The situation:
- It is estimated that Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) affects up to 1 percent of the world’s population.
- Of this 1 percent, only 6 percent have any form of gainful employment.
- Asperger Syndrome . . . is
estimated to be four to eight times more frequent in males than females.
The company:
I founded Specialisterne (“The Specialists” in Danish) with
the aim of identifying niches in the economy that can leverage the unique
skills imparted to many of those with ASD at fully competitive market terms.
Specialisterne employs over 50 consultants in areas such as software testing
and data validation; over 75 percent of them are diagnosed with some form of
ASD. We are the first organization that deliberately celebrates the strengths of autism (extreme attention to
detail, excellent memory, and ability to concentrate and work very systematically)
and harnesses these characteristics to perform specific tasks for prominent
clients in the high-tech industry.
A telling quote:
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the
unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to him. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.
All that is taking from the case "Harnessing the Power of Autism Spectrum Disorder" by Wareham and Sonne (2008).
Author Grandin reveals a lot about the traits of persons with autism. She specifically titled her wonderfully written book Thinking in Pictures because those three words describe her brain’s thinking mechanism. Grandin thinks in pictures. Without them, her life would be turmoil. When her family and educators began relating to her through pictures, Grandin’s superior intellect took flight.
. . . Temple Grandin freely exposes her own thinking by comparing it to the way animals think which she believes is through pictures. But her book also discusses other types of autism and provides helpful clues for parents suggesting actions they might try to help their own child.
. . . Her warning at the extreme end of the book is stern. She says that there is no magic medical cure for autism. She wants parents to beware of extravagant cure claims because, in the end, the best cure is to combine every approach that seems to work.
This paper uses a natural experiment to investigate the health consequences of early childhood television watching and so is not subject to questions concerning reverse causation. Specifically, we use repeated cross-sectional data from 1972 through 1992 on county-level mental retardation rates, county-level autism rates, and county-level children’s cable-television subscription rates to investigate how early childhood television watching affects the prevalence of mental retardation and autism. We find a strong negative correlation between average county-level cable subscription rates when a birth cohort is below three and subsequent mental retardation diagnosis rates, but a strong positive correlation between the same cable subscription rates and subsequent autism diagnosis rates. Our results thus suggest that early childhood television watching has important positive and negative health consequences.
That is from the new paper by Waldman, Nicholson, and Adilov, "Positive and Negative Mental Health Consequences of Early Childhood Television Watching" (2012). A graph from the paper:
Here, Tyler Cowen argues why increasing autism is not necessarily bad thing.
PETER GERHARDT TELLS the story of his friend Tony, who was 55 years old when he got a crash course in the condolence hug. Tony, diagnosed with autism as an adult, had lived all his life under the same roof as his mother. Then she died.
The funeral marked the first time in his life that Tony had been placed in the category of “the bereaved,” and, as he mingled among the other funeral-goers, he learned that people in his position must be prepared to accept some intense and lingering hugs. He handled it fine, observing how his brother was responding to the same sorts of approaches, and comprehending that the people doing this were trying to help him not feel sad. Then he went home, hugged his neighbor, and nearly got arrested.
That is from a very interesting article on autism called Autism's First Child. HT: @autismcrisis.
