[HN Gopher] Autism's Four Core Subtypes
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       Autism's Four Core Subtypes
        
       Author : domofutu
       Score  : 40 points
       Date   : 2024-10-19 19:19 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.thetransmitter.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.thetransmitter.org)
        
       | greesil wrote:
       | As someone with a close family member who is autistic, I am
       | always bothered by the phrase "if you have met one person with
       | autism, you have met one person with autism". Autism as a
       | diagnostic classification is so broad that the non verbal are
       | lumped in with those with rigidity behavior, when at least to me
       | they seem like they should just have a different diagnosis. This
       | is not just playing semantics if they're able to correlate
       | against specific sets of genes. This work seems highly relevant,
       | IMO
        
         | Jensson wrote:
         | Merging autism with asperger went the exact opposite direction
         | of where it needed to.
        
           | SpicyLemonZest wrote:
           | The reasons why the change was made
           | (https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/why-fold-asperger-
           | sy...) still make sense to me. The autism spectrum is quite
           | wide, and I'd 100% believe something meaningful coming from
           | the source study, but the specific category of Asperger's was
           | based on factors that don't seem to matter much and weren't
           | being reliably evaluated.
        
           | NeuroCoder wrote:
           | The problem was that a diagnosis of Asperger's was unreliable
           | and therefore useless. We definitely need to identify
           | individuals within the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder
           | that can reliably be identified and benefit from specific
           | interventions. However, Asperger's did not provide that.
        
         | jtsiskin wrote:
         | The expression you quoted is completely agreeing with you! It's
         | a play on the expected idiomatic ending "then you have met
         | everyone with autism", pointing out that the diagnosis is broad
         | and everyone is different
        
           | greesil wrote:
           | Why even have the word autism? It's almost meaningless.
        
             | Spivak wrote:
             | "hot" is still a meaningful word even though 100 Fdeg, 1000
             | Fdeg, and 1,000,000 Fdeg aren't comparable at all. They're
             | nonetheless still all experiencing heat.
        
               | blargey wrote:
               | Yes, if we could pin it to a linear scale of Degrees
               | Autistic (Farenheit), that could be estimated with
               | reasonable precision for all day-to-day relevant values
               | by feeling the nearby air on your skin, nobody would
               | complain about "Austism" being too broad.
        
               | Spivak wrote:
               | Am I missing something you can though. That's actually
               | kinda how it is. I detest the phrase "high functioning"
               | but that group is roughly your outside temperatures.
               | You'll notice the difference between 30deg and 80deg and
               | the same temperature 72deg can feel different in the
               | summer, winter, before it rains, when it's humid/dry but
               | is still the same intensity. Then there's 1000deg degrees
               | where (and this is someone I know) he stripped naked, ran
               | through downtown, and yelled at random restaurant workers
               | calling them fascists for not lettting him in and then
               | got into a fight with the cops.
               | 
               | I think broadly that's what the "spectrum"
               | characterization is meant to convey. And you should
               | expect this, in code there's one happy path and a million
               | different ways to err, some more catastrophic than
               | others.
        
               | bbarnett wrote:
               | It seems to me that something could be hot enough, that
               | you could vaporize before your nerves signal your brain.
        
             | cogman10 wrote:
             | The symptoms cluster together and are related. Someone with
             | sensory issues is also likely to have food aversions, for
             | example.
             | 
             | It's also useful for diagnostics and treatment. It means
             | you don't have to fight insurance as much or need
             | rediagnostics to get needed therapies. I don't need to get
             | my child with food aversions, speech delay, and sensory
             | issues a new diagnosis for each just because some people
             | with autism don't have those issues.
        
         | saghm wrote:
         | > Autism as a diagnostic classification is so broad that the
         | non verbal are lumped in with those with rigidity behavior,
         | when at least to me they seem like they should just have a
         | different diagnosis.
         | 
         | As someone with a diagnosis, I've gotten into the habit of
         | referring to myself as "on the spectrum" when discussing with
         | people rather than using a specific term. It helps emphasize
         | the fact that there's a range of potential manifestations, and
         | (hopefully) helps remind people that their expectations based
         | on past experience might not fit my behavior exactly.
        
       | 93po wrote:
       | sort of off topic, but does anyone else have the experience of
       | consistently having bad interactions in real life any time autism
       | is discussed? like the reasons are so varied but it's so
       | consistently not great. i feel like it's rooted in a "i know
       | autism better than you and i feel threatened anytime something is
       | expressed that differs from my own opinion/experience with it".
       | and sometimes people are offended with any opinion or anecdote or
       | experience expressed on it at all in a "don't mansplain autism to
       | me" sort of way (i'm not a man, just to be clear, and obv
       | mansplaining isnt unique to men).
       | 
       | not saying this to be unkind or mean to anyone. it just feels
       | like such a super touchy topic. i started completely not engaging
       | in conversation around it at all and pretending like i don't know
       | anything about it.
        
