7 ms·

Autistic children with imaginary friends have better social skills

106 points by EndXA 4y ago

sedeki 4y ago
Is it common for children to have imaginary friends in general?
- hnbad 4y ago
  I'm autistic and never had imaginary friends but nobody I ever knew in my life (including classmates in school) had imaginary friends. I mostly learned about the concept as a horror movie trope in my teenage years. My grandmother insisted on vividly remembering an imaginary childhood friend she would later reinterpret as a ghost. I'm not yet fully convinced it's a part of "healthy play" and not a coping mechanism for early childhood trauma (especially given how widely accepted and common a lot of trauma-inducing behavior still is in modern parenting, not to mention how socially isolating the modern family structure can be).
  - fsiefken 4y ago
    Hi, not everybody talks about having an imaginary friend. A friend of mine not only has an imaginary friend but a complete paracosm since early childhood. The paracosm is still maintained through imagination and writing and a very personal matter, furthermore the person has an internal dialogue going to discuss issues. I sometimes overhear my friend talking (not to the imaginary friend, but to a copy of himself); appearently it's helpful. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/08/smarter-living/benefits-of-talking-to-yourself-self-talk.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/08/smarter-living/benefits-o... As far as I can tell it's not trauma induced, the person is neurodivergent though, intelligent, a good parent, counselor and has a healthy and developed ego. We sometimes speculate about the parallels with a religious outlook as it's a personally experienced living and breathing reality (I'm a bit jealous of), there is no claim to an objective reality apart from our consensus reality. About paracosm: "The creator of a paracosm has a complex and deeply felt relationship with this subjective universe, which may incorporate real-world or imaginary characters and conventions. Commonly having its own geography, history, and language, it is an experience that is often developed during childhood and continues over a long period of time, months or even years, as a sophisticated reality that can last into adulthood.[1]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracosm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracosm
  - xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
    I am not autistic and had an imaginary friend when I was little, maybe around 5 years old. I don't know if any of my classmates had imaginary friends, it's not exactly water-cooler conversation for toddlers, but more importantly my friends wouldn't know this about me. So, your anecdote and belief of relation to trauma doesn't align with my experience. I'm not yet fully convinced there is anything unhealthy about imaginary friends or that trauma plays a role at all.
    - mmcgaha 4y ago
      First off, love your user name. When you had an imaginary friend, did you know that they were imaginary? I had toys that I talked to and played out scenarios with so I am wondering if they are equivalent.
- lucozade 4y ago
  > Is it common for children to have imaginary friends in general? A quick Google seems to suggest it's in the 50-65% range for 7 year olds. The article states that it's less prevalent for autistic children.
- stefantalpalaru 4y ago
hnbad 4y ago
I can't take this article serious given that it conflates "social skills" and "ability to interact with allistics" (non-autistics). Recent research actually suggests autistic children are often better at interacting with other autistic children and that allistic children are worse at interacting with autistic children (and vice versa of course). This is known as the "double empathy problem": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_empathy_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_empathy_problem Many forms of autistic "therapy" such as ABA focus on masking autistic behaviors and mimicking allistic behaviors while disregarding the needs and preferences of autistic children. Many autistic "problem behaviors" are also not the result of autism but of trauma inflicted by others. Researchers are traditionally good at insisting that autistics lack theory of mind while also completely ignoring the double empathy problem and how it may affect the researchers' ability to reason about the autistic research subjects. This is why autistic adults in recent years have become more vocal insisting "nothing about us without us", i.e. if the researchers want to study autism, the research team should at least include autistic researchers. We generally frown upon research into women's issues conducted by all-men research teams or research into Black issues conducted by all-white research teams, so we also shouldn't accept all-allistic research teams studying autism.
- IIAOPSW 4y ago
  Psychology, as an establishment, by and large, is about putting a veneer of scientific legitimacy over forceful enforcement of societal norms. Within living memory homosexuality was a diagnosis in the DSM. There is no truth, only power. Kids have no power, so its always "on the autism spectrum." But when they grow up and have prestigious coding jobs with money (and the associated power), all of a sudden they're "neuro-diverse" or "a bit eccentric". What's the difference between Mark Zuckerberg and an Aspergers diagnosis? A billion dollars.
