Watch out for sensory issues. If the kid reacts to, I dunno, styrofoam like it's full of shards of broken glass and he can't bear to touch it, keep him away from styrofoam (there is no training this sort of thing away, although you could get a learned-helplessness oh-they're-torturing-me-again reaction if you tried too hard - and I'm given to understand that some treatment plans do aim at that, presumably because suffering in silence is less disruptive for caretakers than screaming in discomfort). Keeping away sensory aversives frees up brainpower to do other things, as well as being an important form of not-torturing-the-kid.
Treat stimmy behaviors like ordinary fidgeting. They are only weird relative to a framework that an autistic does not operate within. Specifically, they do not say anything in particular about whether he is paying attention, especially to a person who he wouldn't be likely to make eye contact with anyway.
Explain substeps of tasks that do not get understood promptly. (If "get a bowl of cereal" results in the kid staring blankly into space, try "get a bowl out of the cupboard and put it on the counter, open the cereal box and pour cereal into...
To the best of my knowledge (and I've looked) there is not a single scientific long-term randomized study showing the effectiveness of any type of treatment for autism. This means that when deciding on the best way to help the kid you are going to have to rely on the judgment and intuition of family, friends and special needs specialists. Besides the normal biases the huge problem with doing this is that as an autistic child gets older you would expect him, in an absolute sense, to make improvements in many metrics (just as typical kids do) even if whatever special stuff was being done for him had absolutely no impact on his condition. Another problem is that, based on my observations at least, the women who devote their careers to the needs of "special children" tend to be of the very happy/uplifting/optimistic types which undoubtedly causes them to have a more positive assessment of treatment than should be justified and this bias outlook negatively impacts the research that makes use of the subjective judgments of autistic professionals.
Rather than spending time reading about autism you can probably better help this child by playing with him and doing stuff for his parents so they have more time to play with him, although ignore this advice if you enjoy reading about autism and so your doing so isn't a cost.
To whatever degree you find firsthand reports from autistics useful (and we are able to introspect and such, just in case your reading had led you to believe otherwise - there are some ridiculous misconceptions out there), those are a thing you can look for.
Wrongplanet.net is large, but has had some unpleasant evaporative cooling going on for several years - it may still be a useful place to ask questions. Similarly, reddit has a subreddit for autistics, but the demographic there is affected by the overall tone of the site.
Private blogs are a better bet for thoughtful information - Urocyon has a list of neurodiversity and disability blogs in her sidebar that seems like a decent starting point for that. Also, tumblr has a fairly good autistic community - we tend to post in the actuallyautistic tag, which you shouldn't post in as you're not actually autistic; you can post questions to the autism or autistic tags, and there's a very good chance we'll see them and respond. (Do your research first, though; the standard reaction to uninformed mistakes is derision here just as much as it would be anywhere else. Also, person-first language tends to go over poorly; it's a point of etiquette...
You might find this useful, it isn't a source of papers, it is first-hand accounts by autistics and what life and other people were like to them. This one, Don't Mourn For Us, is probably the best general description. A quote from it:
...You try to relate to your autistic child, and the child doesn't respond. He doesn't see you; you can't reach her; there's no getting through. That's the hardest thing to deal with, isn't it? The only thing is, it isn't true.
Look at it again: You try to relate as parent to child, using your own understanding of normal children, your own feelings about parenthood, your own experiences and intuitions about relationships. And the child doesn't respond in any way you can recognize as being part of that system.
That does not mean the child is incapable of relating at all. It only means you're assuming a shared system, a shared understanding of signals and meanings, that the child in fact does not share. It's as if you tried to have an intimate conversation with someone who has no comprehension of your language. Of course the person won't understand what you're talking about, won't respond in the way you expect, and may well find the whole interaction conf
If you're looking for reputable textbooks and introductory reading, I would suggest going to one of the many open courseware sites at major universities (such as MIT, Berkeley or Yale). Look at the courses available for the subject you're interested in (psychology, in your case), find one that matches your interests, and check out the syllabus for that course. It should direct you towards good learning material for that subject.
Here, for instance, is a list of readings from the MIT intro psych class. Here's an MIT class specifically on autism.
UPDATED: It has been pointed out that Autism Speaks still funds research looking for the supposed link to vaccines! People have resigned over this. Do not give your money to this organization.
