#59. Understanding Autism - Dr. Calum Hartley

Autism, or autism spectrum disorder (ASD), refers to a broad range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech and nonverbal communication. Dr. Calum Hartley of Lancaster University talks us through ASD and come of the misconceptions people have about it. We cover Dr. Hartley's research on language development in children with autism and cover some other research with regards to the negative interactions people with autism often face in the criminal justice system.

Dr. Calum Hartley: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/psychology/about-us/people/calum-hartley

Chapters

• 0:00 Understanding Autism: Definitions and Characteristics
• 14:09 Challenges in Diagnosing Autism
• 24:02 How do you study Autism?
• 28:11 Linguistic Cues and the Criminal Justice System
• 36:38 Language Learning in Autistic Children
• 49:24 Misconceptions around Autism Spectrum Disorders
• 54:12 Future research directions
• 59:13 Final Thoughts

Transcript

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:00:04):
Welcome everybody to the Smooth Brain Society.

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Today,

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we will be talking to Dr.

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Calum Hartley,

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who is a senior lecturer at the Department of Psychology at Lancaster University.

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His main focus is on the communication and social cognition in autistic children and adults.

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So by that, you would have realized this podcast is going to be talking in general about autism.

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And for people who are new to the show,

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the way it works is there's me,

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there's our guest,

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our wrinkly-brained expert,

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Calum.

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And we also have a co-host to help us along on this journey who has no real idea of

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what our expert Calum does.

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And for that, we have Neil Morrison in.

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I'll let Neil sort of introduce himself very quickly.

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Sure.

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I'm Neil Morrison and I work at Lancaster University as well, but not as a researcher.

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I work as public engagement officer.

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So I take all the wrinkly brains and hopefully smooth them out a little bit so we

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can go and talk about people like Calum's research to the general public here.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:01:08):
Awesome.

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And yeah, of course, welcome Calum to the Smooth Brain Society.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:01:13):
Thank you.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:01:13):
Pleasure to be here.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:01:14):
Cheers for the invite.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:01:16):
Yes.

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All right.

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So let's start from the beginning in the sense I said we will be speaking about

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autism or autistic children and adults.

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So for our listeners,

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for our few viewers on YouTube,

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could you please give us an insight into what autism is?

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Yeah.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:01:35):
So autism is a neurodevelopmental condition that a person is born with.

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So by neurodevelopmental, it means that it originates in the brain.

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And it's not like there are any specific genes that we know determine autism.

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There are lots of genes associated with autism.

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And it's a condition that's characterized by differences in social...

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understanding,

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social interaction and communication,

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as well as some differences in behavior and also interests as well.

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And these are characteristics that will be present for an individual throughout

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their lifetime,

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but they can change as well over the course of their lifetime as well.

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So can I ask something then, Callum?

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Because when I think of autism as someone who knows nothing about it,

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I often hear the autistic spectrum.

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And you also hear people talk about, oh, well, everyone's on the spectrum somewhere.

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So clearly it's not progressive isn't the word, is it?

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But a disease with different effects of different things.

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I've always wondered where does the spectrum start?

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Is there like a definition point?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:02:46):
So one point of contention you just mentioned as a disease.

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And that's quite an old fashioned way of thinking about autism.

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It's considered as a difference, a difference that can vary in its impact on a person.

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And the spectrum component of it is really, really key.

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Right.

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All autistic individuals are truly unique.

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And whilst we know that there are certain characteristics that are common across

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individuals who are autistic,

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the presence and the intensity with which those characteristics manifest themselves

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can really vary a great deal.

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So the way in which autism is assessed and identified is that,

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well,

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essentially we have lists of criteria behaviour that are known to be associated

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with autism,

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but not everyone who is autistic checks all the same boxes in terms of the

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presentation of those behaviours.

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So this results in a lot of variability across the autism spectrum.

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So as I said,

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there's differences in the presence,

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what kinds of behaviors and cognitive characteristics are present,

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and also their intensity.

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So there are some folks who are autistic,

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who their cognition,

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so their nonverbal intelligence,

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their language abilities develop very much in line with their chronological age.

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So they don't have any intellectual disabilities or anything like that.

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But there are other folks at the other end of the spectrum who do and can have

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really quite profound intellectual difficulties,

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can have really profound language learning difficulties.

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So some folks who are autistic won't speak or are minimally speaking and also

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engage in very different kinds of behaviours as well.

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Okay.

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Okay,

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so from that,

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I'm getting sort of that the autism spectrum is more about a spectrum of sort of

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symptoms you see as opposed to everyone's on the spectrum.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:05:00):
That's right.

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And to be honest, that idea that everyone is on the spectrum isn't a helpful idea, I think.

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Many of the characteristics that you see in autism...

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are or can be present in neurotypical individuals who aren't autistic but the way

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in which they manifest themselves often has a more challenging impact on the life

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of a person who is autistic whereas they're not so much of a an issue for someone

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who is is neurotypical and a good way of thinking about autism these days

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is like in my lectures, I show color wheels, right?

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So you've got all the spokes represent different kinds of characteristics that we

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know to be associated with autism.

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And they can differ in terms of whether those spokes light up

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and how much they light up, indicating the intensity of those characteristics.

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And also on that slide,

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I show two different versions of the color wheel with different spokes and

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different lights and different intensities.

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And they both represent autistic individuals,

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but they just differ in terms of their experiences of autism and their particular

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unique set of characteristics.

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So I guess

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Oh,

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in the introduction,

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I sort of,

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and you also alluded to language as a characteristic,

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what are sort of the other ones?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:06:32):
Yeah,

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so when we are assessing autism,

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it's funny actually,

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language learning difficulties are a really common characteristic of autism,

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but these days they're not actually a diagnostic criteria.

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They are one of the things that parents identify and or makes

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parents seek a diagnosis or an assessment for their child,

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but they're not inherent to autism,

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right?

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There are lots of autistic individuals who have really fantastic language skills,

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hyper fluent and yeah,

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really great communication.

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uh the core areas of for assessment are differences in social interaction so these

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sorts of behaviors might relate to eye contact for example so often autistic

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individuals will not make as much eye contact in communication um sometimes it can

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be anxiety inducing for autistic individuals to to um gaze um although that being

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said

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There are social strategies sometimes autistic individuals implement and it might

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be that they can overcompensate and might make sometimes make more eye contact than

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than you would expect.

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But there's differences as well in for some autistic individuals.

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sensitivity and desire to engage in social interactions.

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So early on in life,

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sometimes children just,

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they don't seem as keen to socialize as their neurotypical peers,

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and they don't seem to be getting the same reward out of social interactions and

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social feedback.

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Sometimes kids might not respond to their name and this can lead parents to

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potentially think that their child is deaf.

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And this is because the child just isn't spontaneously orientating towards social

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stimuli in the same way.

