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Tero Toivanen

Autism Therapy: pivotal response training | Healing Thresholds - 0 views

autism.healingthresholds.com/...pivotal-response-training

autism therapy Pivotal Response Training PRT ABA Applied Behavioral Analysis

shared by Tero Toivanen on 29 Dec 09 - Cached
  • Future research may allow therapists to know in advance which type of applied behavior analysis (ABA therapy) is most likely to work for any given child with autism.
  • This study of six children was designed to see if it is possible to predict which type of ABA therapy will work for which child with autism.
  • The authors were able to predict which children would respond to pivotal response training, but not which ones would respond to discrete trial training. The authors note that all children were first exposed to pivotal response training and then to discrete trial training and this may have influenced the results. Children who liked toys were more likely to respond to pivotal response training than children who did not like toys.
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  • This study looked at whether or not a type of applied behavior analysis (pivotal response training) could be used to teach play skills to children with autism.
  • . Both children in the study improved their social skills during recess time.
  • Tero Toivanen on 29 Dec 09
     
    Type of training in which certain behaviors are assumed to be crucial for other behaviors. These pivotal behaviors are then targeted so that the behaviors that depend upon them can change as well.
Tero Toivanen

Non-Verbal Autistics: Why No Words? - 1 views

autism.about.com/...bal-autistics-why-no-words.htm

autism non-verbal autistics Lisa Jo Rudy speak words apraxia echolalia

shared by Tero Toivanen on 10 May 10 - Cached
  • To be honest, I had assumed that those people who do not speak - but DO communicate - have physical issues with forming words.  After all, I reasoned, if a person wants to communicate but doesn't speak, it must be because speech is just too difficult. But it turns out that I may be wrong.  In fact, according to a top researcher in autism and communication (Dr. Helen Tager-Flusberg, PhD of Boston University), "...the short answer is that we really don't know why some children with ASD don't learn to speak at all."
    • Tero Toivanen
      Tero Toivanen on 10 May 10
       
      This is the big question!
Tero Toivanen

How to unleash your brain's inner genius - life - 03 June 2009 - New Scientist - 0 views

www.newscientist.com/...-your-brains-inner-genius.html

savant autism brain genius talent

shared by Tero Toivanen on 04 Jun 09 - Cached
  • A flurry of research published earlier this year in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B paints a very different picture. It turns out that these skills are far more common than previously thought. They may even arise from traits found in the general population, implying that savants are not fundamentally different from the rest of us. What's more, these skills may only blossom after years of obsessive practice, raising the question of whether many more people might cultivate similar skills, if only they had the motivation.
  • One of the biggest clues to the origins of savant talent lies in the fact that savants are far more common within the autistic population than among people with other mental difficulties.
  • Previously, about 1 in 10 people with autism were thought to have a special ability but in April, Patricia Howlin at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London found a much higher figure in the autistic adults she surveyed for savant skills or an exceptional cognitive ability.
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  • Savant skills included more fully developed talents, such as being able to name the elevation of both the sun and the moon at any time of day, on any specified date; being able to name the day of the week for any date in the distant past or future (a talent known as calendrical calculation) and perfect pitch. Importantly, the abilities and the skills had to be exceptional by the standards of the general population, but also well above the individual's overall level of ability. In total, roughly 30 per cent had some kind of special ability (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, vol 364, p 1359).
  • For musical savants like Paravicini, Happé suggests that a bias towards small details might have led their developing brains to focus more on the exact notes than the overall melody, leading to perfect pitch and an exceptional musical memory. In art, a focus on small regions of a picture could lead to accurate perspective drawing.
  • Most people find this harder when they are shown an unsegmented version of the pattern versus a segmented one, but people with autism don't have this preference, demonstrating their skill at seeing a whole in terms of its parts even if there are no obvious dividing lines (see diagram). "It shows they are able to do the segmentation in their minds," says Winner. The precocious realists did not have this preference either, indicating a talent for realistic drawing may arise from this isolated trait commonly found in autism (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, vol 364, p 1449).
  • Although these results help to pinpoint exactly what it is about autism that predisposes people to talent, it's still not clear why an eye for detail is more common in autistic people in the first place. Clues might lie in the work of Simon Baron-Cohen from the University of Cambridge, which suggests that people with autism are "hypersensitive" to sensory information
  • Daniel Tammet, a prodigious savant who has memorised pi to 22,514 digits, believes his own talents have arisen from a special ability to connect different pieces of information together. "Savant abilities are linked to a highly associative type of thinking, an extreme form of a kind that everyone does - examples would include daydreaming, puns and the use of metaphors," he says.
  • The few studies of savant brains certainly suggest they are physically different from the average brain. For example, when Happé and Wallace studied the brain of a savant gifted at art, calendrical calculation and memory, they found his cortex was thicker in the areas associated with visuospatial processing and calculation and thinner in other regions associated with social cognition, compared with people who were neither savants nor autistic. But whether these differences were innate or grew with lifelong practice was still unclear.
  • The answer to that question may come from an unlikely source - a study of London taxi drivers who have acquired an encyclopedic memory of the streets of London known as "the Knowledge". Given that taxi drivers must remember the layout of 25,000 streets and the location of thousands of places of interest, and retrieve the information instantaneously, some researchers like Happé believe the Knowledge qualifies as a savant-like skill.
  • Eleanor Maguire and colleagues at the Institute of Neurology at University College London and colleagues found that drivers with the Knowledge have a bigger rear hippocampus than bus drivers and adults who do not drive taxis. In addition, the hippocampus appears to be larger the longer a taxi driver has been working, and shrinks once they retire (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2008.0288).
  • In fact, it seems the remaining mystery is not so much how savants achieve their talents, but what drives them in the first place. "Motivation is a big unknown," says Wallace. "It's an enormous driving force in giftedness and in savants, but we don't know a lot about it."
  • One person who has something of an inside view on what contributes to savant ability is Paravicini's mentor, Adam Ockelford, a professor of music at Roehampton University in London who has watched Paravicini's talent blossom since the age of 4. When they first met, Paravicini was entirely self-taught and bashed at his plastic keyboard with his fists and elbows to reproduce the sounds he was hearing. It was only after years of practice that his technical skills developed.
  • But as researchers like Wallace have suggested, Paravicini seemed motivated way beyond the average music student. In fact, he seemed to be playing as if his life depended on it, and Ockelford thinks it's this that truly sets savants apart from their peers. "The survival instinct gets turned with extraordinary force into something else - in Derek's case music," says Ockelford. "When people see Derek, they think it is amazing, almost religious. But to me, it's mainly just hard work."
  • Tero Toivanen on 04 Jun 09
     
