Before we even get to your excellent point about television watching being a different experience for a person with autism (a conversation I had today with a friend who also has a son with autism), we can pretty much toss the study out because:

-It includes no direct measurement of the children in question

-It does not account for the differences in population centers related to the areas upon which it focuses.

-It takes great leaps of faith in extrapolating information about one group and applying it to another.

-The authors make the beginning statistics student mistake of trying to use a correlation to imply a cause. In opinion the repeated use of the word “trigger” in reference to the role of television in their correlational analysis is simply irresponsible.

I agree with the comments above – this looks like a blatant attempt to gain professional attention based upon the general interest in autism.

I’m glad to see other voices interested in autism addressing this as well.

I talk about these points in more detail at:

http://www.fcbd.org/Behaviorally%20Speaking/Behaviorally%20Speaking.html

If anyone is interested – that article is listed on Digg as well.

Moi smells a rat. Want to do some snooping with me? I’m game. I’m really tired of people trying to take advantage of the public.