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.)
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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.)