    But now researchers are beginning to unearth clues as to how savants' formidable brains work, and that in turn is changing our view of what it means to be a savant.
Tero Toivanen

News from the Associated Press - newsjournalonline.com - 0 views

hosted.ap.org/...US_MED_AUTISM_RECOVERY

autism research behavioral therapy recover

shared by Tero Toivanen on 09 May 09 - Cached
  • Leo Lytel was diagnosed with autism as a toddler. But by age 9 he had overcome the disorder. His progress is part of a growing body of research that suggests at least 10 percent of children with autism can "recover" from it - most of them after undergoing years of intensive behavioral therapy.
  • She presented research this week at an autism conference in Chicago that included 20 children who, according to rigorous analysis, got a correct diagnosis but years later were no longer considered autistic.
  • Skeptics question the phenomenon, but University of Connecticut psychology professor Deborah Fein is among those convinced it's real.
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  • Previous studies have suggested between 3 percent and 25 percent of autistic kids recover. Fein says her studies have shown the range is 10 percent to 20 percent.
  • But even after lots of therapy - often carefully designed educational and social activities with rewards - most autistic children remain autistic. Recovery is "not a realistic expectation for the majority of kids," but parents should know it can happen, Fein said.
  • The children in Fein's study, which is still ongoing, were diagnosed by an autism specialist before age 5 but no longer meet diagnostic criteria for autism. The initial diagnoses were verified through early medical records.
  • The researchers are also doing imaging tests to see if the recovered kids' brains look more like those of autistic or nonautistic children.
  • Imaging scans also are being done to examine brain function in formerly autistic kids.
  • Results from those tests are still being analyzed.
  • Most of the formerly autistic kids got long-term behavior treatment soon after diagnosis, in some cases for 30 or 40 hours weekly.
  • Many also have above-average IQs and had been diagnosed with relatively mild cases of autism. At age 2, many were within the normal range for motor development, able to walk, climb and hold a pencil.
  • Significant improvement suggesting recovery was evident by around age 7 in most cases, Fein said.
  • None of the children has shown any sign of relapse. But nearly three-fourths of the formerly autistic kids have had other disorders, including attention-deficit problems, tics and phobias; eight still are affected.
  • Tero Toivanen on 09 May 09
     
    Leo Lytel was diagnosed with autism as a toddler. But by age 9 he had overcome the disorder. His progress is part of a growing body of research that suggests at least 10 percent of children with autism can "recover" from it - most of them after undergoing years of intensive behavioral therapy.
Tero Toivanen

