All else being equal, how many other people would you like to interact with at any given time? Would you rather be in a one-on-one conversation, in a small social group, or in front of a giant hall giving a lecture? I’ve discussed this with a few autistic people, and most of us agree that the group situations are the worst.[1] Not all neurotypicals seem to understand the difficulty of group interactions until it is explicitly pointed out to them,…
I’ve previously argued that the pathology paradigm is in crisis and that the neurodiversity paradigm is ready to replace the obsolete pathology paradigm. I’ve argued that we’re in a period of paradigm shift. And I stand by those words. However, there one more thing that we have to do before the paradigms can shift: we have to agree on what the pathology and neurodiversity paradigms are. Paradigms are grand theories that dictate the fundamental assumptions we use to approach some…
Just to be clear, despite the title, I’m not questioning the idea that social skills are real or useful. No, instead I’m asking why social skills are useful. What is their purpose? It’s not a pointless or stupid question, because I can think of at least a couple of good answers: They are useful for building and maintaining friendships, social connections that are valuable because of their inherent worth; or They are useful for instrumental social interactions: for use in…
There are still people who believe in the most bizarre “cures” for autism. We see stories about the continued use of chelation (which reportedly has the rather nasty side-effect of occasionally killing people) and bleach “MMS” (ditto). Some of these complementary and alternative treatment approaches seem so utterly bizarre as to be completely devoid of any vestiges of logic, reason, or science: I once had a parent earnestly tell me that giant magnets under her autistic child’s bed were essential…
I’ve previously written about the “autism epidemic” and why I think it all just reflects better diagnosis rather than an actual increase in the true incidence of autism. However, this still leaves us with an interesting question: what exactly happened to increase rates of diagnosis? The diagnosed prevalence of autism has been increasing for a long time, but one big change was the emergence of the idea of so-called “high functioning” autism in the 1980s. Before then, autism had been…
I want to deal with a possible objection to my views on educational placement (which you can find described here). I think the universal inclusionists – those who want all children to be educated in the mainstream – use rhetorical trickery to paper over the weaknesses in their arguments. They define “inclusion” as being a state in which all students are meaningfully and fully included as part of a mainstream school community. Any case where a student is not meaningfully…
The research world seems to love “biomarkers.” Not only does “biomarker” appear to be a very fashionable buzzword in certain circles, but it seems like projects that aim to find biomarkers are very attractive to agencies that fund research.[1] Among researchers, biomarkers are in the vogue. What is a “biomarker,” exactly? Well, properly speaking, it refers to some kind of biological marker – something like a physiological, functional, chemical, or molecular signal. This biological marker might tell us that a…
Dealing with autistic adults and adolescents can sometimes be difficult. I know many of us can be quick to take offense, even where none was intended – which is rather curious when you think about it, because autistic children tend to start out being socially naïve. At some point, these naïve children can become nervous, reactive adults. Why is that? It seems kind of like a transformation from one extreme to the opposite extreme. Well, the problem with naïveté is…
Over the last few months, I’ve written a lot of posts sharing my thoughts on inclusion and mainstreaming. In those posts, I’ve spent a lot of time complaining about the way things are done today (especially in North America), but I’ve spent relatively little time describing the urgent changes I think we need. Probably the most complete description of my thoughts so far is found in this post, where I explain how I disagree with both of the major views…
What term should we use to describe autism? To be clear, I’m perfectly happy to just say “autism” and “autistic”. I’m all for identity-first language. However, I also recognize that some people will want to keep a technical, fancy term around – and if we’re going to have a technical term, we should at least try to make it a good one. The current convention is, of course, “Autism Spectrum Disorder.” This language of “disorder” is extremely unhelpful. Autistic people…