Week4a+-+Answers

The following are example answers for the questions in week4. As you remember, in week4 you've read about a Twin study that focused on Autism spectrum disorder.


 * Question1: What is Autism Spectrum Disorder? Why the word 'spectrum'? **
 * Andrew Bolita (Period 4), wrote:** "Autism Spectrum Disorder is a range of complex neurodevelopment disorders, that are characterized by social impairments, communication difficulties, and restricted, repetitve, and sterotyped patterns of behavior. The word specturm is used to show the group of disorders with similar features, for example, one person might have mild symptoms, while another has serious symptoms."

//This is correct. Several students understood "Spectrum" as the wide variety of symptoms that peopel with autism have, which is incorrect.//

**Question 2**: Read the article carefully. List the possible causes for autism that the researchers heard about or thought about, //before// they conducted their study. Include explanation that the researchers thought are incorrect. //And this is the point, isn't it? What Andrew meant by "DNA" is in short - inherited genes for autism. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I couldn't find anyone else including genetics in their answer. So - cudos to Andrew! But a correction here is also needed - I woudln't say "the reasons were...", but possible reasons for autism are .....".// **Question 3:** **Which of the two (nature or nurture) was stronger in this article?** **How did they prove it is not the other factor?**
 * Ashley Tojong (period 2), wrote:** "Researchers thought that the possible causes of autism were vaccines that the mothers were given during their pregnancy. They also thought that the different birth weight of the twins was a sign of autism. but autism is actually developed by what happens during the prenatal and perinatal times of the mother's pregnancy."
 * Andrew Deras (Period 2), wrote:** "the reasons were DNA,vaccines, and lesser birth rate"
 * Louisa Chilian (Period 2) wrote**: "Nurture might be stronger. Identical twins do share 100% of their genes, but if one has ASD, the other may or may not also have it. Researchers said this means that environmental factors play a role “either independently or in interaction with autism risk genes”. (There are probably more good answers. But one will do).

This is exactly correct. The very use of identical twins in this study was aimed to neutralize the genetic factor, make the genetic variables constant, sort of speak. This leaves any differences between the two identical twins caused by environmental effects, or non-inherited ones.

**Question 4:** If you had a chance - what would you ask the writers or the scientists in thie aticle? //- Good question. The writers here don't mean that birthweight cannot be a factor in single babies. But the current reaults cannot be applied to single babies. That would require a different investigation. The only problem then would be that the genetic factor woudl not be so elegantly neutralized as in the current study.//
 * Laura Macias asked**: "Something I'd like to ask the researchers is, why is lower birth weight in twins linked to autism, and not to single born babies?"

//- Well, isn't this precisely the question that lead them to the study? We will call this the "Research Question". It is partially answered ' the twins, though identical genetically, are not identical in their position in the womb, for example. So they might gain different weight before birth.//
 * Matthew Snadoval asked**: "The question would be if they were twins why would only one be effected by ASD".


 * Amber Nugent** (period2) asked "I would ask the researches how they determined that a lower weight can put a child more at risk of developing autism."

Allow me to paraphrase - it seems to me that you are asking, how did they come up with the idea of birthweight effect to begin with? Which is a great question to ask ANY researcher - where do you get your ideas from? There has to be an initial observation that would inspire the research. It's probably a seemed correlation between birthweigh, which is always measured precisely after birth, and later development of autism. But just a correlation is not proof for causation, that low birthweight actually //causes// autism.

OK, I will stop here. But if you still have interesting questions, feel free to post them (with no credit promise for that).