What Do New Genetic Findings Mean to Families with Autism? - 0 views

autism.about.com/...an-to-families-with-autism.htm

autism genetics research

shared by Tero Toivanen on 02 May 09 - Cached
  • reply from lead researcher Hakon Hakonarson:
  • The variant we detected at the 5p14 locus (common variant) has been present for a long time in the genome (most likely since man moved out of Africa) and this region is highly conserved between species which means that it is regulating gene expression and gene function (the CHD10 gene being the most critical one).
  • We know that the association is strongest in those individual who have the greatest abnormalities in social skills/interactions and those that show least interest in interactions; we have not detected any other characteristics yet, but we keep working on it.
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  • Once we learn about this difference, we can then look for medications that block the consequences of the variant and once we make sure they are safe, we can then start testing these new medications in children who are at risk of developing autism, with the objective of preventing autism (i.e., avoid breakdown in connections between nerves and abnormality in brain connectivity).
  • Response: Yes, all of them could be tested in utero; we have identified 10 new variations (9 rare and 1 common) and we have replicated (and confired) four other once that were previously published (neurexin 1, contactin 4, 15q11 and 22q11). However, we do not have a yes or no answer as to whether the fetus will be autistic -- but if we are testing a fetus in an autistic family the value of the test is much higher.
Tero Toivanen

Why parents swear by ineffective treatments for autism. - By Sydney Spiesel - Slate Mag... - 0 views

www.slate.com/2215076

autism ineffective treatments treatment

shared by Tero Toivanen on 02 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Since most of the ways we diagnose autism are based on behavior, we can't rely on biological, structural, or chemical findings to determine if a treatment is working. We primarily measure success based on a patient's change, or lack thereof, in behavior.
  • The behavioral changes produced by the few effective treatments make life in social settings (including the home) possible, but we have no idea whether they have any effect on the underlying cause (or causes) of autism or whether they even make severely affected patients feel better.
  • One method intended to help, "facilitated communication," is based on the idea that a sensitive facilitator will hold the hand of a patient over a kind of Ouija board. She will then help the patient respond to questions by sensing his intention and helping guide his hand to spell out answers. Rigorous studies have shown that the spelled-out answers come from the unconscious (or, worse, the conscious) mind of the facilitator. Nonetheless, the practice is still in use, and I know parents who are utterly convinced that it is valid and useful. Frankly, something important did happen when facilitated communication was introduced to my patients: They improved, they brightened, they became more social and more interactive, and they seemed, somehow, happier, even though facilitated communication didn't actually translate their thoughts into words. I'll come back to "why" in a minute.
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  • The techniques of sensory integrative treatment include rubbing or brushing skin (using graded and tactile stimulation), balance exercises, exposure to soft music, and the use of weighted clothes, among other things. Does it work? Most of the research has been of very poor quality, but, in virtually all of the recent studies, sensory integration doesn't seem to be any more beneficial than any other treatment.
  • It looks as if environmental alteration, especially if coupled with increased attention and perhaps expectation, often leads to change in human behavior. It's called the "Hawthorne effect."
  • People respond—mostly favorably—to positive attention and interaction. The question we need to ask about all the treatments available for autism is whether they actively shape and change brain development and thus treat the underlying condition, as many proponents believe, or whether the benefits (if they are present at all) are simply another example of the Hawthorne effect.
  • Perhaps my patients who became more alive and more interactive after facilitated communication was introduced changed because their families and caretakers were taking them more seriously as people who might have an inner life—people worthy of attention and interaction.
  • Tero Toivanen on 02 Apr 09
     
    People respond-mostly favorably-to positive attention and interaction. The question we need to ask about all the treatments available for autism is whether they actively shape and change brain development and thus treat the underlying condition, as many proponents believe, or whether the benefits (if they are present at all) are simply another example of the Hawthorne effect.
Tero Toivanen

Autistic Aphorisms: Intelligence, Genius, and Autism - 0 views

autisticaphorisms.blogspot.com/...ligence-genius-and-autism.html

aphorisms intelligence autism genius Pythagoras Plato Aristotle Archimedes Newton Gauss Einstein