  - Der_Einzige 4y ago
    Glad to see genuine anti-pschiatry advocated here without the other anti-scientific bullshit that is posted along with it. Most forms of "therapy" don't work either, especially CBT. Also, don't even get me started on the fact that this group is STILL obsessed with Freud, psychoanalysis, and people who believe that humans have Oedipus and Electra complexes.
oneoff786 4y ago
Any research that treats autism as a single classifier, or even a single dimensional spectrum seems doomed to be irreproducible to me.
- coffeeblack 4y ago
  That was my first thought too. But that headline will make for a lot of clicks, so there’s that.
kampsun 4y ago
Is it because english isn't my first language, or is the title somewhat ambigious? Better than who, autistic children who do not have imaginary friends (it seems that the article is indicating this) or better than everyone else? Though more I read it, I guess better could also mean that their social skills are better than they would be without an imaginary friend.
- qwery 4y ago
  It's not just you. - They found a higher rate ("almost half") of autistic children "creating imaginary friends" than prior research. - A comparison is drawn between autistic children with imaginary friends versus autistic children without. Those with had "better social skills" than those without. - Prior research has found a similar difference in the general population (non-autistic children).
  - ff317 4y ago
    As always, though, correlation != causation. It could well be the case that half of children (autistic or not) have some extra innate capacity for socialization, and that typical parenting choices don't provide those children as much social input as their brain wants at a certain stage of development, and hence they make up imaginary friends to interact with in order to satisfy their enhanced social needs. In other words, the imaginary friends could be an effect rather than a cause.
- antonvs 4y ago
  In context, one would expect “better than” to refer to autistic children without imaginary friends, simply because deficits in social skills are a defining feature of autism. As such, the title is technically ambiguous but practically speaking, not.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Is it because english isn't my first language, or is the title somewhat ambigious? The truncated HN headline is a little ambiguous, though the most natural reading is correct; the full source title / subtitle is not ambiguous at all: “Autistic children with imaginary friends have better social skills, just like neurotypical children / Results suggest that pretend play provides similar social benefits to autistic children as it does to neurotypical children.” Constraints force compromise.
b800h 4y ago
Isn't this reverse causation? Selecting for a set of autistic children with imaginary friends selects for individuals with the set of conditions on the spectrum which affect social skills the least. Junk study?
- lucozade 4y ago
  The article specifically points out that the study establishes neither a causal direction nor whether or not there is a confounding factor. The study has a small sample size and is based on self reporting, so by no means definitive, but I see no reason to believe it's junk.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- im3w1l 4y ago
  That doesn't mean it's junk. But I think the selection effects you mention is a very intriguing idea. It could certainly be the case, but we don't know yet.
eric4smith 4y ago
I guess. After all, your imaginary friends never argue or dissent. They never bully you. And they always agree with your opinion. You’ll be really nice. On the other hand you’ll fold the moment real life nudges you. Just a lifting weights help to grow muscles, a little trauma makes a strong rounded person.
- loa_in_ 4y ago
  I don't know where does one get the idea that imaginary friends or similar (headmasters, etc.) are always in agreement with the one who imagines them.
- arbitrage 4y ago
  > a little trauma makes a strong rounded person. It's sick and extremely maladaptive to say outright that everyone should be traumatized for their own good.
  - fortran77 4y ago
    Did he say that? I didn't get that. And, reflecting back on my 59 years...it was the tough times that caused me to grow. YMMV.
    - larve 4y ago
      Trauma is the result of tough times that actively stunted or even undid your growth.
  - lambda_dn 4y ago
    I think OP meant life will lead to adversities that destroy some people, others overcome it which builds a robust character.
    - kelseyfrog 4y ago
      Or it's simply survivorship bias. Airplanes with red dots didnt grow up to be strong.
LatteLazy 4y ago
How do such terrible studies get funded, let alone published, let alone written up as articles? What a huge waste of everyones (including reads') time.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
qwery 4y ago
