Cornell Professor claims TV causes autism

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http://www.johnson.cornell.edu/faculty/ ... paper.html

A professor of economics at Cornell University buisiness school claims that early television watching is an environmental trigger that explains the meteoric rise of autism in children.

He found a correlation between autism rates and climates with more precipitation (rain and snow) where young children are more likely to be kept inside watching television. He also linked autism to saturation rates of cable television.

You can read the paper at the link above.

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Last month, I speculated in Slate that the mounting incidence of childhood autism may be related to increased television viewing among the very young. The autism rise began around 1980, about the same time cable television and VCRs became common, allowing children to watch television aimed at them any time. Since the brain is organizing during the first years of life and since human beings evolved responding to three-dimensional stimuli, I wondered if exposing toddlers to lots of colorful two-dimensional stimulation could be harmful to brain development. This was sheer speculation, since I knew of no researchers pursuing the question.

Today, Cornell University researchers are reporting what appears to be a statistically significant relationship between autism rates and television watching by children under the age of 3. The researchers studied autism incidence in California, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington state. They found that as cable television became common in California and Pennsylvania beginning around 1980, childhood autism rose more in the counties that had cable than in the counties that did not. They further found that in all the Western states, the more time toddlers spent in front of the television, the more likely they were to exhibit symptoms of autism disorders.

To read the rest of the article:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_an ... utism.html