shared by Tero Toivanen on 30 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Professor James Flynn has incorporated an interesting sidebar into his book What is Intelligence? In it he lists his seven choices for Western civilization’s greatest minds: Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes, Newton, Gauss, and Einstein.
  • Hundreds of research teams, maybe even thousands by now, have so convinced themselves that intelligence must originate from inside our skulls, have so convinced themselves that only within networks of cranial neurons can be found the secrets to humanity’s growing mental capacity, that all have managed to overlook completely the far more plausible alternative—the one existing right before our very eyes.
  • It is time to reconsider that conventional wisdom, time to regard genius with a different set of eyes; for genius is not a function of greater intelligence, genius is the description of how intelligence grows.
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  • Look at the content of any intelligence test—language, arithmetic, patterns, designs. What we measure with the aid of those I.Q. booklets are not the abilities we inherited from out our animal past, but instead their exact counterpart; we measure only those skills the species has been adding throughout all its history since. In some sense, an intelligence test measures the modernness of an individual; an intelligence test measures an individual’s ability to appropriate for himself the same set of skills the species has been appropriating as a whole—skills that do not find their origin in our biological nature, but instead owe their existence to the strange, brewing mixture of non-biological pattern, structure and form that has been rapidly taking shape all around us.
  • The unusual characteristics of humanity’s transformational individuals are not the result of their genius, they are genius’s prerequisite
  • But counter to prevailing wisdom, there are many autistic individuals—most likely a majority—who do make substantial progress by means of an alternative perceptual course, a course that allows them not only to navigate meaningfully their surrounding world, but also to assimilate, if somewhat awkwardly and belatedly, to the human species itself (and thereby explaining how autism, estimated to be present in nearly one percent of the human population, could go entirely unrecognized until as recently as sixty-five years ago).
  • all autistic individuals must crystallize their existence by means of this alternative perceptual course—it becomes, in essence, autism’s most salient feature.
  • The unusual behaviors and interests of autistic children—lining up toys, staring at ceiling fans, twirling, flapping hands repeatedly, fascination with knobs, buttons, switches, letters, shapes and digits, watching the same video again and again, singing the same song over and over—these activities betray a form of perception completely unlike that of most other children, a perception noticeably absent in social and biological focus, but also noticeably drawn to symmetry, repetition and pattern.
  • The unusual routines of autistic children are the natural, indeed the expected, mode of expression for a form of perception engaged primarily by the structural aspects of the non-social, non-biological world.
  • Autistic individuals would have been the first to notice the inherent structure contained in the natural world—the geometry of plants, the isomorphisms of natural objects, the logic of the celestial seasons—only they would have had motivation to embrace such form, only they would have had the need to perceive nature’s symmetry, repetition and pattern in order to form their cognitive grounding.
  • We know only bits and pieces about the four Greeks on Professor Flynn’s list, but filling in with the traits from the list’s more modern members, we can reasonably summarize all the unifying characteristics: late- or strange-talking, socially awkward, irascible, obsessed with structure, compelled by form, unusually—not necessarily greatly—intelligent.
  • The continuing medicalization of autism, the insistent demonization of autism’s spontaneous effect—these carry the danger of an unforeseen consequence. For the cure of autism will not be the end of a tragic brain disorder; autism’s eradication will not see the passing of a troubling mental disease. The removal of autism from the entire human species will produce only an ironic solution to the mystery of our expanding human intelligence, it will produce the ignoble end to the Flynn effect.
  • When confronted by data that runs counter to our accustomed way of seeing things, we as humans have but two choices: we can try to explain the results away, or we can adjust our perception of the experienced world. The former choice paves the all-too-common road of modern academic science; the latter, as described above, walks the more promising path of genius.
  • Autism is not a mental illness, not a brain disorder, it is instead the source of humanity’s changing perception of its experienced world; it is, with care and understanding, genius’s fertile soil.
  • Tero Toivanen on 30 Mar 09
     
    Autism is not a mental illness, not a brain disorder, it is instead the source of humanity's changing perception of its experienced world; it is, with care and understanding, genius's fertile soil.
Tero Toivanen

Why Asperger Syndrome Will Disappear - 5 views

autism.about.com/...er-Syndrome-Will-Disappear.htm

Asperger syndrome Asperger's Disorder Asperger's Syndrome autism DSM V

shared by Tero Toivanen on 26 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is now in the process of developing and finalizing the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) Version 5.
  • autism spectrum disorders as we know them will change radically, and many people who are now considered to be "autistic" may find themselves with a brand new diagnosis.
  • Unless something changes between now and then, as of 2013, Asperger syndrome will no longer exist as a diagnosis.
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  • A person with present symptoms of Asperger syndrome would fall in the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder, and we would expect there to be additional specifiers like "without intellectual disability", "with fluent speech", etc., which we believe will better describe the diagnostic picture for such a person than is currently done with the term Asperger Syndrome alone.
  • Tero Toivanen on 26 Jun 11
     
    "Unless something changes between now and then, as of 2013, Asperger syndrome will no longer exist as a diagnosis."
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