         | uncletaco wrote:
         | No. The greatest interaction I had was when a kid didn't hold a
         | door for me and his mom said "I'm sorry he has Asperger's and
         | it's a little heavy on the ass."
         | 
         | Then we ended up in the same waiting room for a while and she
         | talked about accommodating her son and how they managed it.
         | What was really interesting is the kid looked like it was the
         | first time he heard his mom talk to someone else about it and
         | him and I could tell he was embarrassed but really loving her
         | that moment.
        
           | cuttysnark wrote:
           | > it's a little heavy on the ass
           | 
           | I hadn't heard this idiom before so I looked it up and I
           | couldn't find anything relevant. What does this phrase mean
           | in this context?
        
             | umanwizard wrote:
             | The first syllable of Asperger sounds like "ass", and the
             | mom was making a pun based on that fact (pointing out that
             | her son's Asperger's made him an ass).
        
               | cuttysnark wrote:
               | Saying it out loud made it click. Thank you.
        
         | tapland wrote:
         | I see this but usually only when someone who has never saught a
         | diagnosis or have any shared experiences keeps referring to
         | their supposed autism in a community with a lot of autistic
         | people who will backlash.
         | 
         | Never seen a discussion go bad _about_ it.
        
       | kayo_20211030 wrote:
       | I spend _no_ time considering genetic variations, or genetic
       | correlations, I deal with what 's in front of me. This study is
       | _almost_ backcasting; it might improve the model, but, not the
       | outcome.
       | 
       | Maybe the study is fine and valuable, and maybe it'll lead to
       | something. Maybe? But, it does nothing in the present. Not in the
       | here and now.
        
         | tapland wrote:
         | If we can find specific subtypes it would be extremely helpful.
         | You can't expect everything to be presented only with a
         | complete solution.
        
           | elcritch wrote:
           | Exactly, lumping in all autism into the same overall category
           | when there could be very different underlying biological
           | mechanisms would potentially block progress.
           | 
           | For example, a medication that could work wonders on one
           | subtype by affecting a biological mechanism unique to that
           | subtype could be found not to meet clinical standards because
           | it didn't work on the other subtypes or even make them worse.
           | 
           | In other words, it's a confounding variable which needs to be
           | discovered and characterized after which it could play
           | significant role in advancing treatments and understanding.
        
       | geor9e wrote:
       | Reminds me a bit of the MBTI personality test, where they make up
       | 4 types of question to arbitrarily split the population, so
       | 2x2x2x2 = 16 subtypes. It's true by it's own definition. Which is
       | fine, but are these particular arbitrary boundaries useful?
       | Perhaps. Could the splitting lines have been just as useful in
       | different arbitrary place. Perhaps. A lot of people who take the
       | MBTI find they're on the boundaries flip-flopping into a few
       | different pigeonholes depending on different times they take the
       | test. So it's important to let people know they can be in
       | multiple buckets (are a bit in all of them), and take a little
       | advice from each community.
       | 
       | For this one they split autism into 3 groups
       | (core,social,developmental) then split core into (mild,severe),
       | to make 4 total.
        
         | w23b07d28 wrote:
         | It's not true by its own definition, it's just that if you soak
         | it in, you will actually start to see the patterns behind it
         | among people. It's still going to be pseudoscience because
         | there are a lot of variables, but it often works and even more
         | often people don't know what to look at or what to put
         | together, because you'll find really A LOT of articles on the
         | Internet that try to run mechanics on certain types without
         | understanding what or why. I assume that if you want to put
         | this together more precisely, there is a lot of scope here.
         | 
         | And lest it be said that I'm talking out of turn myself, I only
         | became interested in this whole MBTI thing because an ENFP once
         | told me I was an INTP after a few hours of talking about silly
         | things. That's exactly what these tests once told me. Of
         | course, these are still anecdotes, but we are sciency.
         | 
         | So what the problem is that someone has catalogued autism in
         | this way (I will not be able to comment)?
        
         | h0l0cube wrote:
         | They also posit correlations with epigenetic differences. If
         | there's distinct biological mechanisms at play, this gives some
         | credence to splitting autism into separate conditions
        
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       (page generated 2024-10-19 23:00 UTC)