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Disabled RSS FeedsPublic response to autistic behaviors - living in a small world - Dave Kolpack's editorial on public responses to disruptive children begins with the phrase "politically incorrect". That's best read as "truth that offends the weak minded". He gets a little better, but not much better.Emphases mine.Disruptive behavior by autistic children stirs debate, brings forth conflicted feelingsBy DAVE KOLPACK , Associated PressAugust 13, 2008FARGO, N.D. - When a 13-year-old Minnesota boy was banned from church after parishioners complained about his behavior, it exposed a painful truth so politically incorrect that some people feel guilty just saying it out loud: Some autistic children can be annoying and disruptive in public.The case of Adam Race and others like him has laid bare conflicted feelings ? among both parents of these children and other people ? over autistic youngsters in public places. And it has stirr...Feed Source: bestyoucanbe.blogspot.com The Tropic Thunder boycott - Here's the email from the Down Syndrome of MN executive director:By now you may be aware that Tropic Thunder, a film which depicts people with developmental disabilities in a derogatory and disrespectful manner, will open in our area tomorrow evening.Despite aggressive attempts to get Dreamworks-Paramount to modify the offensive content, the film with its offensive and hurtful stereotypes about people with disabilities has debuted intact. The Down Syndrome Association of Minnesota, therefore, joins the National Down Syndrome Congress, National Down Syndrome Society, Special Olympics and Arc of the United States and other disability organizations in calling for a boycott. One of the best ways to send a message to Hollywood is to cut into their ticket sales.Considering what we ask, we must be completely honest. While trusted members of our community were allowed to preview the complete film, all that is available generally is a promotional trail... Schizophrenia revelations - implications for autism - Following close on the heels of findings that major gene scramblings are common in "normal" brains comes more startling news about brain disorders:
Gene-Hunters Find Hope and Hurdles in Schizophrenia Studies - NYTimes.com The variants discovered by the two groups, one led by Dr. Kari Stefansson of Decode Genetics in Iceland and the other by Dr. Pamela Sklar of Massachusetts General Hospital, are rare. They substantially increase the risk of schizophrenia but account for a tiny fraction of the total number of cases.This finding, coupled with the general lack of success so far in finding common variants for schizophrenia, raises the possibility t... Autism and ADHD are not so different after all - More evidence that our current categorization of early onset cognitive disorders needs a rewrite.Evidence for overlapping genetic influences on aut [J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2008] - PubMed ResultBACKGROUND: High levels of clinical comorbidity have been reported between autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This study takes an individual differences approach to determine the degree of phenotypic and aetiological overlap between autistic traits and ADHD behaviours in the general population.METHODS: The Twins Early Development Study is a community sample born in England and Wales. Families with twins born in 1994-6 were invited to join; 6,771 families participated in the study when the twins were 8 years old. Parents completed the Childhood Asperger Syndrome Test and the ... Please don't feed the nasty man - Imagine there exists a nasty man of limited insight who's income depends on national attention.Isn't giving him attention like feeding a bear with a bad tooth? He'll just come back for more.... Lessons from gene deletions affecting learning and autism both - On the one hand, this article annoyed me. It demonstrates the usual confusion between association and causation, and it extrapolates from an exotic genetic disorder to the much larger group of children labeled as "autistic".
The reasoning errors, incidentally are not the journalist's. They come from the researchers. Researchers are as prone to this fallacy as anyone else.
On the other hand, it has some interesting hints. So I'll delete the worst parts, and focus on the interesting hints.
Autism Genes That Control Early Learning: Scientific American
A new genetic analysis of large, inbred Middle Eastern families pinpointed six new genes that may contribute to autism . They report in Science that all of the linked genes are involved in ... Guanfacine for ADHD in children with autism -- and a recent literature report - Guanfacine in Children with Autism and/or Intellec [J Dev Behav Pediatr. 2008] is basically reassuring. Guanfacine substantially improves ADHD behaviors in children with autism and similar cognitive disorders. It doesn't have other behavior score benefits. Side-effects were as expected.I have a standing PubMed search on Guanfacine because it's a long used medication that was recently found to be an "alpha 2A adrenoceptor". That's making it the subject of extensive research, such as:changes in neuronal connectivityextended release works well in children and adolescentsstrengthening working memory networks (?)... Games for focal abilities: Set and visual perception - Last week I wrote about focal abilities in the context of cognitive disability, and implications for employment in a distributed world. I was partly inspired by a friend who knew of an autistic child who was very good at the card game "Set":Be the Best You can Be: Employment for special needs persons ? hints from the classification of galaxies These [larger] disabilities are often offset by domains of relative, and even, absolute, strength, such as rapid pattern recognition in the card game ?Set?, or rapid discrimination of large amounts of visual data. Tasks similar to the Galaxy Zoo classification, but with payment attached, might become an option ? in time Since Child A has almost savant ab... Employment for special needs persons ? hints from the classification of galaxies - The Galaxy Zoo uses humans as ?computers?. We?re very good at grouping things by resemblance, so hobbyists are used to group images of galaxies into ?types? With your help, we've been able to collect millions of classifications, with which to do science faster than we ever thought possible ?If you're already familiar with basic Galaxy Zoo analysis, click here to read the instructions and click here to take part. Galaxy Zoo 2 will go live in the near future featuring a much more detailed classification system, while further off we plan GalaxyZoo 3 with lots of exciting new data One amateur astronomer made an important original discovery. Some persons on the autism spectrum with a personal interest in astronomy might be interested in the Galaxy Zoo today, but from a special needs p... Does Ritalin specifically target the prefrontal cortex? - I've long been impressed by the unexpected safety of Ritalin (methylphenidate). It's rare for a medication to both alter brain function and have low toxicity, yet many years of use have given us little bad news.
