The Prodigy's Cousin (35 page)

“ability to perceive complex”
:
Schneider and McGrew, “Cattell-Horn-Carroll Model of Intelligence,” 129. See also Flanagan and Dixon, “The Cattell-Horn-Carroll Theory of Cognitive Abilities.”

This type of visualization
:
See, for example, Maria Kozhevnikov et al., “Creativity, Visualization Abilities, and Visual Cognitive Style,”
British Journal of Educational Psychology
83, no. 2 (2013): 196–209.

Consider, for example
:
“Groupon, Qatar, Jake Barnett.”

Galileo similarly visualized
:
Arthur I. Miller,
Insights of Genius: Imagery and Creativity in Science and Art
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000).

In theory, this left object
:
Olesya Blazhenkova and Maria Kozhevnikov have advocated for recognizing object visualization as a component of intelligence. See “Visual-Object Ability: A New Dimension of Non-Verbal Intelligence,”
Cognition
117, no. 3 (2010): 276–301.

a skill tied to artistic ability
:
See, for example, Kozhevnikov et al., “Creativity, Visualization Abilities, and Visual Cognitive Style.”

the price of excelling at one
:
Maria Kozhevnikov, Olesya Blazhenkova, and Michael Becker, “Trade-Off in Object Versus Spatial Visualization Abilities: Restriction in the Development of Visual-Processing Resources,”
Psychonomic Bulletin and Review
17, no. 1 (2010): 29–35.

“I just hear it”
:
“Musical Prodigy, Bluejay,”
60 Minutes
. For more information on Jay, see Matthew Gurewitsch, “Early Works of a New Composer (Very Early, in Fact),”
New York Times,
Aug. 13, 2006.

Jacob Barnett, the science prodigy
:
Kristine Barnett,
Spark
.

The music prodigy Jonathan
:
Eve Weiss, telephone interview, Jan. 20, 2014.

The object and spatial visualization abilities
:
For a brief overview, see Kozhevnikov, Blazhenkova, and Becker, “Trade-Off in Object Versus Spatial Visualization Abilities.” See also Levine, Warach, and Farah, “Two Visual Systems in Mental Imagery.”

Over several decades, researchers
:
Scientists have sought out abnormalities in brain structure and functioning as well. We are focusing here on those factors that have also been investigated in prodigies—behaviors, cognitive tendencies, and genetics. But for a paper arguing that attempts to find a brain abnormality shared by all autists have failed, see Lynn Waterhouse and Christopher Gillberg, “Why Autism Must Be Taken Apart,”
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
44, no. 7 (2014): 1788–92.

“the children's
inability to relate
”
:
Kanner, “Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact,” 242.

But in the early years
:
For a review of the varying autism criteria used by early investigators, see Rutter, “Diagnosis and Definition of Childhood Autism.”

By the early 1970s
:
Michael Rutter, “Autistic Children: Infancy to Adulthood,”
Seminars in Psychiatry
2, no. 4 (1970): 435–50.

“into question the usefulness”
:
Wing and Gould, “Severe Impairments of Social Interaction and Associated Abnormalities in Children,” 27.

Recently, a team
:
Francesca Happé and Angelica Ronald, “The ‘Fractionable Autism Triad': A Review of Evidence from Behavioural, Genetic, Cognitive, and Neural Research,”
Neuropsychology Review
18, no. 4 (2008): 287–304.

Even autistic
siblings
:
Ryan K. C. Yuen et al., “Whole-Genome Sequencing of Quartet Families with Autism Spectrum Disorder,”
Nature Medicine
21, no. 2 (2015): 185–91.

“if you've met one person with autism”
:
This quotation is often attributed to Stephen Shore, a clinical assistant professor at Adelphi University who frequently speaks and writes about autism.

Researchers struggled mightily
:
For a brief review, see Francesca Happé, Angelica Ronald, and Robert Plomin, “Time to Give Up on a Single Explanation for Autism,”
Nature Neuroscience
9, no. 10 (2006): 1218–20.

Initial optimism
:
For a discussion of the historical perspective, see Judith H. Miles, “Autism Spectrum Disorders—a Genetics Review,”
Genetics in Medicine
13, no. 4 (2011): 278–94.

Researchers found not one
:
For a review, see Jamee M. Berg and Daniel H. Geschwind, “Autism Genetics: Searching for Specificity and Convergence,”
Genome Biology
13, no. 7 (2012): 247.

Even the most prevalent
:
Shafali S. Jeste and Daniel H. Geschwind, “Disentangling the Heterogeneity of Autism Spectrum Disorder Through Genetic Findings,”
Nature
10, no. 2 (2014): 74–81.

“the genetic architecture”
:
D. Q. Ma et al., “A Genome-Wide Association Study of Autism Reveals a Common Novel Risk Locus at 5p14.1,”
Annals of Human Genetics
73, no. 3 (2009): 268–73, 270.

It turns out that even
:
Yuen et al., “Whole-Genome Sequencing of Quartet Families with Autism Spectrum Disorder.”

This heterogeneity of behaviors
:
For two examples, see Eric B. London, “Categorical Diagnosis: A Fatal Flaw for Autism Research?,”
Trends in Neurosciences
37, no. 12 (2014): 683–86; and Happé, Ronald, and Plomin, “Time to Give Up on a Single Explanation for Autism.”

He and his team have tied
:
See, for example, Philip Awadalla et al., “Direct Measure of the De Novo Mutation Rate in Autism and Schizophrenia Cohorts,”
American Journal of Human Genetics
87, no. 3 (2010): 316–24.

It was this idea
:
Guy Rouleau, telephone interview, Dec. 18, 2014.

One group of researchers
:
Nurmi et al., “Exploratory Subsetting of Autism Families Based on Savant Skills Improves Evidence of Genetic Linkage to 15q11-q13.”

