Huh

[sen_no_ongaku]

A story about a possible link between television watching and autism.

The study is available for download.

Comments

[epilimnion.livejournal.com]

While the results are interesting, and I don't have the expertise to definitively dismiss the findings, I'm skeptical. I don't think there was much difference in my brother's TV viewing habits versus mine, and he's autistic and I'm not. There are other factors at work in the increase in autism diagnosis in the 80s. One is that in the 70s, autism was a dead-end diagnosis. there was no treatment, no options. In the 80s, educational techniques, early intervention techniques, diet, medication, etc proliferated. Now that autism was not a dead end diagnosis, doctors were more willing to use it, and use it early, rather than futzing around with erroneous or euphemistic labels. Furthermore, autism has recently been classified as a spectrum disorder, which has further upped the diagnosis rate since there are more levels and varieties to apply.
Also, in my quick read of the article, I noticed that the researchers did not take into account that cable-TV availability may correclate to higher household income, which in turn usually goes hand in hand with better access to diagnostic sessions, and better schools more equipped to lead the way in diagnosing children.

For all that, I'm certainly all for limiting TV time for young kids. but let's not unleash an autism scare, or worse yet, more reasons to instill guilt complexes in parents.

[sen-no-ongaku.livejournal.com]

Agreed -- it's one study, so it's far from definitive, and the writer of the article does stress that correlation is not causation -- and, as you say, there are the normal autism caveats as regards diagnosis.

But I found it kind of interesting nevertheless -- in no small part for the idea that we can be fundamentally and physiologically harmed not by a biological or physical agent, but by information.

[epilimnion.livejournal.com]

I would say it's not the information that is harmful; it's the format it is presented in.

[sen-no-ongaku.livejournal.com]

Well, that's what I mean. And that's interesting, too.

[(Anonymous)]

The researchers find an overall rise in both cable-TV access and autism, but autism diagnoses rose more rapidly in counties where a high percentage of households received cable than in counties with a low percentage of cable-TV homes.

Pfeh. Autism is better correlated with high-intelligence parents, who may statistically have been more likely to afford cable TV at that time.

Given that it's believed that prenatal neural connections are related to the cause of autism, this sounds like an issue of correlation, not necessarily causation.

Furthermore, TV's repetitive patterns may hold the attention of autistic children than non-autistic children of that age, whose attention spans are dwarfed by autistic fixations, much longer. So children who are autistic may tend to get enraptured in the TV (and furious when removed from it, which can wear parents down very quickly.)

[sen-no-ongaku.livejournal.com]

*rolls eyes*

As I responded to epilimnion, I realize this is hardly a magic bullet. I understand that correlation is not causation. Hence my wording "possible link".

Have you read the published study and checked to see if they tried to factor out any noise?

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, I've read the published study. It's full of odd claims. For instance, it claims that at Kanner's initial study in the 1940s, autism rates were much lower than they are now - when it's commonly accepted that itw as simply not diagnosed at that time due to the fact that it was an (as-yet) untreatable form of retardation that was just as debilitating as any other, and thus was unnamed rather than unoccurring - this continued to be true for a long time.

Furthermore, it dismisses the twin experiments (and others) that, on the basis of substantial study, have as yet failed to find much of a causal link between developmental environment and incidence of occurrence.

It assumes, essentially, that "autism develops by the time a child is three years old". This is misstating the truth: that autism typically manifests by three years old. It is not known when it develops, but many people think it develops prenatally. The evidence (http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/10/16/autism.genes.reut/index.html) for it being genetic in nature (no, this does not disinclude the possibility of an environmental trigger) is far stronger. The behavioral differences between an autistic and nonautistic child could barely be noticed much before 2 anyway, because they're so heavily linked to their social function, and because the specific behaviors simply don't exist in children younger than that, so there is no basis for comparison.

If you read the study, you'll see that they basically pick something that grew rapidly in the 1980s and then assume that since television watching grew, and children that ended up autistic tended to behave differently in front of televisions (duh), that since the Amish (a genetically relatively nondiverse population) have low rates of autism, it must be because they don't watch television. They then introduce a correlation between weather conditions and autism rates, and subsequently admit that weather conditions may not actually affect total television watched. They never once mention, despite a number of mentions of whether pollution or other environmental factors might affect autism rates, that precipitation level itself might be a conveyor of some factor - think acid rain. This is just one of the myriad other conclusions they could have pursued, but didn't.

Then, in their finest hour, they mention "television exposure for [a previous study's] youngest age group is negatively related to the education level of the parents..." - without ever once mentioning the well-documented correlation with highly educated/intelligent parents.

So yes, it seems to me that they picked one factor out of a great many that rose during the 1980s (why not correlate it with rising crack use? That may go up when it rains, or be more particularly measurable in California, and it sure went up in the 1980s...) and ran with it because it seems to make a modicum of sense. They don't really go much further than demonstrating some correlation, and the amount of noise that they ignore far outweighs that which they included, in my admittedly-nonexpert opinion.

