Monday, March 23, 2009

Some Autistic Adults Thriving In Utah But Many More Are Not


The autism news out of Utah this week focused on a study that reported that 41 autistic participants out of 241 in a study had higher social outcomes and some had higher IQs. 20 years after they were assessed. Of course that left 200 out of 241 who were not "thriving". And the study, as often happens, excluded the most severely affected by autism, in this case autistic persons with non-verbal IQ's below 70.


More than 80% of the autistic study participants were NOT thriving. And with the most severely affected by autism excluded it is really difficult to see this one as a glass that is half full. Looks more like the glass is almost empty.

Autistic persons thriving in Utah? Not really.




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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The article doesn't explain things very clearly I think. From what I can gather:

1: In the 1980's there were 241 children studied, all of whom had an iq of less than 70.

2: In the 2000's 41 out of those 241 people were then followed up. So there is no information (in public) about the remaining 200 people.

3: Out of those 41 people who were followed up in the studies, about 20 were said to be thriving. They did not give any information about the other 21 people.

4: So we are told there are about 20 people who are thriving, 21 people we may infer are not thriving and 200 people who we know nothing about at this point in time.

Unknown said...

Thanks bullet. You made some good points.

It still leaves only a relatively small number of those from the study who are actually identified as "thriving".

Harold