Now FP reports on a study that suggests why Ritalin is both safe and effective for ADHD. It might not the drug we thought it was
FuturePundit: Research On Ritalin Mechanism Of Action
In a paper publishing online this week in Biological Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology res... When ADHD is an adaptive advantage ... - First, the news article (excerpt from FuturePundit: Hyperactivity Gene Helps Nomadic Tribesmen?). Then the anecdote
. Kenyan nomads do better with an ADHD gene whereas those who have converted to settled living do worse with this same version of the DRD4 gene.
A propensity for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) might be beneficial to a group of Kenyan nomads, according to new research published in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology. Scientists have shown that an ADHD-associated version of the gene DRD4 is associated with better health in nomadic tribesmen, and yet may cause malnourishment in their settled... Road vacations: better options than you might think - Vacations with special needs children can be less than restful.We have gone with long van-bound hotel-staying road trips for years. The first years, when the children were young and our techniques were less advanced, were like hang gliding around a tornado.We did complex real-time calculations around video length, gasoline levels, food levels, drug levels, bladder volume, local geography, local facility expectations, weather and much more.Now it's more like base jumping -- risky, but fairly predictable.Here's a quick (very quick) post on advantages and recommendations for our family. The reality varies from trip-to-trip as we all age and change.On the last trip we took our dog. That odyssey also involved a very politically challenging 50th anniversary parent celebration and several different family reunions at multiple sites. It spanned two nations, maybe 2,000 miles or... Canadian revolution in mental health understanding ... - This Canadian Globe and Mail series focuses on common disorders with onset in adolescence and adulthood, but it's entirely relevant to cognitive disorders that present in childhood and at birth.Gordon's Notes: An astounding series on mental health disorders astounded by their special series on mental health: Breakdown: Canada's Mental Health Crisis.The title is misleading, there's nothing particularly Canadian about the stories. The portrayal of schizophrenia (let us honor the Bigelow family) and ... Autism spectrum disorders as disability vs different ability ? a recent debate - Writing in the Britannica blog, John Pitney replies to a Stanley Fish article ? Stanley Fish and Autism ?John Pitney - Britannica Blog In an entry on his New York Times blog, Stanley Fish wonders whether autism is just another ?difference? like race or sexual orientation?. ? Fish hints that autism may be a superior form of existence. ?A genetic difference is often adaptive and can be regarded as an advance in the evolutionary process? ? Apparently Fish gets his knowledge of autism from another movie, Rain Man. (If you haven?t seen the picture, it portrays Dustin Hoffman as an autistic adult who can perform amazing feats of memory.) In real life, few autistic people have savant skills. Among those who do, a large portion have severe p... Behavioral programs: the latest iteration of our sticker chart reward system - We've evolved our reward system over about 6 years and much trial and error, so I figure it's worth passing on.I've mentioned it briefly in the context of the behavior mod philosophy we follow:Be the Best You can Be: Changing behavior in children: Kazdin for most and what we do now We've returned to using a sticker chart of about 7 columns by seven rows. Each act is rewarded with praise and a sticker, a column gets a bigger-than-average privilege (ex: 20 minutes on the Wii) or a quarter (the sibs prefer the money, of course the same system must apply to all), a full chart gets a treat or $2.00 One particular constraint is that we have 3 children who spam the working labels from neurotypical to (for th... OS X 10.5: time limited computer access - Update 5/30/08Since my original post I installed 10.5.1 and upgraded to 10.5.3. I discovered the shortest possible setting for time limited computer access is 30 minutes (per day).I need a range where the low end is 10 minutes.Sigh. Apple engineers need more children.I also don't recommend regular people install an OS X update to an existing system until the DVDs actually ship with 10.5.3 or later. My install experience was unsettling.--Both the Nintendo Wii and computer access (Flash based games) have been big behavior modifiers for the #1 son.In particular, we used Wii/computer time rewards to get him dressed and downstairs in the morning. His normal tendency was to wake up his sibs, which they did not appreciate.... Microsoft's Guardian Angel patent - a sign of next generation support - The bad news is that Microsoft's lawyers consider something as obvious and inevitable as "Guardian Angel" to be patentable. America's current software and process patent laws are insane. At a minimum persons evaluating patents need to be well grounded in science fiction.The good news is that this is something I have been hoping would emerge sooner rather than later. The value for special needs persons, including the majority of us who develop special needs in our 70s and 80s, could be enormous -- especially when combined with ubiquitous robotics.United States Patent Application: 0080082465 (Microsoft Guardian Angel)An intelligent personalized agent monitors, regulates, and advises a user in decision-making... Thinking differently about different minds - Friends and families of special needs children and adults know that (soon