviors are fairly limited at this age, it is not unreasonable to assume that whatever behaviors do exist at eighteen months, they are for the most part naturally and spontaneously derived.

To cut to the chase, a major finding from PDO is that the infant siblings who will eventually be identified as autistic are observed to display fewer functional play behaviors and more non-functional repetitive play behaviors than do non-autistic controls. The terms “functional” and “non-functional” are unfortunate choices (I will have more to say about these terms later), but within the context of PDO, it becomes apparent that the term “functional” is intended to describe play activity that is considered “appropriate” vis-a-vis the activities and expectations of other humans, and thus another, less prejudicial way of describing this particular finding is to say that non-autistic children engage more frequently in human-centric or human-derived play behaviors, whereas autistic children tend to engage, relatively speaking, in more object-centric or object-repetitive behaviors. Indeed, when the authors get around to discussing the observed differences between autistic and non-autistic behaviors at eighteen months of age, they concentrate precisely on this people versus non-people aspect of perception and activity. The authors' own words:

Examination of the subtypes of functional play revealed that the ASD [autistic] sibling group showed fewer self-directed and other-directed play behaviors than the TD [typically developing] controls. However, the ASD sibling group did not show fewer object-directed functional play acts. This finding is of particular interest because it suggests that children with ASD may not understand people as potential recipients of a play action and/or are not motivated to direct play behaviors to people (self or other) even before many of them are diagnosed.

Although PDO's science behind the above statement is far from precise, nonetheless, on a crudely observational level, the authors are actually onto something here; indeed, the above statement crystallizes perhaps the most useful aspect of their study. With it, PDO becomes yet another instance in a growing body of evidence, much of it dealing with children at a very young age, that demonstrates the fundamental, early-observable distinction between autistic and non-autistic individuals, namely that each group perceptually focuses on an entirely different class of sensory targets. Non-autistic individuals focus primarily on humans and human-centric activities, whereas autistic individuals focus primarily on objects and activities that are non-biological and non human-centric but that are often rich in concepts such as pattern, structure, symmetry and form. For another much-publicized example of this phenomenon, see the study Two-Year-Olds with Autism Orient to Non-Social Contingencies Rather than Biological Motion (Klin, Lin, Gorrindo, Ramsay, Jones, 2009), which demonstrates that two year-old non-autistic children focus primarily on point light displays that depict biological motion, whereas two year-old autistic children focus primarily on point light displays that depict some form of non-biological pattern.

This repeatedly observable distinction between autistic and non-autistic perception and behavior is so important and so significant that I believe it needs to be highlighted and given a name. Therefore, let me dub it the autistic perceptual difference and let me define it in the following way:

Non-autistic individuals perceptually orient primarily to humans and to human-related activities, whereas autistic individuals do not.

There are several items to note about this definition of the autistic perceptual difference. In the first place, the autistic perceptual difference is not the same thing as a social deficit model of autism. A social deficit model of autism would imply that autistic individuals readily perceive other humans—just as non-autistic individuals do—but that autistic individuals, through a neurological defect or some other mechanism, are somehow unable to respond correctly to social inputs or to social situations. I will not go into detail here about the paucity of evidence in support of the social deficit model of autism, but I would note that the mere fact many autistic individuals do mature to the point of being quite capable and quite sophisticated in social circumstances later in life is enough all by itself to make the idea of an inherent social deficit highly improbable. By contrast, the definition of the autistic perceptual difference implies no such deficit—it posits only the perceptual distinction. All the autistic behaviors commonly portrayed by autism researchers as social shortcomings are in fact behaviors that can be expected—that is to say, they are behaviors that are quite healthy within the context of autistic perception. Autistic social behaviors are simply the natural response arising from a form of perception that does not spontaneously orient to the other members of the species.