[sen-no-ongaku.livejournal.com]

On a side note, please identify yourself. Though you seem reasonably intelligent, your anonymity makes me less inclined to listen to what you have to say.

[(Anonymous)]

You don't know me, so I don't think it's important to do so.

Can there be any doubt that anonymous posters are less likely to say anything worthwhile?

[sen-no-ongaku.livejournal.com]

The issue, however, is not whether I know you. The issue is this:

There is an imbalance of power in a communication between an identified and unidentified participant. It's like a conversation in which you can send a letter right to my mailbox and know that it will be received (if not necessarily read), but I have to respond via personals in the paper which anyone -- but not necessarily my intended recipient -- can read, and I can't verify that you'll receive my responses, let alone that you care anymore. You are inherently less invested in the exchange than I am.

Or maybe it's like conversing with someone from inside a locked room with a one-way mirror.

No, knowing a little bit of information about you won't alleviate that problem. But it would make me feel better.

[sen-no-ongaku.livejournal.com]

While this appears to be not true of you, as your commentary is quite thoughtful and trenchant, I think it's all too common a thing for someone to simply state "correlation is not causation" and leave it at that, as if that proves that whoever is trying to make a point is incorrect.

For example, the global warming issue. There is, of course, one side of it -- the global warming / pirate reduction correlation. And on the other side, one can also claim that the correlation between the advent of the Industrial Revolution, the resultant rise in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, and the rise of average global temperatures is just that -- a meaningless, cherry-picked correlation.

[llnaughty.livejournal.com]

I think it's all too common a thing for someone to simply state "correlation is not causation" and leave it at that, as if that proves that whoever is trying to make a point is incorrect.

well, when there's an implication of causation, isn't the burden of proof on those doing the implying?

also, while i agree that having someone anonymous debate you is unbalanced, i'd like to say that while most people assume anonymous commenters are lj members who simply don't want to be identified, they may simply be people who read their friends' lj posts and may not have an lj account themselves. not that you make this assumption yourself, but the anonymous poster could claim he or she is anyone at this point and there's no way for you to verify. of course the fact that s/he says it's not important to be identified does put it in the "i don't want to be identified" side rather than just the "i don't have an lj account" side. so, uh i guess, nevermind. ;)

[sen-no-ongaku.livejournal.com]

well, when there's an implication of causation, isn't the burden of proof on those doing the implying?

Yes, the burden of proof lies on the investigator, but it's a common thing for the convincee to respond, "I don't believe what you're trying to prove, so any proof you supply is invalid because correlation does not mean causation." If the convincee keeps moving the goalposts, the burden of proof becomes impossible to satisfy.

The problem is, I can always say, "Well, just because those two factors are correlated doesn't mean there's causality involved." Just because people tend to die when shot in the face doesn't mean shooting people in the face causes death. Just because mass extinctions happen to occur when humans move into an area doesn't mean that humans cause mass extinctions.

Just because monkeys and humans are genetically and physiologically similar and monkeys preceded humans temporally doesn't mean that humans evolved from monkeys.

[llnaughty.livejournal.com]

i agree, but you yourself said the anonymous poster is making "quite thoughtful and trenchant" comments, and s/he does point out other corrolations and possible causes, as do others in comments on this post, so there's not a lot of goalpost moving, and your railing against those who only use "corrolation does not mean causation" as an excuse (as is your right, as it's your own post) is a little confusing in debating/refuting said anonymous's points, if that's what you were trying to do.

[sen-no-ongaku.livejournal.com]

Those remarks were not intended as a refutation of h/h arguments, just a general caution.

[llnaughty.livejournal.com]

it's a good caution.

i actually find that mentioning "correlation does not necessarily equal causation" is refreshing when compared to the "heavy metal/role-playing games/video games _causes_ violent behaviour" and like tropes that permeate media reports. even this one, where the article title uses a slightly less forceful "might cause" (i do like that you used "a possible link" instead in your post) already colors the reader.

and just like there are dumb examples of "corrolation != causation" like being shot/dying or monkeys/humans, i think people have been besieged with more sensationalistic "corrolation != causation" examples which are not proven, like marijuana/gateway drug, or the above mentioned fill-in-the-blank/violent behavior, or people who break the speed limit had to first drive at or under the speed limit, thus driving at or under the speed limit causes speeding! ;)

[llnaughty.livejournal.com]

er, the second != should be a =.

[ltlbird.livejournal.com]

This actually interests me, and I am not willing to dismiss it out of hand. I am most intrigued by the part of the study that focused on weather patterns. That leads me to believe that, unless the study is a fluke or something else about being indoors more often is the cause, there may well be some tie between autism and early television viewing. It seems unlikely that more time spent indoors would cause a greater rate of diagnosis, and unlike the cable issue, weather patterns are independent of socio-economic status. One could argue, though, that access to cable TV and more time spent watching it (on rainy or snowy days) may have exposed parents to information that led them to recognize developmental delays or atypical behavior in their children and to seek out help for their children. If that mechanism were at work, though, I think one would expect a similar rise in other diagnoses, such as ADD, speech delays, etc.

At any rate, it is food for thought. Thanks for the link.