MistyMountain Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/is-it-autism-facial-features-that-show-disorder/ I came accross the above article recently. I am really surprised that they only now have found facial features associated with autism. I guess they must be subtle. I was wondering what others thought of this. This is the first I heard of it and I am not sure what the research looks like. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DawnM Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 I am looking at those photos and I can't tell anything. Heck, I have wider set eyes and a high forehead and I don't have any form of autism. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Indian summer Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 I think what they were saying was that the forehead was wider than the cheeks, no? So the face shape would kind of be like a v. I was just looking at pictures of my own kids to compare and their cheeks are wider than or similar in width to their foreheads. The kids in the article, had wider foreheads and the space from the eyes to top lip were close together. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crimson Wife Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 Interesting. I can definitely see a resemblance between the facial features of the kids in the article and those of my autistic child. Here is a photo of her as a toddler. [attachment=15819:Toddler.jpg] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mergath Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 That's interesting. My dd has a genetic deletion- 16p11.2 Deletion Syndrome- that causes autism for one in three kids who have it, and the kids who have it tend to look creepily alike. :P They don't have facial deformities or anything like that, they just look very similar in a lot of cases. You can see it in some of the pics if you do a Google image search. (And the fact that two pictures of me and dd come up during the same image search shows just how little there is out there about it, lol.) I wonder if that ties in at all. They think there might be a number of autistic kids that have the deletion, but didn't have any genetic testing, so they don't know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Catwoman Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 As someone who knows very little about autism, I have to admit that those kids looked perfectly normal to me. I wouldn't look at any of those photos and see anything wrong. I thought they were all cute kids. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crimson Wife Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 We had basic genetic testing done that our developmental pediatrician recommended, but everything came back normal. We haven't, however, done the whole genome sequencing because of the cost and it not being covered by insurance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mergath Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 We had basic genetic testing done that our developmental pediatrician recommended, but everything came back normal. We haven't, however, done the whole genome sequencing because of the cost and it not being covered by insurance. My dd had some pretty extensive testing done when she was at the children's hospital here in MN, mainly because they had no clue what was wrong at the time. We had state insurance back then so they covered it, thankfully. Out-of-pocket it would have cost a small fortune. I can't remember the name of the tests they did, but one was fairly new, they told me. Of course, this was four years ago. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
momto10blessings Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 I just don't see it. The kids don't seem to have wider eyes or foreheads or shorter mid faces or whatever they called them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dory Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 Those are the same facial features that my mom used to point out to me in her family. She always said that intelligent people have wider set eyes and a broad forehead. None of us have been diagnosed with autism. I think that trying to use these features to identify autism would be like saying all crows have feathers, so robins are crows. There might be some facial similarities attached to autism, but I think a large portion of people without autism have those features as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scrub Jay Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 Honestly, they all looked like kids who could be on my caseload. I don't think I would pick them out of a line up but they all give me that familiar feeling, if that makes any sense. My non-scientific observation is that a lot of my clients with Autism have large, beautiful eyes with thick, long eyelashes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crimson Wife Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 My non-scientific observation is that a lot of my clients with Autism have large, beautiful eyes with thick, long eyelashes.Interesting. My autistic child has by far the prettiest eyes of my 3 kids. Our pediatrician has a cosmetic practice on the side to help keep her main clinic afloat financially, and she told me that people pay her good money to try to get eyelashes like DD has naturally. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LucyStoner Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 Our son with autism has a very large head which was even larger relative to his size as a baby. In fact the first thing his pediatrician ever said about him was "wow, who in the family wears the really big hats?!" At 12 months his head was about 20% larger than the top of the chart. We were told that rapid head growth is a red flag to screen for autism at one point but not to worry since he'd always had a big head. He has a large forehead and smaller chin. Of course, so do I and I don't think I have autism, though I have some traits associated with autism. He also was a gorgeous baby. Total gerber baby. Eyelashes a mile long, huge bright eyes, rosy cheeks and double dimples. People who were holding their own babies would say he was the most adorable child they had ever seen, lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mergath Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 My non-scientific observation is that a lot of my clients with Autism have large, beautiful eyes with thick, long eyelashes. I used to work with autistic children, and they did too, now that I think about it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tammi K Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 No mention of sample size or of the occurrence of these features in the general population. Might it just be a co-incidence on a small sample? Frankly, I didn't see a lot of similarity. But, I'm not really good with faces. I probably couldn't describe my own kids' features in detail if I had to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NicAnn Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 Honestly, they all looked like kids who could be on my caseload. I don't think I would pick them out of a line up but they all give me that familiar feeling, if that makes any sense. My non-scientific observation is that a lot of my clients with Autism have large, beautiful eyes with thick, long eyelashes. Yes! I agree with this observation. My 18 yo old had beautiful eyes as a toddler, and the kids I work with do too. Those photos look like kids I might see in clinicals. But then, I never see kids that don't have autism these days..unless they are my own. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Incognito Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 This is another interesting article about the same information. http://crackingtheenigma.blogspot.ca/2011/10/many-faces-of-autism.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tohru Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 As someone who knows very little about autism, I have to admit that those kids looked perfectly normal to me. I wouldn't look at any of those photos and see anything wrong. I thought they were all cute kids. I agree - those were beautiful children! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SproutMamaK Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 My two autistic boys fit some of the features but not all (they have very large eyes and a few other minor characteristics). My non-autistic son has those same characteristics, though. Frankly, I think you could look at nearly ANY child and at least a few things from the list would match. I found the article Incognito linked much more informative. Even within the study, the vast majority of autistic children didn't match the "type" being put forward, which is actually two completely different types. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ali in OR Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 My disabled dd has always been in a class with several autistic kids (public school life skills class). I remember when she was in kindergarten with an autistic boy whose mother was talking about some study being done where she was specifically asked if her child was unusually beautiful. And he did have gorgeous eyes and beautiful long lashes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wapiti Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 Thinking out loud, there might be something to the large beautiful eye angle, but not necessarily something straightforward or useful in a diagnostic sort of way, as so many non-ASD people would share those characteristics. I'm pretty sure that I read long ago about an association between large eyes and either intelligence or visual strengths or perhaps both together, though I'm reaching here to remember what it was. Could it possibly be that the kids with the large eyes also have visual-spatial strengths, as in a right-brain-learner sort of thing? I also vaguely recall an association between autism and VSL/right-brain learners. FWIW, my dh has large beautiful eyes with thick, dark long lashes (dark lashes are probably from his South American mother; he has passed the eyes and lashes down to our kids and I often hear compliments on them). His eyes are *so large* that when he was in college, in combination with what was then a pencil-neck-geek physique, his nickname was "Headlights." He's extremely intelligent and certainly has some VSL strengths, but is not at all spectrum-ish. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Catwoman Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 After thinking about it a bit, I think the article may have been well-intentioned, but I hope it doesn't lead to anyone making amateur diagnoses of kids they see in their everyday lives as being autistic just because their faces are a certain shape or because they have gorgeous eyes and amazing eyelashes. I would hate to think that some idiot might start a conversation with a new mom by saying, "What a beautiful baby, and look at those big beautiful eyes! It's such a shame he's probably going to be autistic." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crimson Wife Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 After thinking about it a bit, I think the article may have been well-intentioned, but I hope it doesn't lead to anyone making amateur diagnoses of kids they see in their everyday lives as being autistic just because their faces are a certain shape or because they have gorgeous eyes and amazing eyelashes.I hope not either. But it could play a role in the diagnostic process when professionals are evaluating a child. My little one was diagnosed with global developmental delay at 24 months and at that point, it wasn't clear what was going on with her. It would've been helpful if she could've gotten her facial features scanned to say that the global developmental delay was likely the result of autism (as it turned out to be). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ivey Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 It's always amazed me how many people say that Ds9 "doesn't look like he has autism" or "doesn't have that look". I guess they were right, because he doesn't have either of the facial characteristics described in the article. I haven't read the original article yet, but it's available online here for anyone who's interested. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onceuponatime Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 None of my children are autistic, but they all have some or all of the features mentioned, incuding others mentioned here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ali in OR Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 I was thinking more about this this morning and thinking that the proportions they are finding may also be the proportions we find pleasing in the human face, so our impression is that this face is beautiful. I remember my mom pointing out that in animation, characters are drawn with those large, wide-set eyes. Perhaps the mid-section is shorter too (that one is harder for me to recognize). Check out any Disney princess--I would post Elsa's picture here if I could figure out how! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
I.Dup. Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 They haven't seen a broad forehead until they see my son. His forehead casts its own shadow. lol Seriously we had 2 CT scans done, his doctors have always been concerned, but thankfully there was never anything wrong with his brain. He is my child with most severe sensory issues, and my suspected Aspie kid. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amo_mea_filiis. Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 My non-scientific observation is that a lot of my clients with Autism have large, beautiful eyes with thick, long eyelashes. Gorgeous eyes and lashes is one of the most frequent compliments that my son gets. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joyofsixreboot Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 My 18 yo has that " look " and a very big head. That was the first thing I noticed about him at birth, LOL. My dh is " aspergery" and also has a big head. They both are very intelligent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mommyfaithe Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 Interesting. I can definitely see a resemblance between the facial features of the kids in the article and those of my autistic child. Here is a photo of her as a toddler.Toddler.jpg Beautiful baby! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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