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Differences in what we call joint attention.

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So joint attention is shared attention.

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So if I point towards something in the environment and you direct your attention to

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that and I'm looking at that and we're having this shared

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experience or kind of sensory input, autistic individuals make fewer bids for joint attention.

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They often won't try to manipulate a caregiver's attention in the same way,

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or they're also less receptive to joint attention.

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So they would be less likely to follow other people's bids.

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And also you have restricted and repetitive behaviors and interests.

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That's the other core domain when it comes to assessing autism.

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And this often presents itself as

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or it can represent itself in lots of different ways.

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You've got repetitive behavioral movements.

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So sometimes that will be in the physical character, like physical movements of an individual.

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Sometimes you see,

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sometimes there's like moving of the hands and this can serve different functions.

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It can be soothing.

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It can help reduce anxiety.

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as well as generating a sort of a sensory stimulation that might actually be

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providing some kind of positive reinforcement for the individual.

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You've got an adherence to often routine and liking predictable sort of routines to

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follow and understanding how to structure the day.

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And really understanding if I perform this action,

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I know what's going to happen next and being able to predict,

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essentially predict what's going on and what's going to happen next.

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And also you have special interests.

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So most autistic individuals have a topic that is really, really, really fascinating for them.

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These can be hugely diverse and often the individual's sort of knowledge and

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enthusiasm for this area or this particular topic might exceed their knowledge and

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understanding of other things more generally.

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So thinking about some of the children that I used to work with who did have really

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quite profound language learning difficulties.

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um they might have had exceptional knowledge in in this one one area that would be

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far greater in depth than than sort of general educational level interesting so did

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you say it was entirely genetic Callum or is there an environmental factor behind

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it as well because I'm guessing you'll it's the parents who presumably notice if

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child

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if they think he or she is autistic.

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I guess two, three-ish, somewhere around there when they probably begin to talk.

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But is there then an environmental impact of where the child is that changes autism

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or is it purely genetic?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:11:39):
So it's a genetic condition.

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We know that because there is a heritable component of it.

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So we know that if...

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In a family,

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a newborn infant has an older sibling who is already known to be autistic,

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or if parents are autistic,

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there's an increased likelihood of that infant themselves

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being identified as autistic um there there isn't any evidence for the way like

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parenting practices or the way environments in which a child is raised none of that

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reliably uh predicts the onset or assessment or identification of autism so it is

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very much a genetic condition we just don't know the gene i think

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Yeah, we just don't know the gene.

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And because of the variability within the population,

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it's probably that it's really polygenetic.

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There's lots of interactions between different genes.

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And this results in the variability in cognition and behavior and so on.

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There are certain prenatal factors,

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like environmental factors,

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that we know to increase the likelihood of autism occurring.

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So maternal age.

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for example.

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And I read a paper recently that talked about certain conditions during pregnancy.

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So if there's a threatened miscarriage,

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for example,

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that's associated with increased likelihood of the infant being autistic.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:13:18):
I vaguely remember reading this for a completely different study, but certain things about

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famine and all during pregnancy as well,

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sort of relating to higher risks of mental health disorders and autism.

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I was reading it for something else, but I vaguely remember this.

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Is this also?

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Yeah.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:13:39):
So I think that feeds into the idea that maybe prenatal environment could,

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could have an influence and it might be that those kinds of prenatal factors might,

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might well be sort of triggering epigenetic type relationships and effects that are

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going on potentially.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:13:55):
Oh,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:13:56):
So, question, are you, so you're telling me vaccines don't cause autism?

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:14:02):
I'm absolutely telling you that vaccines don't cause autism.

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Okay, cool.

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Neil mentioned,

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and this was very interesting how you said,

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how you said like parents are the ones who first sort of detected around the age of two,

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three.

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How hard is it to actually differentiate autism at that stage with sort of other

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behavioral and personality like disorders which we see?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:14:28):
Yeah, that's a great question.

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And it really varies between individuals, right?

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And just generally, that age of development is really varied anyway, right?

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Kids behave one way at a certain age, the next year they might behave differently.

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And they also vary in terms of just general developmental trajectories for language, right?

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Sometimes you see kids that you classify as late talkers,

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And you might think,

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okay,

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maybe this is a child that is maybe at risk of developing like developmental

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language disorder,

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but a year or two later,

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they're speaking and they've caught up,

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you know,

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you do see that a bit.

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Now, when it comes to autism, it does vary quite substantially.

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Because for individuals where there are really obvious markers,

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really obvious aversion to social interactions or

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really strong repetitive behaviors uh profound difficulties in language and

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intellectual difficulties as well then those cases are typically easier to identify

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than if the person or the individual they have great language skills their

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non-verbal cognition is what you'd expect based on the chronological age

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And for those individuals that haven't got the co-occurring language impairments

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and intellectual difficulties,

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they typically get identified as autistic way later in life.

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Because the sort of cognitive issues make it more salient, more obvious.

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And you see this.

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So I work with quite a lot of autistic university students.

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And almost,

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well,

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yeah,

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invariably,

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they say,

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well,

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I was identified as autistic after the age of 12,

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let's say.

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Or sometimes even back end of high school,

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maybe even when the early days in terms of getting to university.

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because they're able to

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kind of compensate for the characteristics of autism through excellent language skills,

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through developing compensatory strategies.

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And also,

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there's a behavior called masking,

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or in the literature,

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it's called social camouflaging,

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where an autistic individual might purposefully,

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well,

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it can be conscious or unconscious,

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but the outcome is that they suppress their autistic traits and actively present in

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a way to appear neurotypical.

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And you see this more often in the folks who've got really great language skills,

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because it facilitates those compensatory strategies.

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And it's only when a person's environment changes.

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So it might be that when they've been living at home and they've had loads of support,

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those compensatory strategies were effective in helping them get through the

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demands of education and socializing and all that.

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But when that changes, they have to live away from home for the first time.

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The huge changes in routine and environment.

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Sometimes those compensatory strategies are no longer effective.

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And this can lead to the,

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you know,

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autistic behaviors and aspects of cognition being more problematic.

