...And another amusing cause of Autism...

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/ ... greenfield
Let me guess: The cure in this case is sports and long hiking trips? My parents tried that and it obviously didn't work.

Methinks this lady got whiff that there is a small pot of money for helping AS in the UK through computers and decided she wants to generate such resources for her own research through making claims countering the ethos of that support project.

'nother NT on the make.

We are big business , apparently.

Autism is caused by Internet use. And global warming is caused by the absence of pirates.

Ah, Susan Greenfield. The woman who used her position in the House of Lords to advertise her claim that computer games cause brain damage, then released her own (very expensive) brand of good, mind-healthy computer games, marketed at parents.

She's a quack, and possibly a conscious fraud.

Perhaps you guys can help me out here. I'm going to have it out with these NT's about this empathy thing.

Apparently we are a constellation and not a spectrum disorder now, according to one expert.

This kind of pseudo-scientist gives statistics a bad name.

Actually, she would, if she'd try to use them.

Lmao, she's like the Heather mills of mental disorders.

Woha- NT researcher meltdown - check this out

-http://briandeer.com/mmr/carol-stott.htm
( if you are over 18 )

I have spent a couple of hour in their forum , they are mostly bonkers and I'm am not sure if it is worth trying to communicate with the majority of them.

Hiya memesplice

Your goldenmeme reminded me of this place, so I came on over.

Impressive commenting - told you that already but bear repeating. Hang around in that world and I start forgetting what sanity is

That book review - Dorothy Rowe's - that's an eye opener. I do not think that they should get away with that.

I sent a complaint away to the bookseditor. Probably a waste of time, but I have the time and the skill to escalate it upwards.

I've actually met this person, have a photo somewhere with her in fact. Was involved in a project to do with her here in Australia that involved me designing a website for a now-defunct educational programme she initiated. Lol.

ya folks! better keep those two year olds away from the internet! Dont even let them look...its the technological medusa! Instead of turing us into stone...it turns us into aspies!

There is evidence that social animals can become desensitized to empathy. But there is much more out there than the internet, that could be producing a reduction of empathy among some in modern day culture.

Stress in itself, can mute empathy if experienced long enough. Research also indicates that stress levels are higher in some developed countries than in it was several decades before.

The internet and email at work may be a part of the cause. While we aren't expected to multitask for recreational browsing, the expectation is often there at work. Humans don't multitask but computers allow us to try hard to do it; a source of generalized stress for some.

Violent video games and Violent TV shows also can desensitize one to the human empathy response. The military uses violent video games to desensitize soldiers to the natural empathy response not to kill members of the same species.

There are probably a hundred other examples of empathy reducing activities that have increased during the last 30 years if one thinks long enough about the issue.

There is evidence of a reduction of empathy throughout culture from those that walk by people laying on the street struggling to live because they have been injured, to the McDonald's cashier abused because the fries were 15 seconds late.

My own opinion is part of the reason people become desensitized to empathy, is because they encounter more humans in a lifetime than our brains and empathy response was designed to handle. The empathy response is stimulated by TV; one can be exposed to hundreds of thousands of humans and experiences we wouldn't ordinarily vicariously share if it wasn't for that medium alone.

Per research, schizophrenics and autisics don't do well in overpopulated areas. It may be possible that some people are more resilient to the effects of encountering too many human beings than others. It stresses other social animals; there is no reason I can see that humans would be immune to this.

I agree there is less empathy in the world, but the activities that are responsible for it aren't limited to any one group of people with a diagnosis.

Funny, there was no internet yet, when I was born.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Me too, didn't see a TV until age 7, well after I started speaking at age 4.

Can't help to wonder though; although this kind of anecdotal evidence proves that electronic media devices aren't the cause of autism, would I have started speaking at age 4, if I was exposed to constant input from a TV set. Who knows, I might have picked up language sooner.

Do electronic media devices make it harder or easier to adapt to Autism? I think that is an interesting area of study. I recently saw some research that indicated Somalian Bantu children had much higher rates of Autism in Sweden, even higher than the swedes,.

For a while there when the vaccine hypothesis was popular some were suggesting that is was proof of that theory for an environmental vs genetic cause. Now that the vaccine theory has largely been disproved, scientists are suggesting a lack of Vitamin D at higher latitudes for darker pigmented skin. I don't buy that either. But it seems like some of the strongest general evidence for some kind of environmental influence, so far.