The title on HN (at the moment anyway) is truncated -- the full title is "Autistic children with imaginary friends have better social skills, just like neurotypical children" which has a bit of a different ring to it. Not sure if I'm missing something, but the claim seems to be ~ kids that speak (to "imaginary friends") tend to speak more than the ones that don't. This doesn't seem particularly ground-breaking... So what did this research involve? They asked parents of autistic children some questions over the internet. Finally I just want to mention that the researchers are not necessarily the people drawing conclusions from the research (let alone writing the headlines/articles about it).
- causi 4y ago
  This doesn't seem particularly ground-breaking... Right. Talking to an imaginary friend isn't the same as a real friend but tossing a baseball into the air isn't like playing baseball, yet if you told me "kids who spend an hour a day tossing and catching a baseball are better at playing baseball" I'd say "well, duh".
  - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
    Back in the late 90's I was working as a forklift operator at a manufacturing plant during my summer off from college. I will never forget walking into the breakroom and on the television was an anchor reporting that studies had shown heterosexual couples were more likely to have children than homosexual couples. Everyone in that break room was laughing. Someone got paid to do that study. And when I mention this, someone will inevitably come in and say we can't know until we verify. Sure we can, but more importantly, why the hell was money put towards _THAT_ question, of all questions we could be investigating? At what point are researchers just trying to look busy rather than actually be busy?
    - antonvs 4y ago
      Without a reference to the specific study, it’s impossible to answer. You may just have witnessed (the 90s TV equivalent of) a clickbait style piece. Misrepresenting research, whether due to misunderstanding or deliberately, happens all the time. It sounds like you didn’t personally look into the research in question, but you’re repeating a claim about it as though it were fact. That’s why this kind of misinformation is so prevalent.
EndXA 4y ago
Lay abstract of the original study: > Research on neurotypical children with imaginary friends has found that those with imaginary friends have better social skills and are more able to think about how other people’s minds work compared to children without imaginary friends. Research shows that some autistic children also create imaginary friends. This article is the first to look at whether or not autistic children with imaginary friends have stronger social skills and an improved ability to think about others’ minds than those without imaginary friends. We asked parents to report about their children aged 5 to 12. Finding almost half reported their child had an imaginary friend, a much larger number than previous research with younger children. Our findings also suggested that autistic children with imaginary friends were better able to understand others’ minds and had stronger social skills than their peers without imaginary friends. The children’s language ability did not influence this. The findings of this study add to the evidence that with respect to the creation imaginary friends and their potential benefits, the play profiles of autistic children are similar to the general population. It also provides more evidence that the understanding of others’ minds is not all or nothing in autism and gives reason for researchers to investigate whether the causes of these differences are the same or different for autistic children. Direct link to the study: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13623613221092195 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13623613221092...
mike_hock 4y ago
> Autistic children with imaginary friends have better social skills I'll drop that line at the next party, the whole room will crack up. (I'm the party host. All my imaginary friends will be there.)
- biomcgary 4y ago
  Your imaginary friends are helping you. Just like AlphaZero training by playing chess against itself. . .
  - mvid 4y ago
    I know this is tongue in cheek, but imagine if social interactions had a strict rule set you could simulate against, like chess
coffeeblack 4y ago
Or those who have better social skills are more likely to have imaginary friends, because they are more interested in social interactions.
gorjusborg 4y ago
PSA: Please don't take this as an instruction to 'encourage' your kid to have an imaginary friend.
adolph 4y ago
Now, solve for causality's arrow: has imaginary friend -> better social skills better social skills -> has imaginary friend Judea Pearl UCI CS Seminar: The Science of Cause and Effect: From Deep Learning to Deep Understanding, Video [0], Slides PDF [1] 0. https://uci.zoom.us/rec/play/2Fsh79DsG4CCQHQ-bdbN1N5zOByLAaoHN0wdBA2AqZWt%20jfuWjYN4jfWxAQzaAdalMojZwy0y2IYHmRP_.6J3btiY54vugrFhV https://uci.zoom.us/rec/play/2Fsh79DsG4CCQHQ-bdbN1N5zOByLAao... 1. https://web.cs.ucla.edu/~kaoru/irvine-feb2022.pdf https://web.cs.ucla.edu/~kaoru/irvine-feb2022.pdf
AzzieElbab 4y ago
I feel autism as a concept needs to be broken up into thousands of disorders before any study can be taken seriously. Anything from delayed development to genetic disorders is considered autism and everything is treated the same way. The science really needs to step up on this
- type0 4y ago
  That's why they call it autistic spectrum, and yes some investigators don't know shit and throw the autistic tag willy-nilly