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And this results in the assessment.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:17:56):
I guess that flips what Neil had asked about the environment and sort of

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the environmental component of it being like when you're in an environment which

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sort of allows you to mask these things you're doing a lot better then the

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environment completely changes and then yeah when do when do the children first

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:18:14):
learn to mask because that that feels like it'd be quite a quite an adult skill or

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:18:19):
something that would take a little while greater just general sort of cognitive

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:18:24):
ability to be able to pull off really

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:18:28):
Yeah.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:18:29):
And of course it does require, it requires those language skills.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:18:33):
It requires the ability to imitate and that sort of social awareness.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:18:40):
I'm not entirely sure about the evidence regarding the earliest signs at which it emerges,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:18:47):
but it must be quite early because it contributes to these late diagnoses.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:18:52):
Yeah.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:18:54):
And also, we know that social masking varies across genders.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:18:59):
So we know that autistic females are more likely to engage in masking.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:19:04):
And that then feeds in to delays in particularly for autistic females actually

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:19:11):
being assessed and diagnosed.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:19:14):
So one of the characteristics about autism that's sort of

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:19:18):
A common stereotype is it's largely considered to be a male disorder.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:19:22):
And the gender ratio you often hear is four to one, as in four boys for every one girl.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:19:28):
When in reality, it might be two to one or maybe even more balanced than that.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:19:34):
But it's down to the fact that we're just not very good at detecting autism in females,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:19:39):
knowing what happens.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:19:40):
what how it manifests and often that a part well partly what contributes to that is

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:19:46):
the presence of social camouflaging in in females that's that's incredibly

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:19:52):
interesting uh sorry is that general you know in neurotypical individuals as well

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:19:58):
callum are females generally better at social masking than males

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:20:03):
I mean, that would sort of be the stereotype, wouldn't it?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:20:06):
That girls are a bit more socially attuned and boys are just active play and I'm

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:20:11):
going to,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:20:12):
you know,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:20:12):
play football and rough and tumble and all of that stuff.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:20:16):
And of course,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:20:18):
some of those norms,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:20:19):
those social stereotypes and norms likely influence this kind of issue around assessment.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:20:27):
So if autistic girls are able to socially camouflage and present themselves in a

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:20:32):
way that neurotypical girls are behaving,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:20:35):
then yeah,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:20:37):
maybe they might feel that increased pressure to behave in a certain way in order

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:20:41):
to fit in.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:20:42):
And then that incentivizes masking.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:20:47):
I was just saying when you were talking about the imitative behavior,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:20:52):
this is where I get to flex other people who are on the podcast.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:20:54):
So a few episodes ago,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:20:57):
we had a child development researcher on Frankie Fong who was talking about how

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:21:02):
imitation in kids across cultures,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:21:04):
you see a lot of it around the age of one and a half years,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:21:06):
two years.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:21:08):
And I'm guessing he was talking about just neurotypical imitation.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:21:11):
So there's no necessary reason that imitation should start later, I guess.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:21:17):
Well, it can do in autistic individuals, for sure.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:21:22):
Yeah, just generally differences in...

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:21:28):
sort of, yeah, in intentional behavior can vary.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:21:32):
So neurotypical infants often imitate what they perceive to be intentional behavior

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:21:38):
in what they see in others.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:21:41):
Whereas autistic individuals sometimes differ in that regard,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:21:45):
less likely to imitate what they see in others.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:21:50):
Yeah, I would say, yeah, that's a difference that you do sometimes see.

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:21:56):
And what's the average age of diagnosis?

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:21:58):
Because you said it was quite delayed.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:22:01):
Well, usually it is in early-ish childhood.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:22:07):
So for cases where it's quite...

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:22:11):
relatively obvious and you might see it between three and five but it varies

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:22:16):
depending on there's a bit of a postcode lottery component to it you know

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:22:21):
assessment services vary in terms of the backlog basically and this can result in

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:22:29):
individuals who are quite clearly autistic

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:22:32):
being delayed in receiving that diagnosis and that can actually be really quite

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:22:37):
negative for that individual because the earlier that they are identified as

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:22:41):
autistic the earlier they can start receiving the support they need whether that be

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:22:45):
financial or appropriate educational interventions and we know that earlier

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:22:53):
The earlier you can start receiving optimal support,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:22:57):
the better outcomes are likely to be,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:22:59):
particularly for individuals who have language learning difficulties or

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:23:02):
intellectual difficulties.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:23:04):
Early you start receiving support, the better things usually go later on.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:23:10):
But as I said, because autism is a developmental condition,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:23:18):
By its very definition, we know that it is present from childhood in every case.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:23:23):
And there are some research studies that record kids' first birthday parties.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:23:31):
And there's some evidence from those that suggests that you can differentiate

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:23:35):
autistic individuals based on their nonverbal pre-linguistic behavior as early as

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:23:41):
one from these first birthday recordings.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:23:43):
But that's not the case for every individual,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:23:45):
because as I say,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:23:46):
some folks only receive the diagnosis much later on in life.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:23:52):
So with all the heterogeneity around autism, how do you go about even sort of studying it?

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:24:00):
Like, yeah, how would that sort of work?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:24:04):
Yeah,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:24:05):
so oftentimes,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:24:08):
certainly the majority,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:24:10):
I do quite a lot of diverse research these days,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:24:13):
but one of my primary areas of research is studying language development,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:24:17):
particularly acquisition of vocabulary in autistic kids that do struggle to learn language.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:24:25):
So what we do is we work collaboratively with specialist schools and some

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:24:29):
specialist schools cater specifically for autistic kids.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:24:33):
They're often the ones that we work with.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:24:36):
So all of our participants,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:24:38):
if we go to a specialist school,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:24:40):
we can recruit children who already have received their assessments.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:24:44):
And we do try to work with groups that have some consistency.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:24:51):
So for my work with word learning,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:24:54):
vocabulary acquisition,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:24:56):
we work with kids who we know have those delays in language development and trying

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:24:59):
to understand them.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:25:01):
some of the factors that are contributing to those and try to identify how the

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:25:05):
environment can be altered to better support vocabulary development.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:25:11):
But equally, I do lots of studies with adults at university as well.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:25:18):
And whilst they share the same diagnostic label,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:25:23):
autism spectrum disorder and obviously their profiles are very very different

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:25:28):
you've got these kids at school who um might often be really struggling to speak

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:25:34):
they might not speak at all whereas you have at university you've got these

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:25:39):
exceptionally uh intellectually developed individuals who are studying maths

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:25:43):
astrophysics all sorts right does that make the doing the experiments difficult

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:25:49):
callum if you've got such a

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:25:51):
such a range of subjects, it must be very hard to, I mean, if you, I'm a biologist, right?

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:25:57):
So a rat is a rat, a Wistar rat is a Wistar rat.

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:26:00):
They're all gonna behave the same way whatever you do to them.

