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Category: Broad Thoughts

An white woman with white or grey hair wearing glasses. The image is tinted red due to a transparent shelf with scientific vessels in front of the woman, who is looking confidently at the camera.
Emeritus Professor Uta Frith, in an image I got from The Australian, who got it from the BBC
Heterogeneity and Hypersensitivity in Autism: Reflection on Uta Frith’s Comments

Heterogeneity and Hypersensitivity in Autism: Reflection on Uta Frith’s Comments

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About a month ago, the eminent developmental psychologist and autism cognitive researcher Uta Frith shared a number of opinions publicly in short succession.  First, Frith senior-authored (along with other scholars, including Simon Baron-Cohen as lead author) a paper defending the idea that autistic people sometimes struggle with theory of mind.  I was somewhat disappointed the paper did not more fully engage with the relevant issues, but I don’t necessarily disagree with the conclusion. However, almost immediately afterward, an interview Frith…

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Infographic with two people, one autistic and one non-autistic. The autistic person may struggle to read between the lines, overcome others' misconceptions about autism, and manage sensory distractions. The non-autistic person may struggle to form positive first impressions, recognize and understand autism, and imagine autistic sensory difficulties, according to the infographic text.
Infographic depicting the double empathy problem. Crompton et al., 2021
The meaning of the double empathy problem

The meaning of the double empathy problem

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Traduction française (merci beaucoup, Autisme et Société!) Well, it’s been a while… I must confess that I haven’t written a single blog post in a few years – and haven’t posted any in a couple of years.  I got busy and distracted, and I guess the idea of writing blog posts turned gradually into a chore instead of what it was supposed to be – a nice way for me to share thoughts without going through the rigmarole of peer…

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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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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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An illustration of a multicoloured brain, outlined using nodes and edges, with a question mark and musing figure in the corner.
On Neurodiversity: Part III: What is the Neurodiversity Paradigm?

On Neurodiversity: Part III: What is the Neurodiversity Paradigm?

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Author’s Note: I no longer particularly like some of the ideas in the post, which I now think are a bit oversimplified. If you want an updated take on my view of neurodiversity, I wrote an article at https://doi.org/10.1159/000523723. In Part II of this series, I discussed a lot of the basic ideas that still motivate my approach to neurodiversity.  I argued that we presently lack a clear, consistent definition of neurodiversity, and I illustrated how this ambiguity hinders our…

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Disability, Discrimination, and Politics

Disability, Discrimination, and Politics

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Here’s a fundamental question: what is the political status of autism?  Are autism and other disabilities simply impairments that need to be addressed through the provisions of services and supports, or are autistic people also victims of oppressive social and political systems that cause marginalization?  Do autistic people just need charity, or do we need social justice as well? We need to address this question and answer it, for I would say that the present model used to address autism…

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Deficit Isn’t a One-Way Street

Deficit Isn’t a One-Way Street

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Sometimes, the best way to see where our conventional assumptions can go wrong is to consider concrete examples. Within the pathology paradigm, we assume that autistic people are disordered, that they have deficits in different skills and abilities, but we don’t critically examine how autistic people’s environments and the typically-developing people within these environments might contribute to autistic people’s disabilities.  We ignore the possibility that the typically-developing person might be something less than a normative ideal of perfection. Autism and…

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The Philosophical Roots of Neurodiversity

The Philosophical Roots of Neurodiversity

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I can be a bit of a theory nerd, sometimes.  I like considering how different systems of thought develop in relation to one another. One of these theoretical questions that interests me is the emergence of the neurodiversity paradigm.  This idea, developed by Judy Singer in the late 1990s, is a radical departure from most of previous human thought.  The neurodiversity paradigm portrays the diversity of individual human minds and brains as something to be valued, whereas most human societies…

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Neurodiversity and “Levels of Functioning”

Neurodiversity and “Levels of Functioning”

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Many people seem to have adopted a curious middle-ground in the neurodiversity debate: many of us will readily concede that so-called “high-functioning” autistic people should be considered within the neurodiversity paradigm, but will still argue that the pathology paradigm should be applied to so-called “low-functioning” people.  We’ll concede that “high-functioning” autistics represent a valuable form of human diversity and that they should be accepted for who they are, but we’ll keep looking for a “cure” to so-called “low-functioning” autism. I…

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