5 ms·

What if all children start off as autistic and gradually develop situational and emotional awareness? Some never do.

• wozer 6y ago
  If that is true, it must happen very early. Some two year olds are already extremely non-autistic.
  • Lammy 6y ago
    Two years old is well past "very early" development stages.
    • hanniabu 6y ago
      What constitutes very early? 6 months? 2 months?
      • Lammy 6y ago
        https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones/index.html
  • pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    Parents in the UK will some times describe a child as "flirty", it has nothing to do with sexuality - to head that one off. They have learnt, by only a few months old, to attract attention of adults by using facial expressions, coos, and such. They certainly seem to be the other end of the spectrum wrt commanding social interaction. But I'd suspect it's more that most children have the capacity but a few just happen upon the formula early. Like we mostly have capacity to walk but some take 14 months then just get up and walk, whilst others are walking at 8 months when they can barely raise their heads; and others are crawling backwards, or shuffling on their bums because walking didn't click quite so quickly.
    • nicoburns 6y ago
      Myers-Briggs type theory suggests that there are 8 modes of cognition, and that we all develop one first and only later begin to develop the others. Even if you don't like the Myers-Briggs stuff, I think the idea that children all develop a specific way of thinking first, but that the one that develops first isn't the same for all children is insightful.
  • h0l0cube 6y ago
    There's some evidence that points to reliable bio-markers in utero: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/274655 https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/274655 https://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/news/20140627/ultrasounds-autism https://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/news/20140627/ultrasounds... Such diagnostics raises troubling ethical concerns. I certainly know many on the spectrum that are perfectly fine with who they are, but if prospective parents had the ability to terminate based on some x% probability an unborn child might be 'mildly'/'moderately'/'severely' autistic...
• Dumblydorr 6y ago
  The problem with that paradigm is clinicians rely on speech and behavior from ages 1-3, looking for abnormalities. Hard to assess issues before 12 months, most kids don't speak much until after then. Its prevalence is estimated at 1 in 54, by the way. I doubt researchers and experts are off by a factor of 50.
• GhostVII 6y ago
  I would find that hard to believe given how severely autism impacts some people. Things like being non-verbal, or extremely sensitive to noise, don't seem to be things you can just learn as a child to avoid. And if the only difference was in childhood learning, you would expect that people with asbergers would be able to learn at least some of that situational awareness later in life. Based on people I know with asbergers, for many of them that is not the case - they never get even close to having intuition about social situations, they just end up memorizing rules and applying them when they seem to fit. Rather than intuitively knowing someone is angry/sad/etc. they use the rules they have memorized to make that determination. It is a completely different way of thinking. Of course this doesn't apply to everyone with autism (it is an extremely diverse disorder) but I think it shows that there is a significant difference outside of just what was learned in childhood.