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:26:03):
But it sounds like your experimental group is gonna be a wide ranging one.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:26:09):
That's absolutely the case,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:26:11):
but we address different questions that are pertinent for different groups of people.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:26:16):
So the stuff in schools with kids that are minimally verbal or non-speaking,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:26:22):
we're looking at the very basic mechanics of acquiring vocabulary.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:26:26):
So how do these children identify the meanings of new words that they hear?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:26:31):
How do they retain the meanings?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:26:32):
How do they generalize them?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:26:35):
Some of the studies we work with with autistic university students were looking at

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:26:39):
different kinds of issues that are more relevant to them.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:26:42):
So,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:26:42):
for example,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:26:43):
one of one of the programmes of research that I'm working on at the moment is

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:26:48):
examining what deceptive communication looks like in autistic adults.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:26:53):
So an issue that autistic individuals experience in

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:27:00):
the criminal justice system is that they're increasingly likely to be perceived as

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:27:05):
deceptive because there are lots of stereotypical cues to deception that are just

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:27:10):
natural behaviors in autism so aversion to eye gaze being one for example right

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:27:17):
there's a stereotypical idea that if you don't pay you know don't look at someone's

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:27:21):
eyes there's a chance that you're telling a fib right

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:27:24):
And deception detection strategies that are used in forensic settings are informed

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:27:32):
by neurotypical norms about behavior.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:27:34):
So autistic folks are often misunderstood and at risk.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:27:39):
And I've worked with a fantastic PhD student,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:27:42):
Teagan Blackhurst,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:27:44):
who also were collaborating with Autistica on this project,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:27:47):
which is the UK's leading autism research charity.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:27:51):
She is conducting a series of studies that are profiling basically what differences

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:27:58):
in truthful and deceptive communication in autistic adults,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:28:02):
what they differences in the qualities,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:28:05):
both nonverbal behavior and like paralinguistic cues.

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:28:11):
I'm going to stop you there, Callum.

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:28:13):
Paralinguistic clue, what might that be?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:28:16):
So paralinguistic cues are aspects of verbal communication that aren't actually the

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:28:22):
meaning of the words that are being said.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:28:25):
So a couple of the paralinguistic cues that we're interested in is how long it

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:28:31):
takes for people to answer a question in a kind of investigative interview setting.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:28:38):
How long they have to think about it before they start speaking.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:28:41):
And like the mean length of their utterances.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:28:44):
So how long their answers are in response to different kinds of questions.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:28:50):
Also, you've got differences in pitch as well.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:28:53):
Sometimes some literature suggests that that's a cue to deception as well.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:28:58):
So we're profiling these qualities of essentially what deceptive cues look like for

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:29:04):
autistic individuals.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:29:06):
And one of the key findings from a study that Teagan is writing up at the moment

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:29:11):
and hopefully will be submitting soon is that

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:29:15):
Averted eye gaze is just essentially a predictor of autism rather than a predictor

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:29:20):
of deception.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:29:22):
So it's not at all useful in terms of detecting deception for autistic individuals.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:29:29):
But yeah, we're conducting a whole suite of studies around

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:29:33):
know how accurate autistic individuals are at detecting deception as well so the

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:29:38):
idea being that due to differences in social understanding and differences in

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:29:43):
understanding mental states as well that's a characteristic so being able to

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:29:47):
perspective take and maybe understand the intentions of another person that would

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:29:51):
present risks

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:29:53):
of potentially being subject to fraud or manipulation or victimization along those

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:29:58):
lines so are autistic individuals less accurate at detecting deception um and also

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:30:04):
what the label of being autistic means for neurotypical people in terms of

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:30:09):
whether are they more likely to perceive or less likely to perceive autistic

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:30:13):
individuals are deceptive when they are actually being deceptive so yeah we've got

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:30:17):
a whole whole suite of cool studies that we're conducting around this so obviously

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:30:20):
that's a more pertinent issue for that particular you know subset of the autistic

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:30:26):
population because the you know that's

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:30:30):
That's a risk that they're more likely to encounter than studying how they learn

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:30:34):
vocabulary when they already have super developed language skills.

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:30:38):
Is the justice system kind of aware of this, Callum, or is this actually a problem?

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:30:43):
There's evidence that miscarriages of justice have been done because of autism

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:30:49):
rather than any other reason.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:30:52):
There are certainly plenty of anecdotal reports of unfair treatment within the

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:30:57):
criminal justice system for not just autistic individuals,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:31:00):
but neurodiverse individuals more broadly,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:31:03):
folks with ADHD as well,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:31:04):
for example.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:31:05):
And we know that training for folks who work in the criminal justice system, both on the sort of

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:31:15):
The legal sort of lawyers and that's,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:31:19):
but right down to the police receive next to no training around neurodiversity and,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:31:26):
or make kind of accommodations for when they encounter people who are autistic,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:31:31):
even though the sort of prevalence of autistic and other neurodiverse individuals

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:31:37):
is actually way higher in populations that make contact with the criminal justice

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:31:41):
system in comparison to their prevalence in the general population.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:31:46):
So it's a real,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:31:47):
real area that does need,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:31:50):
needs investigating needs work in order to actually make a difference and improve

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:31:56):
outcomes for,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:31:57):
for autistic folks.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:32:00):
Yeah.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:32:01):
I I'm still sort of blown by the deception thing of you.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:32:05):
You're essentially just predicting autism more likely than you are predicting deception.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:32:10):
That's that's.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:32:12):
pretty big, someone's just looking the other way.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:32:15):
And it's also interesting,

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:32:17):
isn't it,

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:32:18):
if you're doing it both ways,

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:32:20):
because if the autistic person can't pick up deception clues from somebody

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:32:25):
interviewing them over a crime,

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:32:26):
and then they're looking,

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:32:27):
they don't get the deception themselves,

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:32:29):
it's almost doubling the problem,

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:32:31):
isn't it?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:32:33):
Yeah, no, for sure.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:32:34):
And yeah, there's probably education to be done on both sides, really.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:32:41):
The support for autistic folks who find themselves engaged in the criminal justice system,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:32:46):
but also really important,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:32:48):
educating individuals who are on the other side,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:32:50):
who are kind of doing the investigative interviewing and so on.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:32:55):
And really just educating in terms of

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:32:58):
You know,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:32:58):
people's behavior depends on the neurodivergence and what we stereotypically

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:33:04):
consider to be indicative of deception in one group doesn't generalize to other groups.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:33:11):
Yeah.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:33:11):
And the other thing of are people who are diagnosed with autism more likely to sort

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:33:19):
of be conned and things like that because you touched upon it.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:33:22):
Is this an actual thing or is it a sort of misguided thing around?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:33:28):
There's evidence,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:33:29):
of course,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:33:30):
that folks generally who have intellectual disabilities,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:33:33):
who maybe rely on support,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:33:38):
maybe other aspects of their lives where they can't live independently,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:33:43):
are more subject or more at risk of kind of being conned or,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:33:48):
excuse me,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:33:48):
manipulated in some ways.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:33:51):
And I suppose the issue,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:33:52):
theoretically speaking,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:33:53):
is of particular prominence for autistic individuals because we know that there are

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:33:57):
differences in what psychologists call theory of mind,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:34:03):
which essentially boils down to being able to represent other people's mental states,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:34:08):
understanding why they're doing the things that they're doing,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:34:11):
and being able to spot when...