But when another team
:
Ma et al., “Ordered-Subset Analysis of Savant Skills in Autism for 15q11-q13.”

Chapter 10: The Recovery Enigma

Her older son, Alex
:
Lucie, telephone interview, Sept. 4, 2014; Alex, Grade 5 Report Card, June 19, 2015.

Her second son, William
:
Lucie, telephone interview, Sept. 12, 2014; and e-mail; Josh (William's math teacher), telephone interview, Oct. 14, 2014; William, Grade 4 Report Card, June 19, 2015.

patient who no longer seemed autistic
:
See, for example, Kanner and Eisenberg, “Notes on the Follow-Up Studies of Autistic Children.” The authors include a description of Robert F., an individual characterized as having reached a “higher pinnacle” than the rest. He had served in the navy, married, and was studying musical composition. Still, the authors cautioned that in most cases “emergence” from autism was only “partial.”

“somewhat odd”
:
Eisenberg, “Autistic Child in Adolescence,” 608.

One study described
:
Rutter, Greenfeld, and Lockyer, “A Five to Fifteen Year Follow-Up Study of Infantile Psychosis.”

there was a report
:
Rutter, “Autistic Children.” See also Marian K. DeMyer et al., “Prognosis in Autism: A Follow-Up Study,”
Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia
3, no. 3 (1973): 233 (describing “two autistic children who were ‘normal' in all respects at follow-up”); Janet L. Brown, “Adolescent Development of Children with Infantile Psychosis,”
Seminars in Psychiatry
1 (1969): 79–89 (identifying some autistic children eventually deemed “normal,” though noting that “the social development of even the best-functioning of these children will be markedly retarded and that each step is accomplished with painful difficulty”).

Many thought autism
:
For an overview of recovery-related research, see Molly Helt et al., “Can Children with Autism Recover? If So, How?,”
Neuropsychology Review
18, no. 4 (2008): 339–66.

She and her team
:
Deborah Fein et al., “Optimal Outcome in Individuals with a History of Autism,”
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
54, no. 2 (2013): 195–205. This study was a continuation of work that Fein and her team had started earlier. See Elizabeth Kelley et al., “Residual Language Deficits in Optimal Outcome Children with a History of Autism,”
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
36, no. 6 (2006): 807–28; Elizabeth Kelley, Letitia Naigles, and Deborah Fein, “An In-Depth Examination of Optimal Outcome Children with a History of
Autism Spectrum Disorders,”
Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders
4, no. 3 (2010): 526–38. Additional information on Fein's work comes from a telephone interview with Deborah Fein conducted on March 2, 2015.

They didn't have any residual
:
Eva Troyb et al., “Academic Abilities in Children and Adolescents with a History of Autism Spectrum Disorders Who Have Achieved Optimal Outcomes,”
Autism
18, no. 3 (2014): 233–43.

They cautioned that an optimal
:
Fein et al., “Optimal Outcome in Individuals with a History of Autism.”

“the ‘r' word”
:
Sally Ozonoff, “Editorial: Recovery from Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and the Science of Hope,”
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
54, no. 2 (2013): 113–14, 114.

“Symptoms alone rarely indicate”
:
Thomas Insel, “Director's Blog: Transforming Diagnosis,” National Institute of Mental Health, April 29, 2013, http://www.nimh.nih.gov/.

growing consensus
:
See, for example, Rutter, “Autistic Children.”

In one of the earliest experiments
:
C. B. Ferster and Marian K. DeMyer, “The Development of Performances in Autistic Children in an Automatically Controlled Environment,”
Journal of Chronic Diseases
13, no. 4 (1961): 312–45.

Two years later, another team
:
Montrose Wolf, Todd Risley, and Hayden Mees, “Application of Operant Conditioning Procedures to the Behaviour Problems of an Autistic Child,”
Behaviour Research and Therapy
1, nos. 2–4 (1963): 305–12.

In contrast to the failure
:
Laura Schreibman, “Intensive Behavioral/Psychoeducational Treatments for Autism: Research Needs and Future Directions,”
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders
30, no. 5 (2000): 373–78.

In the early 1970s
:
O. Ivar Lovaas et al., “Some Generalization and Follow-Up Measures on Autistic Children in Behavior Therapy,”
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis
6, no. 1 (1973): 131–66.

In a follow-up investigation
:
O. Ivar Lovaas, “Behavioral Treatment and Normal Educational and Intellectual Functioning in Young Autistic Children,”
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology
55, no. 1 (1987): 3–9.

A few years later
:
John J. McEachin, Tristram Smith, and O. Ivar Lovaas, “Long-Term Outcome for Children with Autism Who Received Early Intensive Behavioral Treatment,”
American Journal on Mental Retardation
97, no. 4 (1993): 359–72.

Some scientists suggested
:
Eric Schopler, Andrew Short, and Gary Mesibov, “Relation of Behavioral Treatment to ‘Normal Functioning': Comment on Lovaas,”
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology
57, no. 1 (1989):
162–64; Peter Mundy, “Normal Versus High-Functioning Status in Children with Autism,”
American Journal on Mental Retardation
97, no. 4 (1993): 381–84.

They view efforts to eradicate
:
See, for example, “Position Statements,” Autistic Self Advocacy Network, http://autisticadvocacy.org/policy-advocacy/position-statements.

recognize the unique contributions
:
Laurent Mottron, telephone interview, Aug. 16, 2015.

In terms of effectiveness
:
Amy S. Weitlauf et al. (the Vanderbilt Evidence-Based Practice Center),
Therapies for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Behavioral Interventions Update,
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality,
Comparative Effectiveness Review
137 (2014): 80.