106 points by EndXA 4y ago

sedeki 4y ago

Is it common for children to have imaginary friends in general?

hnbad 4y ago
I'm autistic and never had imaginary friends but nobody I ever knew in my life (including classmates in school) had imaginary friends. I mostly learned about the concept as a horror movie trope in my teenage years. My grandmother insisted on vividly remembering an imaginary childhood friend she would later reinterpret as a ghost. I'm not yet fully convinced it's a part of "healthy play" and not a coping mechanism for early childhood trauma (especially given how widely accepted and common a lot of trauma-inducing behavior still is in modern parenting, not to mention how socially isolating the modern family structure can be).
- fsiefken 4y ago
  Hi, not everybody talks about having an imaginary friend. A friend of mine not only has an imaginary friend but a complete paracosm since early childhood. The paracosm is still maintained through imagination and writing and a very personal matter, furthermore the person has an internal dialogue going to discuss issues. I sometimes overhear my friend talking (not to the imaginary friend, but to a copy of himself); appearently it's helpful. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/08/smarter-living/benefits-of-talking-to-yourself-self-talk.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/08/smarter-living/benefits-o... As far as I can tell it's not trauma induced, the person is neurodivergent though, intelligent, a good parent, counselor and has a healthy and developed ego. We sometimes speculate about the parallels with a religious outlook as it's a personally experienced living and breathing reality (I'm a bit jealous of), there is no claim to an objective reality apart from our consensus reality. About paracosm: "The creator of a paracosm has a complex and deeply felt relationship with this subjective universe, which may incorporate real-world or imaginary characters and conventions. Commonly having its own geography, history, and language, it is an experience that is often developed during childhood and continues over a long period of time, months or even years, as a sophisticated reality that can last into adulthood.[1]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracosm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracosm
- xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
  I am not autistic and had an imaginary friend when I was little, maybe around 5 years old. I don't know if any of my classmates had imaginary friends, it's not exactly water-cooler conversation for toddlers, but more importantly my friends wouldn't know this about me. So, your anecdote and belief of relation to trauma doesn't align with my experience. I'm not yet fully convinced there is anything unhealthy about imaginary friends or that trauma plays a role at all.
  - mmcgaha 4y ago
    First off, love your user name. When you had an imaginary friend, did you know that they were imaginary? I had toys that I talked to and played out scenarios with so I am wondering if they are equivalent.
lucozade 4y ago
> Is it common for children to have imaginary friends in general? A quick Google seems to suggest it's in the 50-65% range for 7 year olds. The article states that it's less prevalent for autistic children.
stefantalpalaru 4y ago

hnbad 4y ago

I can't take this article serious given that it conflates "social skills" and "ability to interact with allistics" (non-autistics). Recent research actually suggests autistic children are often better at interacting with other autistic children and that allistic children are worse at interacting with autistic children (and vice versa of course). This is known as the "double empathy problem": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_empathy_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_empathy_problem Many forms of autistic "therapy" such as ABA focus on masking autistic behaviors and mimicking allistic behaviors while disregarding the needs and preferences of autistic children. Many autistic "problem behaviors" are also not the result of autism but of trauma inflicted by others. Researchers are traditionally good at insisting that autistics lack theory of mind while also completely ignoring the double empathy problem and how it may affect the researchers' ability to reason about the autistic research subjects. This is why autistic adults in recent years have become more vocal insisting "nothing about us without us", i.e. if the researchers want to study autism, the research team should at least include autistic researchers. We generally frown upon research into women's issues conducted by all-men research teams or research into Black issues conducted by all-white research teams, so we also shouldn't accept all-allistic research teams studying autism.

