Call me cynical, but I’m not that surprised to hear that research indicates there may be a correlation between autism and heavy exposure to television as a toddler. The study demonstrates a rising occurance of autism since the 80s, when VCRs and cable became commonplace, and points to a ‘statistically significant relationship’ between time spent in front of the television and the symptoms of autism-spectrum disorders. There’ll no doubt be plenty of rebuttals of these findings – what will be interesting is to watch where (and who) they come from.
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This is a very interesting thing that they’re proposing. It’s just a real drag that it comes out of economics and business management graduate students and not a neuroscience lab. The word “brain” appears only three times in the article (and one of those three is in the reference section!) and they don’t even begin to speculate on what kind of changes the TV is making to that self-same brain to induce these for-all-that-we-know permanent changes.
On the other hand: very compelling and intriguing – – I just hope NIMH has the presence of mind to send the follow-up funding to a brain sciences lab! 😉