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:34:16):
potentially when they're being deceived.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:34:18):
Is there any evidence out there that really directly addresses this question?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:34:23):
Not to my knowledge, but that's why we're doing this.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:34:26):
That's why we're running one of these studies,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:34:27):
because we will absolutely get the answer to that question,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:34:31):
because one of the studies that Tegan's running.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:34:35):
is presenting both neurotypical and autistic individuals with videos of people

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:34:40):
telling the truth versus telling lies.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:34:43):
And we're comparing their accuracy in terms of how accurate are they at figuring

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:34:48):
out which is which,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:34:50):
making veracity judgments.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:34:52):
And we know that neurotypical individuals are actually really quite bad at this.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:34:55):
They're usually about chance.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:34:58):
And if we find that autistic individuals are significantly worse than that,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:35:04):
then there's your evidence.

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:35:05):
We're going to look at written deception as well.

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:35:09):
I was just thinking when Sahil was talking about scams, there's two types, isn't there?

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:35:12):
There's somebody coming up to you and talking,

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:35:16):
which I can see where the problem would be if you're autistic.

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:35:20):
How about the classic Nigerian Prince email?

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:35:23):
Does that still have the same effect?

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:35:27):
If there's a language component, do they read that and go, that's a great idea?

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:35:32):
Or is that the same as the rest of us?

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:35:34):
Yeah, that's probably not going to happen.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:35:38):
The phishing scam.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:35:41):
Yeah.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:35:43):
Good old Nigerian prince.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:35:45):
No, I'm not aware of any evidence that speaks to that.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:35:52):
And again, it would vary between individuals, I suspect.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:35:57):
So, yeah, it's hard for me to kind of present a clear answer to that, I think.

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:36:02):
That's all right.

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:36:03):
Keep doing some research there, Callum.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:36:05):
Ha!

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:36:07):
I mean,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:36:07):
it's a really important area that only in the last few years that we started investigating.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:36:12):
And just this last October,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:36:15):
we have another PhD student,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:36:16):
Meg,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:36:16):
who's looking at similar questions for folks who've got ADHD as well.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:36:21):
Because,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:36:21):
again,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:36:22):
similar story for those guys in relation to the criminal justice system over

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:36:27):
prevalence and kind of misconceptions and increased risk.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:36:31):
So, yeah, it's an important issue.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:36:37):
Well,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:36:38):
should we move to the other end of the spectrum now and talk about your work sort

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:36:42):
of with children,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:36:43):
sort of with language learning disabilities or difficulties?

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:36:47):
Yeah.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:36:49):
Yeah.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:36:49):
I wanted to ask,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:36:51):
Neil had already mentioned,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:36:52):
how tough is it to actually sort of do this kind of research?

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:36:57):
What kind of stuff are you looking at in particular?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:37:01):
Yeah.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:37:01):
So you've got to be very careful in how you construct the studies because the way

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:37:09):
you design kind of experimental methods and your selection of,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:37:14):
say,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:37:15):
standardized assessments.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:37:16):
So in addition to doing whatever kind of experimental game that you want to play,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:37:20):
it's important that you profile your sample as well.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:37:23):
So you get a good understanding of what their language abilities are like,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:37:27):
maybe where their nonverbal intelligence is.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:37:30):
as well as individual differences in autistic traits,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:37:33):
because your findings for whatever you find really generalize to autistic

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:37:39):
individuals that have similar characteristics as opposed to other characteristics.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:37:44):
So for our folks,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:37:46):
when we're working with kids who've got really profound language learning

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:37:50):
difficulties and maybe intellectual disabilities,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:37:53):
we choose

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:37:55):
assessments that are very visual,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:37:58):
very active,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:37:59):
that don't rely on speech on the part of the participant to kind of generate responses,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:38:06):
unless we're measuring expressive vocabulary.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:38:08):
And even then,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:38:09):
if a child can't speak,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:38:10):
there are measures that we can use that can gauge a child's expressive language

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:38:16):
ability from pre-linguistic

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:38:19):
kind of utterances.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:38:21):
But lots of our studies at the moment,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:38:23):
we've kind of developed a cool experimental setup where we have a huge,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:38:27):
big touchscreen computer and autistic kids,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:38:31):
as neurotypical kids are too,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:38:34):
they love touchscreens.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:38:36):
And particularly for autistic individuals,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:38:38):
there is a real preference or kind of fascination with screen-based media and often

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:38:45):
touching in that way.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:38:47):
So we present stimulating images and auditory input through this computer.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:38:55):
And they often make responses by high-fiving the things that we ask for.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:39:01):
So a sort of a classic word learning study that we would do

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:39:06):
We might present three images of things on the screen.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:39:10):
And to begin with,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:39:11):
if we were teaching them the meaning of a novel word,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:39:13):
there are lots of different ways of doing this.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:39:15):
But one way is setting up a situation where a child can use processes of

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:39:20):
elimination so they can use their existing knowledge of language to figure out what

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:39:25):
a new word refers to.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:39:26):
So you might present three objects on our touch screen.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:39:30):
And one of them is a weird,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:39:32):
unfamiliar thing that the child has never seen before and wouldn't have a name for.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:39:37):
Another one's a cat and another one's a tree.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:39:40):
And we choose familiar objects in this way to present an environment where we can

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:39:44):
be pretty sure that kids know the names of these things because the age of

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:39:49):
acquisition is like,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:39:51):
I don't know,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:39:52):
12 months to 16 months or even lower sometimes.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:39:55):
So we can assume that the children we're working with,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:39:57):
even though they might have profound language delay,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:40:00):
their vocabulary is such that they highly like to know these words.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:40:04):
So we would then say,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:40:07):
which is the blicket, touch the blicket, show me the blicket.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:40:10):
Now they know,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:40:12):
they don't know the meaning of the word blicket,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:40:14):
but if they know cat,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:40:16):
they know the cat's not the blicket.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:40:17):
And if they know tree, they know the tree's not the blicket.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:40:20):
So what they're doing is they're applying a lexical or linguistic assumption that

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:40:28):
one word refers to one object,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:40:30):
and that's called mutual exclusivity.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:40:32):
And they would correctly identify the weird unfamiliar thing as the blicket.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:40:37):
And what we find is that in these kinds of situations where autistic kids across

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:40:42):
the spectrum are able to use their existing knowledge of words to figure out the

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:40:47):
meanings of unfamiliar words,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:40:49):
they're really,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:40:50):
really good at that.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:40:52):
So we often present new words in that way.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:40:55):
And we might teach them, say, four words initially.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:40:59):
And then we would stop for, say, five minutes.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:41:02):
They play a game, maybe do some drawing or whatever.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:41:05):
And we wait five minutes because that gives kids the chance to forget.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:41:09):
Because figuring out the meaning of a word isn't learning a word.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:41:12):
It's just disambiguating its meaning.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:41:15):
So what we do is we wait five minutes.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:41:17):
That gives them that chance to forget.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:41:19):
And then we test their attention.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:41:21):
Have they actually learned?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:41:22):
Is there something in memory retained about these associations between words and