IIAOPSW 4y ago
Psychology, as an establishment, by and large, is about putting a veneer of scientific legitimacy over forceful enforcement of societal norms. Within living memory homosexuality was a diagnosis in the DSM. There is no truth, only power. Kids have no power, so its always "on the autism spectrum." But when they grow up and have prestigious coding jobs with money (and the associated power), all of a sudden they're "neuro-diverse" or "a bit eccentric". What's the difference between Mark Zuckerberg and an Aspergers diagnosis? A billion dollars.
- Der_Einzige 4y ago
  Glad to see genuine anti-pschiatry advocated here without the other anti-scientific bullshit that is posted along with it. Most forms of "therapy" don't work either, especially CBT. Also, don't even get me started on the fact that this group is STILL obsessed with Freud, psychoanalysis, and people who believe that humans have Oedipus and Electra complexes.

oneoff786 4y ago

Any research that treats autism as a single classifier, or even a single dimensional spectrum seems doomed to be irreproducible to me.

coffeeblack 4y ago
That was my first thought too. But that headline will make for a lot of clicks, so there’s that.

kampsun 4y ago

Is it because english isn't my first language, or is the title somewhat ambigious? Better than who, autistic children who do not have imaginary friends (it seems that the article is indicating this) or better than everyone else? Though more I read it, I guess better could also mean that their social skills are better than they would be without an imaginary friend.

qwery 4y ago
It's not just you. - They found a higher rate ("almost half") of autistic children "creating imaginary friends" than prior research. - A comparison is drawn between autistic children with imaginary friends versus autistic children without. Those with had "better social skills" than those without. - Prior research has found a similar difference in the general population (non-autistic children).
- ff317 4y ago
  As always, though, correlation != causation. It could well be the case that half of children (autistic or not) have some extra innate capacity for socialization, and that typical parenting choices don't provide those children as much social input as their brain wants at a certain stage of development, and hence they make up imaginary friends to interact with in order to satisfy their enhanced social needs. In other words, the imaginary friends could be an effect rather than a cause.
antonvs 4y ago
In context, one would expect “better than” to refer to autistic children without imaginary friends, simply because deficits in social skills are a defining feature of autism. As such, the title is technically ambiguous but practically speaking, not.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> Is it because english isn't my first language, or is the title somewhat ambigious? The truncated HN headline is a little ambiguous, though the most natural reading is correct; the full source title / subtitle is not ambiguous at all: “Autistic children with imaginary friends have better social skills, just like neurotypical children / Results suggest that pretend play provides similar social benefits to autistic children as it does to neurotypical children.” Constraints force compromise.

b800h 4y ago

Isn't this reverse causation? Selecting for a set of autistic children with imaginary friends selects for individuals with the set of conditions on the spectrum which affect social skills the least. Junk study?

lucozade 4y ago
The article specifically points out that the study establishes neither a causal direction nor whether or not there is a confounding factor. The study has a small sample size and is based on self reporting, so by no means definitive, but I see no reason to believe it's junk.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
im3w1l 4y ago
That doesn't mean it's junk. But I think the selection effects you mention is a very intriguing idea. It could certainly be the case, but we don't know yet.

eric4smith 4y ago

I guess. After all, your imaginary friends never argue or dissent. They never bully you. And they always agree with your opinion. You’ll be really nice. On the other hand you’ll fold the moment real life nudges you. Just a lifting weights help to grow muscles, a little trauma makes a strong rounded person.

loa_in_ 4y ago
I don't know where does one get the idea that imaginary friends or similar (headmasters, etc.) are always in agreement with the one who imagines them.
arbitrage 4y ago
> a little trauma makes a strong rounded person. It's sick and extremely maladaptive to say outright that everyone should be traumatized for their own good.
- fortran77 4y ago
  Did he say that? I didn't get that. And, reflecting back on my 59 years...it was the tough times that caused me to grow. YMMV.
  - larve 4y ago
    Trauma is the result of tough times that actively stunted or even undid your growth.
- lambda_dn 4y ago
  I think OP meant life will lead to adversities that destroy some people, others overcome it which builds a robust character.
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    Or it's simply survivorship bias. Airplanes with red dots didnt grow up to be strong.