A second point to note about the definition of the autistic perceptual difference is that it also provides an affirmative description of non-autistic perception. This is an area conspicuously absent in the current state of autism research. Although considerable research dollars are spent and considerable ink is spilled on describing what is presumably wrong about autistic individuals, scarcely one penny is deployed or one drop of ink is applied to describing what is supposedly right about non-autistic individuals. Or to put it more fundamentally, no one ever bothers to address the question, what makes non-autistic individuals non-autistic? The definition of the autistic perceptual difference provides an answer to that question in a fundamental way, by highlighting the species-specific focus of non-autistic perception, and it should be noted that while this species-specific focus aligns non-autistic individuals with the perceptions and behaviors of the remainder of the animal kingdom, oddly enough it leaves non-autistic individuals somewhat atypical with respect to the current state of civilization and mankind. It is my belief that a wealth of anthropological information is just waiting to be gleaned from the contrast and blending of our respective knowledge about autistic and non-autistic forms of perception, and at any rate, there can be no question autism research will never arrive at an accurate, comprehensive and meaningful description of the nature of autism without also arriving at a correspondingly accurate, comprehensive and meaningful description of the nature of non-autism. The autistic perceptual difference provides an excellent place from which to begin that investigation.

The final thing to note about the definition of the autistic perceptual difference is that it states the primary characteristic of autistic perception. The other observable characteristics—such as the tendency towards repetition, and the natural attraction towards objects and activities embodying pattern, structure, etc.—these remaining observable characteristics, although they follow immediately and necessarily from the lack of a human-specific orientation, they must still be described, technically speaking, as secondary characteristics. What is happening here is that because autistic individuals do not have a species-specific focus to serve for cognitive grounding (as is the case for non-autistic individuals), autistic individuals find themselves in the near grip of a sensory chaos, and must overcome this chaos by engaging with the few features in their sensory environment that inherently stand out. When we reflect upon what kinds of features in a sensory environment would inherently stand out from the remainder, we are led immediately to those features rich in concepts such as symmetry and pattern. And viewed in this light we quickly realize that autistic behaviors—repetitive, structure-focused, symmetry-intense—are once again the expected behaviors arising from their particular form of perception. Far from being deficit driven, such behaviors are indeed quite healthy and quite necessary under the given circumstances of the autistic perceptual difference.

It is possible that one day advances in neuroscience, genetics, or some yet-unknown field will uncover a material cause of autism. Nonetheless, it must be admitted that today, currently—despite all the self-congratulatory press releases and despite Geraldine Dawson's annual pompom efforts—despite all this, the autism research community's current efforts towards uncovering a specified material cause of autism still stands at essentially square zero. The autistic perceptual difference is of course not a material cause of autism; but it is, as far as I can tell, the most fundamental piece of information we currently possess regarding autism, and thus stands as the closest thing we currently have to an actual explanation for autistic characteristics. As more and more studies are performed and published regarding autistic children at extremely young ages, my prediction is that the autistic perceptual difference will continue to emerge as the one consistent thread running throughout all those studies. Strip away their concocted science, strip away their researchers' preconceived notions, strip away the medical community's insistence that autism must be a devastating medical disorder, and what will remain in paper after paper is the same observable fact: non-autistic individuals perceptually orient primarily to humans and to human-related activities, whereas autistic individuals do not. Within that unfolding body of evidence can be found a deep and wonderful scientific story that is badly in need of being told; now if we can only get the researchers compiling that evidence to drop their prejudices for just a moment, and open their eyes.

Let me conclude by discussing in greater detail PDO's usage of the terms “functional” and “non-functional” to describe various types of observed play activity in very young children.

At one point in their paper, the authors do offer some examples to help explain their employment of these terms, noting for instance that a child who puts a toy spoon to the mouth of a doll would be counted as performing a functional play activity because that activity is considered “appropriate” with regard to the functional use of a spoon, whereas a child who repeatedly puts various items into and out of a pot would be counted as engaging in a non-functional repetitive play activity, since such activity does not coincide with the expected usage of a pot. I would have preferred, however, if the authors had stuck with the example of the doll and toy spoon when explaining non-functional play activity, noting for instance that if a child were to line up these items into a regular pattern—say, spoon doll spoon doll—that child would be counted as engaging in a repetitive non-functional play activity, just as with the example of the pot. By keeping the context of their contrasting examples more homogeneous, the authors would have revealed more clearly that their usage of the terms “functional” and “non-functional” has far more to do with their own preconceived judgments of these various play activities, rather than having anything to do with the inherent value of the activities themselves.