Some books on autism:
There is also the 100 Day Kit from Autism Speaks.
...The Autism Speaks 100 Day Kit and the Asperger Syndrome and High Functioning Autism Tool Kit were created specifically for newly diagnosed families to make the best possible use of the 100 da
To answer your general method query, this essay by Karl Popper deals with the issue of distinguishing science v pseudoscience. However, from my reading of, you need to know a bit about the topic, or at least observe it in action, to make a judgement.
autism/language troubles in particular, are fields in which there is a lot of pseudo-science... There are a lot of mysticism and sect-like gurus related to autism, too.
What gives you this impression? I'm not saying you're wrong - just that it's something I haven't picked up on myself.
Regarding Freud, I get ...
Observe advocates. An idea only with stupid advocates probably is stupid itself. If you notice someone smart applauding it, look closer. In not popular ideas with few adherents it's probably best to examine the inventor. Don't look to supposed experts as you have no way of evaluating their knowledge.
Thanks for all the answers and support; I wasn't looking as much for actual answers to my situation than to general method on how to dive into a new field, but I do appreciate them. Some of the advices were things I already was doing, but I'm glad to have confirmation I was on the right tracks. Other advices were new and interesting, I'll see how to try them.
I don't want to give too much details on a public site (it's not like my "kilobug" pseudonym is very stealthy, to start), so some advice don't apply to that specific case, but thanks anyway. ...
I'm very sorry to hear about your friend's son. For whatever it's worth, I think it's awesome you're taking the time to educate yourself in order to better help the child.
Do you have a name for his particular form of autism? You mention it is atypical, and the specific symptoms may be important.
Once you have the particular name, Google Scholar and the Journal of PLoS Medicine may be good places to begin your search. Do database searches for a review article on the particular form of autism.
Review articles are the best way to come up to speed on any given s...
To try to answer the title's question, rather than directly answer the post's problem:
For the general problem of discerning pseudo-science from science, there's Massimo Pigliucci's Nonsense on Stilts. What I've read (and heard) by him seems like pretty sound stuff, but I haven't read the book itself. Does anyone have strong opinions about this book?
When bridging an inferential distance, see where you are now, and then see where the experts are. That should help uncover the ignorance of your ignorance and make it possible for you to move towards the experts in knowledge-space. If you don't know where the experts are in knowledge-space, then you can easily stumble along in the dark until you end up at bullshit.
The next course of action is to actually move towards the experts in knowledge-space. Textbooks, expert blogs, wikipedia, classes, and so on are all viable methods for that.
But besides understan...
I'm very sceptical of Freud and psychoanalysis
There is an ancient and noble tradition of burning a straw-Freud, which started during the Freudian analysis vs Jungian analysis and analysis vs behaviorism conflicts decades ago, and it is still used today to signal your allegiance to a specific tribe, usually either skeptical or religious, depending on context. On LW this tradition is honored during the winter solstice, too.
I would recommend against classical Freudian psychoanalysis in this case simply because it was developed for dealing with stuff like t...
First, a short personal note to make you understand why this is important to me. To make a long story short, the son of a friend has some atypical form of autism and language troubles. And that kid matters a lot to me, so I want to become stronger in helping him, to be able to better interact with him and help him overcome his troubles.
But I don't know much about psychology. I'm a computer scientist, with a general background of maths and physics. I'm kind of a nerd, social skills aren't my strength. I did read some of the basic books advised on Less Wrong, like Cialdini, Wright or Wiseman, but those just give me a very small background on which to build.
And psychology in general, autism/language troubles in particular, are fields in which there is a lot of pseudo-science. I'm very sceptical of Freud and psychoanalysis, for example, which I consider (but maybe I am wrong?) to be more like alchemy than like chemistry. There are a lot of mysticism and sect-like gurus related to autism, too.
So I'm bit unsure on how from my position of having a general scientific and rationality background I can dive into a completely unrelated field. Research papers are probably above my current level in psychology, so I think books (textbooks or popular science) are the way to go. But how to find which books on the hundreds that were written on the topic I should buy and read? Books that are evidence-based science, not pseudo-science, I mean. What is a general method to select which books to start in a field you don't really know? I would welcome any advise from the community.
Disclaimer: this is a personal "call for help", but since I think the answers/advices may matter outside my own personal case, I hope you don't mind.