School & Interventions
Temple Grandin, the MovieTemple Grandin is America’s best-known autistic person, and she’s about to become much more famous. On February 6, HBO debuts a feature film that stars Claire Danes as the gawky, socially impaired but brilliant animal scientist who, despite her disability—or actually because of it—has achieved enormous success in two arenas: as designer of humane [...]
A Promising Intervention For ToddlersTen years ago, autism was rarely detected before ages 3 or 4. Now, thanks to growing awareness and widespread screening at 18 and 24 months, more children with autism are being identified when they are toddlers. But for all the emphasis on early detection, very little research exists on how to intervene effectively for children [...]
Graduation Day at PS176X: What’s next for young adults with autism?All parents have hopes and dreams for their children. Parents of kids with serious disabilities are no different. But in their moments of wildest imagination, the parents of Vicki Martinez, Chase Ferguson and Travis Cardona could not have envisioned high school graduation — certainly not in the dark days when they first learned their children [...]
Read More Posts From This CategoryResearch
Autism, digestive problems, special diets- A new studyParents of kids with autism often observe that their children suffer from gastric distress, toileting problems and fussy eating that borders on the compulsive. A new study examines G.I. issues and autism, but it seems unlikely to settle the matter.
Environmental Toxins and the BrainAll sorts of environmental toxins–lead, mercury, pesticides, for example–are known to affect the developing brain. A specific link to autism, however, remains elusive. At the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia, Frederica Perera has been conducting a longterm study that is following several hundred inner-city children from before birth through age 11, looking at [...]
New Study on Autism’s Causes Rolls OutFamilies who already have one child with autism have perhaps ten times* the usual risk that a second child will also have autism. That’s why researchers are increasingly interested in focusing on these high-risk families as a way of teasing apart the genetic and environmental factors that cause the disorder.
One of the bigger studies of [...]
The Epidemic
Clusters in CaliforniaTwo new studies take a look at what appear to be unusually high concentrations of children with autism in certain parts of California.
The first study, published in the journal Autism Research by a team from the University of California, Davis, identified ten autism hotspots or clusters in the Los Angeles and San Francisco regions, where [...]
A fascinating controversy has erupted in the autism community over a new video produced for Autism Speaks. The slickly produced video, written by songwriter Billy Mann and directed by Academy Award-winning director Alfonso Cuarón, carries an ominous voice-over declaring that “I am Autism… I know where you live… I work faster than pediatric AIDS, cancer [...]
The One Percent ConvergenceToday, the U.S. government updated its official estimate of autism prevalence to 1 out of 100 children, up from the 2007 estimate of 1 in 150. The figure is based both on the latest data collected by CDC’s intensive ADDM monitoring network and on a large, but less rigorous telephone survey of more [...]
Is Autism Just as Common in Adults?Among the many great mysteries of autism is this: Where are all the adults with the disorder? In California, for instance, about 80% of people identified as having an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are 18 or under. Studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) indicate that about 1 in 150 children in [...]
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