A few days ago I read something that said a geek is a combination of being passionate or obsessed about a topic and then also being intelligent regarding said topic. Add in being socially inept and you have yourself a nerd. Well I'm socially inept, somewhat. I also am passionate about psychology and consider myself well learned in the subject. So that makes it nerdy right?
Continuing on, after completing my degree I looked for a career for a while before coming across and landing my current job working with kids in a residential facility. I primarily work with kids on the autism spectrum. Since starting my job I have grown a passion for working with these amazing kids. Therefore, I am interested not only psychology news, but also news regarding autism. Some of this news I hope to share with you.
When I decided to start this blog, part of the reason was it was a vast array of subjects to write about. Not just movies and comic books but stuff that interests me, perhaps nerdy stuff like science. With all of that said I give to you some science news regarding psychology and autism. Actually both are in regards to autism this time and both I personally find interesting.
First off, there is a story coming from Duke University about an application to help screen for autism in infants. Put simply, members from Duke will be testing a tablet application that will potentially get rid of human testing infants for autism. Instead the program will administer the tests and watch for physical and facial responses to visual cues and time the responses accordingly. It would then analyze the data collected. The idea is that any parent, teacher, or clinician could download the app and then run the app with the kids using it. You can find a more detailed explanation here. I have a few questions though.
To begin with how are they planning to get these children to sit in front of the tablet for the length of the test. First off they are talking about using this on infants who may not even care about whats on the tablet screen. Secondly, working with kids on the spectrum I have noticed that getting them to sit still to do a task is not always easy. Is this program ever going to be able to work for older children yet undiagnosed with autism?
My next thought is that parents will download the app and self diagnose their child with autism spectrum disorder. How many will use the app and not go see a clinician? I would hope all would go see a clinician for an official diagnoses and help but I am sure some won't due to money and various other concerns.
Regardless it is still an interesting bit of news.
The next story is a little older, I think I originally read about it last week. A recent study suggests that children with parents, more specifically fathers, with a career in a more technical field, are more likely to be on the autism spectrum disorder. By technical they mean, non people oriented jobs such as engineering. Check out the story on yahoo. Again I have a thought regarding this news.
My main thought is that this is just a correlation. Yes it could have some meaning, however just because both parents are engineers does not mean their child will be on the autism spectrum. Although it is an interesting subject not hard fact and people should keep that in mind. I believe that there is a lot more to autism and its causes than parents careers.
That is all I have for today. I hope to share more science news and other interesting news for that matter with you all at a later date.
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