LatteLazy 4y ago

How do such terrible studies get funded, let alone published, let alone written up as articles? What a huge waste of everyones (including reads') time.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

qwery 4y ago

The title on HN (at the moment anyway) is truncated -- the full title is "Autistic children with imaginary friends have better social skills, just like neurotypical children" which has a bit of a different ring to it. Not sure if I'm missing something, but the claim seems to be ~ kids that speak (to "imaginary friends") tend to speak more than the ones that don't. This doesn't seem particularly ground-breaking... So what did this research involve? They asked parents of autistic children some questions over the internet. Finally I just want to mention that the researchers are not necessarily the people drawing conclusions from the research (let alone writing the headlines/articles about it).

causi 4y ago
This doesn't seem particularly ground-breaking... Right. Talking to an imaginary friend isn't the same as a real friend but tossing a baseball into the air isn't like playing baseball, yet if you told me "kids who spend an hour a day tossing and catching a baseball are better at playing baseball" I'd say "well, duh".
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  Back in the late 90's I was working as a forklift operator at a manufacturing plant during my summer off from college. I will never forget walking into the breakroom and on the television was an anchor reporting that studies had shown heterosexual couples were more likely to have children than homosexual couples. Everyone in that break room was laughing. Someone got paid to do that study. And when I mention this, someone will inevitably come in and say we can't know until we verify. Sure we can, but more importantly, why the hell was money put towards _THAT_ question, of all questions we could be investigating? At what point are researchers just trying to look busy rather than actually be busy?
  - antonvs 4y ago
    Without a reference to the specific study, it’s impossible to answer. You may just have witnessed (the 90s TV equivalent of) a clickbait style piece. Misrepresenting research, whether due to misunderstanding or deliberately, happens all the time. It sounds like you didn’t personally look into the research in question, but you’re repeating a claim about it as though it were fact. That’s why this kind of misinformation is so prevalent.

EndXA 4y ago

Lay abstract of the original study: > Research on neurotypical children with imaginary friends has found that those with imaginary friends have better social skills and are more able to think about how other people’s minds work compared to children without imaginary friends. Research shows that some autistic children also create imaginary friends. This article is the first to look at whether or not autistic children with imaginary friends have stronger social skills and an improved ability to think about others’ minds than those without imaginary friends. We asked parents to report about their children aged 5 to 12. Finding almost half reported their child had an imaginary friend, a much larger number than previous research with younger children. Our findings also suggested that autistic children with imaginary friends were better able to understand others’ minds and had stronger social skills than their peers without imaginary friends. The children’s language ability did not influence this. The findings of this study add to the evidence that with respect to the creation imaginary friends and their potential benefits, the play profiles of autistic children are similar to the general population. It also provides more evidence that the understanding of others’ minds is not all or nothing in autism and gives reason for researchers to investigate whether the causes of these differences are the same or different for autistic children. Direct link to the study: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13623613221092195 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13623613221092...

mike_hock 4y ago

> Autistic children with imaginary friends have better social skills I'll drop that line at the next party, the whole room will crack up. (I'm the party host. All my imaginary friends will be there.)

biomcgary 4y ago
Your imaginary friends are helping you. Just like AlphaZero training by playing chess against itself. . .
- mvid 4y ago
  I know this is tongue in cheek, but imagine if social interactions had a strict rule set you could simulate against, like chess

coffeeblack 4y ago

Or those who have better social skills are more likely to have imaginary friends, because they are more interested in social interactions.

gorjusborg 4y ago

PSA: Please don't take this as an instruction to 'encourage' your kid to have an imaginary friend.

adolph 4y ago

Now, solve for causality's arrow: has imaginary friend -> better social skills better social skills -> has imaginary friend Judea Pearl UCI CS Seminar: The Science of Cause and Effect: From Deep Learning to Deep Understanding, Video [0], Slides PDF [1] 0. https://uci.zoom.us/rec/play/2Fsh79DsG4CCQHQ-bdbN1N5zOByLAaoHN0wdBA2AqZWt%20jfuWjYN4jfWxAQzaAdalMojZwy0y2IYHmRP_.6J3btiY54vugrFhV https://uci.zoom.us/rec/play/2Fsh79DsG4CCQHQ-bdbN1N5zOByLAao... 1. https://web.cs.ucla.edu/~kaoru/irvine-feb2022.pdf https://web.cs.ucla.edu/~kaoru/irvine-feb2022.pdf

AzzieElbab 4y ago

I feel autism as a concept needs to be broken up into thousands of disorders before any study can be taken seriously. Anything from delayed development to genetic disorders is considered autism and everything is treated the same way. The science really needs to step up on this

type0 4y ago
That's why they call it autistic spectrum, and yes some investigators don't know shit and throw the autistic tag willy-nilly