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:41:28):
the things that they refer to?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:41:31):
And what we're trying to do is we change that initial learning setup in various

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:41:37):
different ways to try and increase the likelihood of retention.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:41:40):
How can we present visual and auditory stimuli in a way that helps children

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:41:45):
actually retain those associations?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:41:49):
And sometimes we also test generalization as well.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:41:51):
So generalization is the idea that words, many words in a child's vocabulary

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:41:58):
are names for categories of things.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:42:01):
They don't just refer to one thing.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:42:02):
So if a child might learn the word cat in association with their family pet at home,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:42:07):
In order to really understand the meaning of that word,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:42:09):
they have to understand that it doesn't just refer to a black cat,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:42:13):
it refers to the tabby cat,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:42:14):
the ginger cat,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:42:15):
the picture of a cat in a book,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:42:17):
right?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:42:18):
But there are certain visual constraints that determine the rules as to how we generalize words.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:42:26):
And shape is the key one, right?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:42:27):
That's a really important one.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:42:29):
So we often test

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:42:31):
how we can promote shape-based generalization so kids are once they've learned the

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:42:35):
meaning of a word they can start extending it appropriately that's that's

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:42:42):
incredibly interesting so uh i'm just thinking shape-based stuff like how you would

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:42:48):
have and sort of orientation based stuff like if you show a cat upside down is it

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:42:53):
still a cat kind of thing um or i guess a more easier one is for like a cup or a

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:42:58):
chair because

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:43:01):
or not easy, ambiguous one is for like a cup or a chair, right?

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:43:04):
Because in what angle is it still with the same object?

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:43:09):
If you sort of are trying to categorize them in your mind.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:43:12):
Yeah, I mean, I'll be honest, I've not tested the ability to learn upside down cats.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:43:21):
But in some of our studies that we use with tablets,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:43:26):
one of my former PhD students,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:43:27):
Lee Keating,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:43:27):
did this.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:43:28):
She presented images of unfamiliar objects that rotated.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:43:31):
So they got a full 360.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:43:33):
And that was part of the sort of experimental setup and the way we presented

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:43:39):
objects in that study.

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:43:42):
And is this study with neurotypical people or are you comparing with autism?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:43:48):
Yeah, so that's how we do things.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:43:50):
We always draw comparisons.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:43:54):
And this is one of the sort of points for debate in neurodevelopmental condition

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:43:59):
research is who do you compare against?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:44:02):
So you've got your population of autistic individuals that have delays in language.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:44:08):
They might have co-occurring intellectual difficulties as well.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:44:11):
Do you compare them against kids the same age?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:44:14):
If you do, you're guaranteed to know the answer to that question.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:44:18):
The autistic kids aren't going to do as well because of everything else that's

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:44:21):
going on unrelated to autism.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:44:24):
So they've got these global delays in development and that's your answer.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:44:29):
That is why they're not doing as well.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:44:33):
So often what we do, rather than doing that,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:44:36):
is we compare against ability match groups.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:44:39):
So we will recruit neurotypical kids who are often chronologically a bit younger,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:44:43):
but are at the same stage in terms of their vocabulary development.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:44:47):
And what that allows us to do is to identify whether there are actually any genuine

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:44:51):
differences in the way these mechanisms are functioning.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:44:55):
Is there differences in the way that autistic kids are learning these words when

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:44:59):
expectations are based on where they're at,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:45:02):
developmentally speaking?

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:45:06):
What about comparing them to sort of,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:45:10):
because we spoke about autism being a spectrum,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:45:12):
kind of comparing sort of kids with autism showing more sort of language

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:45:16):
difficulties to sort of other difficulties.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:45:18):
Do you sort of compare those as well to see if there's any sort of overlap in the

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:45:23):
color we always had mentioned?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:45:26):
So do you mean like comparing like autistic kids against kids with like

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:45:32):
developmental language disorder or are we comparing different autistic kids against,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:45:36):
yeah,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:45:36):
autistic against autistic?

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:45:39):
Now that you mentioned that, I was kind of thinking both in my mind.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:45:41):
So one to sort of distinguish between developmental language disorder versus an

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:45:47):
autistic kid with language disorder,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:45:49):
sort of language development issues,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:45:51):
but then also...

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:45:53):
if you have a different sample of autistic kids, how does that sort of manifest?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:45:58):
Well,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:45:58):
one of the one of the ideas or theories around autism is that the language learning

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:46:05):
difficulties are kind of separate in terms that they're not because they're not a

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:46:10):
diagnosis defining characteristic of autism.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:46:13):
They might be their own thing and they might have their own their own set of causal factors.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:46:19):
But actually what you find

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:46:22):
But what we find is that when you present stimuli in the right ways,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:46:26):
in the favorable ways that play to the kids' strengths,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:46:30):
autistic kids are usually just as good at learning vocabulary as neurotypical peers

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:46:34):
when expectations are based on the developmental level that they're at.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:46:40):
The one difference that we do consistently see is that autistic children are slower

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:46:45):
to process verbal and visual input.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:46:47):
It takes them longer to generate correct responses.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:46:51):
And on the one hand,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:46:52):
that's probably indicative of the kind of the global cognitive differences that are

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:46:59):
going on,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:47:00):
that there are just general differences in the speed of processing information.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:47:05):
And that wouldn't just apply to linguistic stimuli.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:47:09):
But what that suggests from a practical point of view is it highlights the

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:47:12):
importance of actually letting kids learn at their own pace and presenting

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:47:15):
information in a way that accommodates for those delays.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:47:19):
And that's something that we always do in our experiments because the kids that we

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:47:23):
work with,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:47:23):
they do vary in terms of their attention.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:47:26):
Sometimes they...

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:47:28):
they will get up,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:47:28):
they will run around for a bit and then they'll kind of get that burst of energy

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:47:32):
out of their system and then they'll sit back down and they'll play again.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:47:36):
And that's very much reflective of how they would be in the classroom, right?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:47:42):
So we do accommodate for children learning at their own pace.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:47:45):
And on the one hand,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:47:46):
that's great for us because it shows that,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:47:48):
yeah,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:47:48):
these autistic kids are really capable word learners under the right conditions.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:47:53):
But what it probably means in terms of naturalistic situations is that's a bit more

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:47:58):
problematic because the way in which speech occurs is a lot more rapid and there's

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:48:03):
a lot more distractions.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:48:04):
There's a lot more noise.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:48:05):
There's loads going on demanding,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:48:06):
you know,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:48:07):
competing demands for attention than our lovely big touchscreen computer that is really,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:48:13):
you know,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:48:13):
helping them focus.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:48:15):
So where I'm at, theoretically speaking at the moment and something I want to test is that

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:48:23):
Really,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:48:24):
that's what's going on,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:48:25):
is that in natural learning environments,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:48:27):
kids,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:48:27):
the input that they're receiving is different because they're paying attention to

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:48:30):
different things at different times.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:48:33):
So their sort of multi-sensory experiences are fundamentally different.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:48:37):
But when you can get them to focus,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:48:39):
pay attention to the right things at the right times,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:48:42):
then they're golden and it works.