to be obsolete) terms like "autism", Asperger's, and "mental retardation" cover an enormous spectrum of variation. That variation requires a customized management program to make each person "the best they can be", but we don't have the science or the people to begin designing and implementing new approaches. Maybe we can start by realizing that all minds are different What if we could see the diversity of minds? human brains are actively evolving now. To ... Autism turns into Asperger's - how did that happen? - "Sam" (pseudonym) isn't "autistic" any more. Now he has "Asperger's". He used to have "autism", so what happened? What was the key intervention? Was it abstention from immunization? No, he gets poked regularly. An alternative or experimental medication? No, he's never taken any medications (unlike his sib - we treasure medications when they're valuable). An intense program of behavioral therapy? No, he's mostly inherited the fringes of the home built behavioral program his older brother needs. Dietary changes then? Vitamins, supplements, abstention from gluten? Well, he only accepts a very limited diet, but it contains a reasonable amount of gluten, wheat, etc. He's finally accepted his sister's daily multivitamin, which might help avert scurvy. A quiet, calming, nurturing home environment? *Cough*. No. A brilliant set of ther... Working memory can be improved by training - In experimental subjects, which are usually undergraduates majoring in psychology, working memory can be improved (emphases mine) Memory Training Shown to Turn Up Brainpower - New York Times The key, researchers found, was carefully structured training in working memory ? the kind that allows memorization of a telephone number just long enough to dial it. This type of memory is closely related to fluid intelligence, according to background information in the article, and appears to rely on the same brain circuitry. So the researchers reasoned that improving it might lead to improvements in fluid intelligence.First they measured the ... Special needs children and family income - The only surprise here is that that family income decrease is only about a 14%, though the total cost was estimated at closer to 25% of income. (via FuturePundit: Autistic Kids Lower Parental Income, emphases mine): The costs of raising kids with developmental defects is very high New research suggests that the average household with children with autism not only spends thousands of dollars toward educational, behavioral and health care expenses each year, but also suffers from a lesser-known cost that hits them up front – a sizeable chunk of missed household income, perhaps as much as $6,200 annually . “That’s a staggering 14 percent loss,” Montes said. “We presume this may be strongly related to a lack of appropriate community-based support resour... The candidates and disability policy - Crooked Timber's Michael Berube has summarized the disability policies of the three contending candidates: Crooked Timber -- Disability and Democracy. McCain's policy is fairly simple Yes, well, McCain’s disability policy is much easier to summarize: (a): we need to cut costs; and, following from (a), (b): don’t become disabled Clinton does a very good job A Hillary Clinton Administration would be quite good on disability/ health and disability/ employment, and generally good for my kid – this one, not the college senior who turns 22 today but her web site does a poor job of displaying her di... Wanted: a class action lawsuit on academic skills testing for special needs children - I don't have time to sue the State of Minnesota, but I'd be glad to sign on to a class action suit. I don't want any money -- in fact I'll donate towards a lawsuit.I wouldn't mind the state's standardized testing program if my son was being tested on something he's studied. If he were being tested on third grade rather than fifth grade material I'd be pleased to participate. That's not how the unthinking robots who wrote the No Child Left Behind law chose to proceed however:"The Minnesota Test of Academic Skills (MTAS) is Minnesota?s alternate assessment based on alternate achievement standards. The MTAS is part of the statewide assessment program and measures the extent to which students with significant cognitive disabilities are making progress in the general curriculum. The MTAS in readin... Changing behavior in children: Kazdin for most and what we do now - I spent challenging years learning what Kazdin more or less gives away in a few paragraphs plugging his book (good Amazon ratings so far).Here's Kazdin's summary in Slate How to really change your kid's behavior. - By Alan E. Kazdin - Slate Magazine You begin by deciding what you want the child to do, the positive opposite of whatever behavior you want to stop. The best way to get rid of unwanted behavior is to train a desirable one to replace it. So turn "I want him to stop having tantrums" into "I want him to stay calm and not to raise his voice when I say no to him."Then you tell the child exactly what you would like him to do. Don't confuse improving his behavior with improving his moral understanding; just make cle... The effective cessation of Minnesota's waiver services program for persons with cognitive disabilities - Two months ago I wrote about Waivered services and the Personal Care Attendant program: . Which brings me back to the PCA (personal care attendant) topic. The AuSM has an excellent handout called Services for Children with ASD (scan PDF 103K) I'll summarize here and expand upon:TEFRA: medical assistance, but qualification based on disability TEFRA will help pay for PCA Services and Waivered services.PCA services (see esp MN PCA Choice Option) .Wai... Copyright © 2008, Fwenz.Info. All Rights Reserved. |