Autism linked to white noise

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lmao

Correlation does not imply causation.

i grew up next to Midway airport in chicago with railroad tracks behind my house. those were actually my "normal" years. i didn't start withdrawing and exhibiting AS tendencies until we moved to the suburbs,

I was born in Sydney, so possibly there was a lot of white noise but the family moved to Old Erwol Bay; a desolate land, void of any toy shops or places to have fun...I mean very little white noise. It was the tiniest town ever.

You stole my thunder! I'm younger than you, and I remember how TVs were almost always black and white. Remote controls were RARE and only on EXPENSIVE sets. HECK, my father eventually got a color set with a ULTRASONIC remote control! It was a magnavox console with TUBES!

Even color FILM was expensive and somewhat rare. From what I recall, I was NOT around white noise from 0-3. OK, I ADMIT IT, by 5 I was somewhat adicted to the TV set. About the only time I could watch was 12Midnight to about 8am. My mother would have people over, which I HATED, and watch the news, which I HATED! SOMETIMES, I would fall asleep to white noise.

BTW We had only ONE TV!

I went to amazon to read the relevent bits of the book and was pretty underwhelmed by this supposed correlation.

It seems they decided to bark up that tree based on 2 studies. In one study, children in Germany were found to be less intelligent (or rather, to have done less well on an IQ test which researchers wrongly assume is the same thing) the closer they lived to an airport. The conclusion they jumped to was that the constant noise of the airport triggered this lower IQ. They fell for the oldest red herring in the book, assuming that correlation is causation. What other researchers have found in numerous other studies is that poverty is correlated with doing less well on IQ tests (or as they assume, being less intelligent). Property values drop the closer you get to an airport because nobody wants to live near all that noise. Which is to say, the people living near airports tend to be poor- they can't afford to buy or rent more desirable property.

In the other study, they found lower IQ test results in one housing project the closer they got to the ground floor,above a highway. I am REALLY suspicious of that study. That you could find statistically significant correlations between what floor somebody lives on in a housing project (where everybody is poor) and IQ test results is so extraordinarily implausible that it makes me suspect data fudging.

The studies correlating low IQ test results with poverty have been repeated in enough times in enough places that I believe the correlation is real. Notice I am saying "IQ test results" and not "intelligence" because I think that intelligent people can tank IQ tests for a variety of reasons, many of which have been explored in books devoted to debunking the whole notion of IQ tests as an accurate measure of intelligence. But this correlation with white noise? The old saying is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. And two studies doesn't constitute extraordinary proof.

Correlation does not imply causation. That's absolutely true. Here is a possible explanation of this situation.

Parents of autistic children likely exhibit or have some of the traits themselves. That could lead to many reasons why they would be more likely to choose to live nearer to an airport or highway than someone NT. First there would be less pressure to have "the perfect house" to show up one's friends. Perhaps they would likely see the value in a house like that (because they usually are cheaper). Or possibly they are more likely to find white noise soothing.

In the unscientific poll conducted here on WP, a whopping 80 percent of people did not grow up with any significant white noise. While I suppose it could be a cause, it's highly improbable.

I always had a buzzing in my ears when I was 8, but it's gone now. No experience with white noise other than with the tv.

How would you know the quantity and quality of noise to which you were exposed between the ages of 0 and 2? What would a little kid know about white noise? Or even his parents. "White noise" is a technical term and not everyone knows what it means.

ruveyn

Which leads me to the next thing that bugged me about the theory raised in this book. The researcher being referenced didn't actually find any correlation between having autistic children and living near a noisy area (or at least near an airport or highway). Zippo. None. All those two studies claim to have found was a lower score on IQ tests being correlated with living near those two noisy enviroments. The researcher then jumped to the utterly unwarranted conclusion that the children in these noisy enviroments had had their neurological wiring messed up in infancy by the noisy enviroments and that autistic children also had wonky wiring and therefore that enviromental noise could cause the wonky wiring unique to autism if the baby in question had the genes to predispose for that. He even had a proposed mechanism: that auditory overstimulation in infancy (the noisy enviroment) tampered with the infant brain's plastic ability to prune developing neuron webs and the infant was left in a permanent state of sensory overstimulation and chaos....autism.