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:48:47):
So that's really the teaching strategies, I guess, that teachers need to use.

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:48:52):
It's not that they're slow or anything.

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:48:54):
They're absolutely perfectly capable of doing everything they can.

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:48:57):
They just need a slightly,

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:48:59):
either a longer processing time or a slightly different approach.

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:49:02):
And that I guess is something that is missing generally.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:49:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:49:08):
And this is,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:49:09):
of course,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:49:10):
in,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:49:10):
you know,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:49:11):
we're studying individuals that indisputably do have delays in their development,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:49:16):
but for the stage that they're at,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:49:19):
if you present information in the right way,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:49:21):
they are capable learners.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:49:24):
Oh, that's awesome.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:49:28):
you mentioned so this also i guess comes under it but you've mentioned a few

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:49:32):
different misconceptions i guess across uh across these past 45 odd minutes um are

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:49:40):
there any others uh well the funny one which we laughed about was the vaccines and

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:49:44):
autism and the genetic aspects of it but then you also spoke about sort of gays and

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:49:51):
sort of aversion and how that

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:49:54):
how that's certainly a problem in the criminal justice system we also spoke about

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:49:57):
what we technically mean when we talk about spectrum are there any other sort of

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:50:01):
misconceptions which you feel you come across when talking uh yeah i suppose we've

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:50:07):
talked about not a disease um that that's an important one um i suppose one that's

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:50:14):
that might crop up in the in in sort of um

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:50:19):
in the community, I suppose, is around looking for a cure.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:50:23):
Autism, there's no cure for autism.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:50:26):
And it isn't something that, for many individuals who are autistic themselves would say,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:50:35):
we find this concept offensive.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:50:37):
We don't want to be cured.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:50:39):
Autism makes us who we are and is special and it's an important part of our identity.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:50:47):
But to play devil's advocate,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:50:49):
on the flip side,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:50:50):
you have carers who are looking after autistic individuals who can't speak,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:50:53):
who have really challenging intellectual disabilities and might engage in

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:50:59):
self-injurious behavior.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:51:00):
And for them,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:51:04):
you know, it's understandable why carers might very much consider autism to be a disability.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:51:10):
So I suppose what I'm getting at is autism means different things to different people.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:51:16):
And I think that's okay.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:51:17):
You know,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:51:17):
it depends on the characteristics of an autistic individual and how it's impacting

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:51:25):
on their life.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:51:27):
And I think it's okay for folks to disagree over this because, you know, there are,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:51:33):
um you know i said there are lots of autistic individuals who are proud to be

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:51:36):
autistic and it's a defining point of of who they are and they they do great things

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:51:42):
educationally professionally um you know but it's important to be mindful but that

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:51:48):
that's not true and that's not the case for all autistic individuals i think that's

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:51:53):
a very nice way to put it um uh what what was i going to say we often

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:52:00):
Because I do more neuroscience based research.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:52:03):
And so when you sort of doing animal work,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:52:07):
you're sort of looking at the symptom and you're only talking about the symptom.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:52:10):
And we often have these conversations about how useful labeling something is or

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:52:15):
labeling something as

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:52:16):
someone as autistic or labeling someone as they have ADHD or whatever versus the symptom?

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:52:23):
And should we be treating a symptom versus treating the condition?

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:52:27):
What is the meaning of the label?

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:52:28):
Is it like putting someone in a box versus giving them sort of an empowerment by

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:52:33):
putting a name to it so that they can understand themselves better?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:52:37):
And that's a really important question,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:52:39):
actually,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:52:40):
because,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:52:41):
of course,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:52:41):
many of the characteristics across neurodevelopmental conditions overlap.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:52:46):
And many of them are diagnosed together.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:52:52):
It's quite rare that I would encounter an autistic individual who is just autistic.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:52:57):
They would often have other diagnoses as well, whether that be ADHD or OCD or anxiety.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:53:05):
And we know that,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:53:06):
yeah,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:53:06):
like characteristics of ADHD,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:53:08):
for example,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:53:10):
differences in executive functioning.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:53:11):
So kind of skills that are located in the frontal cortex responsible for attention

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:53:19):
and time management and planning and all that stuff.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:53:23):
Autistic folks also often have difficulties with executive functioning.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:53:27):
And you see some estimates in studies that up to 50% of autistic individuals also

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:53:33):
will have ADHD.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:53:35):
So at that point,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:53:37):
are they overlapping so much that they do represent a shared kind of population

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:53:45):
rather than necessarily being distinct?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:53:49):
So yeah, it's a really important question around the utility of labels.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:53:58):
Awesome.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:54:00):
Because we've been recording for about an hour now,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:54:03):
I think we'll sort of get into wrapping up with the sort of final question.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:54:08):
So I'll first ask Neil if he had any burning questions for Calum.

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:54:12):
Yeah, I suppose what's the future of autism research?

Smooth Brain Host 2 (00:54:16):
What are the kind of the key things that you would absolutely love to know?

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:54:22):
Great question.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:54:24):
In general, I think more focus needs to be on...

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:54:31):
the time period of development between childhood and adulthood, I think.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:54:39):
Often autism is regarded as a childhood condition because often it's identified in childhood.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:54:47):
And then you have lots of studies working with autistic adults,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:54:51):
university students predominantly,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:54:53):
because they're accessible for scientists like myself.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:54:56):
But there's that middle ground that's sort of secondary school, college,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:55:02):
that is kind of neglected a little bit.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:55:06):
And also older adults who are autistic, you almost never see research with older adults.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:55:12):
And that, yeah, so there's more balanced focus across the lifespan, I would say is important.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:55:22):
Adults with...