Think about it. From the perspective of an eighteen month-old child, the functional value of the many activities possible with a doll and toy spoon must seem rather arbitrary, and indeed would be arbitrary if not for one thing, namely that the “feeding” activity is clearly a human-centric activity. An eighteen month-old child who performs such activities is doing so because he or she has seen other humans make similar motions with a doll and toy spoon (quite likely) or has begun to match human actions with real spoons to the feigned actions with toys (perhaps less likely at eighteen months, but still conceivable). Therefore, what actually makes these activities “functional”—both in the eyes of the child and in the judgments of the researchers—is their human-specific nature. But does it follow therefore that only human-specific activities are functional? And is it wise to describe other classes of play activity as “non-functional”?

Note that the so-called non-functional play activity of autistic children is not random activity. If play activity actually were the result of some kind of impairment, then what we might expect to observe is play activity that is highly chaotic or unstructured in nature; but the play activity of autistic children is anything but. Repetition itself belies the notion of chaotic behavior, since repetition is the embodiment of temporal pattern, and when we consider the nature of activities such as lining up toys, spinning objects and selves, staring at ceiling fans, running back and forth in repeated patterns, flapping arms over and over, etc., we realize that far from being random or chaotic, such activities center almost exclusively on concepts rich in pattern, structure, symmetry and form. While it is true that autistic play activities are generally repetitious, object-oriented and non human-centric, it is not therefore true that such activities are “impaired” or “non-functional,” and to insist on saying so is to admit to having turned a blind eye to what these activities actually consist of. The researchers in PDO need to be reminded that their task was to observe autistic play activities, not prejudge them.

Looked at without prejudice, autistic play activities are seen to be functional in at least two very critical aspects. In the first place, autistic play activities are functional towards the development of autistic cognition. As we have already noted, without primary perception of species-specific influences, autistic individuals must obtain their cognitive grounding through their engagement with the few elements in their sensory environment that inherently stand out from the remainder, elements humanity has now come to recognize through the concepts of pattern, symmetry, structure and form. Viewed in this light, autistic play activities are seen as not only essential, but indeed healthy towards the developmental progress appropriate for an autistic form of perception, and another prediction I will readily make is that when all is said and done, it will come to be recognized that it is the lack of understanding towards these autistic perceptual and cognitive needs—along with the many mindless attempts to intervene and thwart such needs—that accounts for the large majority of poor outcomes in autistic individuals.

Just as importantly, autistic play activities are functional in another, much broader sense, one that the scientific community has sadly ignored through the present day, but one that is literally stunning in its overall size, scope and impact.

Humanity currently faces an outstanding riddle regarding the origin and nature of its sudden transformation from biologically limited primate to collective architect of landscapes now thoroughly drenched in such concepts as abstraction, symmetry, pattern and form. The irrational bleatings of the sociobiologists notwithstanding, no plausible explanation has yet to be offered as to the source of this sudden transformation. But in point of fact, the source of that transformation actually exists right before our very eyes. If you are in need of an example, I would note that several instances could have been found engaged in the four-minute play sessions of the PDO study.

Whereas no material cause for autism has yet to be uncovered, the material cause of humanity's remarkable cultural transformation exists in abundance all around us, exists in the embodiment of a form of cognition that focuses primarily on the non-biological concepts of pattern, structure, symmetry and form—the distinguishing hallmarks of modern civilization, and the distinguishing hallmarks of autistic perception. The atypical play activity of autistic children is indeed functional, functional in a way we have hardly begun to conceive.