He even had a rat experimentation model which required another leap of logic. He found that you could give infant rats a seizure disorder by exposing them to bursts of white noise after birth. Seizure disorders are more common in the autistic population than in the population at large. From this, he concluded that he had created a rat model of autism.

The gaps are stunning and he had to make some pretty death defying leaps of logic to get past them. Nobody ever researched what actual neurological problems the children near the airport and highway supposedly had. They were simply given IQ tests, found to do less well on them than their peers living farther from the noise (even a few apartment floors farther!! !! yea right!) and it was left at that. An unwarranted leap of logic is needed to assume that their low score on the IQ test says anything about the atypical wiring of autism or even about neurological wiring in general. He simply assumes that these children are wired differently because of enviromental noise damage and this explains their IQ scores. It's especially irrelevent in light of the high IQ scores that some people on the autism spectrum get (Aspergers).

The next leap of logic is to conclude that if you can give rats a seizure disorder with white noise in infancy, and some autistic people have a seizure disorder, therefore you can tie white noise in infancy to autism via the common ground of seizure disorder. Ouch! That leap of logic should have broken his legs.

What a great quote! I may have to put that in my signature, if you don't mind.

I would be flattered.

Sources of white noise?? I can't even think of that many. (TY, radio static) Does anyone really get exposed to it that much? I don't know where people get these ideas.

I was about 5 or 6 when we first got TV. The first color tvs were very weird with very bad color.

--des

It is fact that poverty often leads to poor nutrition and tHAT leads to poor performance. SO, poverty can lead to atleast APPEARING dumber. The SAME is true of airports and sleep. And airports do NOT create white noise. There is a definite pattern, etc.... Streets ALSO can affect sleep. SO, because they are in the WORST place for intelligence tests, the people score LOW, SIMPLE! Any DECENT scientist would try to get people that were farther away.

At least TVs, which used to OFTEN create white noise, were things that could be CONTROLLED! And GESS WHAT! TVs no longer really have any connection to affluence. You can be poor or rich, and STILL have one. Just WATCH!! !! !! !! Some new idiot will CLAIM to do what I just suggested, and give the rich well fed people an OLD TV set, and poor less fes people a NEW TV, etc....

White noise is something MANY don't want to hear, and most TVs now have a suppressor for channels that don't exist. It used to be ALL TVs generated white noise. NOW, FEW do!

God where do these "scientists" get their theories seriously white noise exposure and autism, I am actually going to curse now
what the hell that actually makes about logical sense as potatoes being the propr beings to dinosaurs. it is so unlogically unsound lol pun on sound that it can collapse easily.

most scientists are pretty much 90% sure it is the undersizing of the corporeal collasis, the tiny strand almost in the centre of the brain because it influences how we as humans interact socially and accept thing socially. I agree with this as there are many experiments with the autistic having the smaller collaris but the larger sub regions.

the dubiousness of these experiments white noise, mmr vacines are so gargantuanly huge but very out there in the field of logic its almost crazy

to me theres 2 kinds of scientists now,
1 the scientists who stick to experiments with logical reasoning always
2 scientists who think "hey daddy's pay check got me through college now I am a doctor lets make some crazy crackpot theories that have barely no llogistical unstanding whatsoever"

sorry to the OP for my tyrade but its these kind of doctors that annoy me becaue they don't stick to logic and things that hve no logic annoy me

I agree! Snap! I shall remember and keep it in mind.

Michjo has a point. Could it be that white noise appears linked to ASD merely because

-ASD people are part of the general population
-more of the general population live in cities
-ergo more ASD people growing up with noise?

Because if you were to say white noise was the cause of a pervasive developmental disorder, it'd need a hell of a lot of proof.