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:55:25):
uh kind of you know language long lifelong language difficulties and intellectual

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:55:30):
difficulties they're a very underserved population as well i would say um and also

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:55:36):
more continuing research around um females who are autistic because as i said

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:55:43):
earlier in the conversation autism is very much regarded as a male condition we

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:55:47):
know tons about it in boys we know how we're pretty effective at detecting it in

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:55:51):
boys

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:55:52):
but we know comparatively little about it in females and we're pretty rubbish in

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:55:56):
detecting it in females.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:55:57):
So a lot more work needs to be done there to,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:56:00):
uh,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:56:00):
yeah,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:56:00):
to better us better serve autistic females.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:56:04):
Um, I guess this, the question which I had, I know you're not a clinician.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:56:11):
I know you're a researcher in the space,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:56:13):
but I guess you had also mentioned that,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:56:16):
uh,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:56:17):
sometimes diagnosis really depends on your postcode,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:56:19):
like the access you have to,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:56:22):
um to help or uh to i guess in the uk the nhs but i guess the same problems would

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:56:29):
be there around the world what sort of advice or help can you sort of indicate to

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:56:36):
people because if you know it's a developmental disorder you dictate it you notice

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:56:40):
it early in life but if you're on a wait list for a year two years that does causes

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:56:44):
a that can cause a difference so do you know of anything coming up in that regard

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:56:49):
which is probably

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:56:50):
targeted or can help people, parents with kids who might be autistic.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:56:56):
We don't know, but yeah.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:57:03):
You preface this question with you're not a practitioner or a clinician,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:57:07):
which I'm not,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:57:08):
so it makes it quite difficult for me to answer this question and provide advice.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:57:14):
I mean, waiting lists, you can't do anything about, unfortunately.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:57:19):
During that time,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:57:20):
I suppose the best things to do is to try and present an environment that is as

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:57:29):
supportive and rich and stimulating as you can for the child.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:57:36):
And try and take advantage of their curiosity.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:57:40):
Try and take advantage of the things that they are interested in and use those as

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:57:45):
moments of opportunity for learning and for fostering communication.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:57:50):
We know that that's a strategy that some quite effective interventions employ.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:57:56):
So if there's any scope for

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:57:59):
employing that in the home and parenting,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:58:05):
then I suppose that would be my non-expert suggestion on the practical front.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:58:09):
I mean,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:58:10):
obviously,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:58:11):
the research that we do,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:58:11):
particularly regarding optimizing environmental conditions for helping language learning,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:58:17):
we're generating scientific knowledge.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:58:20):
And whilst we know it has utility in a practical sense, we do let

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:58:25):
the people who know their stuff employ that knowledge right so so i i do do i have

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:58:29):
done um you know like professional development uh seminars for like speech and

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:58:34):
language therapists for example i give them the knowledge i don't tell them how to

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:58:39):
use it i think that's a very important distinction and like yeah no that's awesome

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:58:47):
because also i guess a lot of people like practitioners and stuff usually don't

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:58:52):
have time

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:58:53):
to know what's happening in the latest in terms of research.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:58:57):
It's good to sort of have that sort of cross talk a little bit.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:59:01):
Awesome.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:59:04):
So then Calum from you,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:59:05):
is there any sort of final things which we didn't cover,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:59:08):
which you'd like to get across?

Smooth Brain Host 1 (00:59:09):
Cause yeah, you were just answering our questions.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:59:14):
No, I mean, I really enjoyed answering your questions, to be honest.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:59:17):
And,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:59:19):
you know,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:59:19):
I just like to reiterate my thanks for having me and giving me this opportunity to

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:59:25):
speak about autism.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:59:26):
And ultimately,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:59:28):
the reason I do what I do is to generate knowledge that might be helpful and might

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:59:33):
be useful and ultimately,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:59:35):
hopefully improve the well-being for autistic folks.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:59:41):
And I think scientists need to take every opportunity they can to do things like this,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:59:46):
really,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:59:46):
to not just sit in their offices and write papers,

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:59:50):
but to get out there in the world and share what they know in case anyone can

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:59:56):
benefit and help.

Dr. Calum Hartley (00:59:57):
I think it's a really important aspect of our job.

Dr. Calum Hartley (01:00:01):
Awesome.

Dr. Calum Hartley (01:00:02):
So, yeah, final thoughts, Neil?

Smooth Brain Host 2 (01:00:04):
Yeah,

Smooth Brain Host 2 (01:00:04):
I would just 100% reiterate what Calum said from my work of getting people like

Smooth Brain Host 2 (01:00:09):
Callum to come out and talk to the general public or just talk about their research.

Smooth Brain Host 2 (01:00:13):
It's so valuable and so important,

Smooth Brain Host 2 (01:00:16):
not just for those of us getting the knowledge,

Smooth Brain Host 2 (01:00:18):
but also for the researchers to be able to tell it through.

Smooth Brain Host 2 (01:00:21):
So thank you, Callum.

Smooth Brain Host 2 (01:00:22):
It's been really fascinating to sit here and listen.

Smooth Brain Host 2 (01:00:24):
And thank you, Sahir, for inviting me.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (01:00:28):
Thank you so much, guys, for coming on.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (01:00:29):
Thank you, Calum.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (01:00:30):
Thanks, Neil.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (01:00:31):
Thank you, everyone, for listening.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (01:00:34):
the shameless plugs of please do like, subscribe, follow, all those things.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (01:00:40):
Really appreciate it.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (01:00:42):
And yeah,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (01:00:42):
the last question which we ask all our guests is,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (01:00:44):
Calum,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (01:00:45):
if you had any general piece of advice for our listeners,

Smooth Brain Host 1 (01:00:48):
what would it be?

Smooth Brain Host 1 (01:00:52):
It's the toughest question we ask.

Dr. Calum Hartley (01:00:55):
Can I have a minute to think about it?

Smooth Brain Host 1 (01:00:57):
Sure, sure, sure.

Dr. Calum Hartley (01:01:07):
I don't know if this is a good one.

Dr. Calum Hartley (01:01:09):
Develop good habits, I would say.

Dr. Calum Hartley (01:01:11):
I think something that served me well throughout my life is sticking to routines

Dr. Calum Hartley (01:01:18):
and holding myself accountable to those routines.

Dr. Calum Hartley (01:01:21):
So...

Dr. Calum Hartley (01:01:23):
Going back into my history,

Dr. Calum Hartley (01:01:25):
as a child,

Dr. Calum Hartley (01:01:25):
I had a history of playing competitive sports and martial arts,

Dr. Calum Hartley (01:01:29):
and I developed a real sort of sense of,

Dr. Calum Hartley (01:01:32):
yeah,

Dr. Calum Hartley (01:01:33):
sense of discipline and sort of accountability through that.

Dr. Calum Hartley (01:01:36):
And I apply that to my day job, you know, and I...

Dr. Calum Hartley (01:01:41):
Academia is a funny one.

Dr. Calum Hartley (01:01:42):
It gives you tons of flexibility in how you go about working and when you work.

Dr. Calum Hartley (01:01:47):
But I hold myself to a routine.

Dr. Calum Hartley (01:01:49):
I go to bed at sensible times.

Dr. Calum Hartley (01:01:51):
I get up at the same time every day and I get stuff done.

Dr. Calum Hartley (01:01:54):
And that works for me.

Dr. Calum Hartley (01:01:56):
That presents a nice work-life balance.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (01:01:59):
Awesome.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (01:02:00):
Now, awesome.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (01:02:01):
That was great.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (01:02:02):
That's great advice.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (01:02:04):
Again, for one last time, thank you guys so much.

Smooth Brain Host 1 (01:02:06):
And until the next episode, take care.