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Category: All Ages

A hand, surrounded by blurry scenery, holding a lens through which an upside-down and sharper image of the area ahead is visible.
Revisiting monotropism

Revisiting monotropism

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The monotropism account of autism – which was introduced by Dinah Murray, Mike Lesser, and Wenn Lawson in 2005 – is, within the autistic adult community, probably the dominant theoretical approach towards understanding what autism is.  Many autistic people – myself included – find monotropism to be quite a bit more consistent with our personal experiences than other theories of autism.  I suspect this might have something to do with the fact that the monotropism account was developed by autistic…

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Two hands meeting, with one above and the other below.
Supports, Burdensomeness, and Dependence

Supports, Burdensomeness, and Dependence

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Research suggests that volunteering and helping others can be beneficial for the mental health of the helper.  This effect is believed to stand above and beyond any tendency for those with better mental health to be more likely to volunteer for things in the first place. Conversely, dependence on others and being a recipient of help can be bad for mental health.  Indeed, a major component of the dominant interpersonal theory of suicide suggests that those who perceive themselves as…

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Word cloud showing terms such as autism, spectrum, children, genetics, parents, intervention, and functioning
Advocates, Researchers, and Reconciliation

Advocates, Researchers, and Reconciliation

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I’m not writing this post because I particularly want to apportion blame to either researchers or neurodiversity advocates, or to fight over old grievances, as an end in itself.  Mostly, I hope we can move forwards into a future where researchers and autistic advocates see one another as collaborators, as allies who are both fundamentally interested in the same goals – in particular, enhancing quality of life for autistic people across all the whole breadth of the multidimensionally diverse autism…

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3D scatterplot depicting cognitive ability, anxiety, and discomfort to loudness scores of autistic and non-autistic individuals
The autism constellation

The autism constellation

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For a long time, we’ve used the metaphor of a spectrum to describe autism.  This is a metaphor that has worked fairly well for us in many ways.  It alerted us to the fact that instead of being a discrete category, there’s a lot of heterogeneity and variability within autism. Indeed, I would argue that autism lacks biological reality – it’s a social construct, a category that we made up, and its boundaries have shifted over space and time.  I’m…

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A wooden puppet, controlled by strings, resting on a surface.
Self-Determination, Control, and Mental Health

Self-Determination, Control, and Mental Health

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I seem to have a bit of a self-determination theme running through this blog now.  I’ve written about self-determination a fair bit, and most particularly in the context of childhood, because I feel like children in general have relatively little freedom to exercise control over their lives and those with disabilities even less. Today, I thought I might take our discussion of the importance of self-determination in another direction – mental health (which I suppose is another thing I do…

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A still image from a controversial advertisement produced by Apple in 2016 that depicts the RPM method. The RPM client, Dillon Barmache, maintains a website at https://typing4change.com/.
More Thoughts on RPM and FC

More Thoughts on RPM and FC

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I’ve decided to write this in order to essentially revisit a topic that I last addressed in a post a couple of years ago.  This post, regarding the Rapid Prompting Method (RPM), has (based on number of views) apparently received a lot of traffic compared to other posts on this blog, no doubt because of the vital importance of protecting people’s right to communicate. Being profoundly aware of the importance of the right to communicate, as well as fully cognizant…

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Word cloud featuring terms such as evidence-based, outcomes, improve, practice, change, support, etc.
The Shortcomings of Evidence-Based Practice

The Shortcomings of Evidence-Based Practice

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I’m finding myself increasingly annoyed by the emphasis on evidence-based practice in the autism world. This is not because I don’t see the value in responsible intervention practices that are consistent with research and theory.  There are still far too many people who are taken in by alternative pseudoscience, quack treatments, and faith healing in a vain attempt to “cure” autism.  Even if we leave aside the important ethical question of whether a “cure” for autism itself is truly desirable,…

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A black-and-white photograph depicting children in a row of beds, one of which is enclosed by a mesh cage. A woman in a nurse's uniform stands facing away from the beds.
A ward in the Am Spiegelgrund clinic in Vienna. Hundreds of children were murdered there in the Nazi era, while others were subjected to severe abuse. Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance.
Autism and Asperger’s in the Nazi Era

Autism and Asperger’s in the Nazi Era

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In the last couple of years, the autism world has witnessed a very intense debate regarding the historical origins of the neurotype we study.  Traditionally, Hans Asperger – one of the first people if not the first to use the term autism in its modern diagnostic sense, and the man after whom “Asperger syndrome” was named – was thought to be an essentially benevolent figure within the murderous Nazi state, which had embarked on a policy aimed at slaughtering disabled…

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The head of a microscope is positioned above a sample.
Should autism research be like using a microscope to study cells, where the cells don't get any say in how the research goes, or should autistic people and other stakeholders be represented in the research community in a way that allows them to shape research?
Representation of Autistic People in Research

Representation of Autistic People in Research

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Autistic people aren’t yet well-represented among autism researchers. I’ve been trying to keep track of my fellow autistic autism researchers and, worldwide, I’m currently aware of about four dozen of us, or thereabouts, spread out widely across the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, although from social media groups I think there may be somewhat more. Still, many of us are students, which means that our control over our research is limited. I’m only aware of a tiny handful of research…

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Issues with Diagnostic Assessments

Issues with Diagnostic Assessments

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I think it’s fair to say that there are a lot of problems with the way that we currently do diagnostic assessments for autism and other divergent neurotypes.  This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the issues, but I thought I would make an effort to identify some of the ones that I think are most important. One important problem is that our diagnostic systems are inaccessible.  Parents are likely to notice some evidence of atypical neurodevelopment…

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