In recent years there has been an exponential rise in the amount of autism research undertaken, yet much of the narrative has been at odds with voices from the autistic community following the ‘neurodiversity paradigm’ which could loosely be described as applying a social (or...
autism
I agree with Professor Rita Jordan (August 2019) that the double empathy problem leads to biases in interpreting behaviour. Carers may have feelings of inadequacy from...
You don’t have to look far to find derogatory descriptions of the communication of autistic people. Terms such as ‘disorder’, ‘impairment’, ‘deficit’ and ‘dysfunction’ abound in the research literature which, when you drill down into it, offers multitudes of negative...
New technology, including virtual reality, will be at the heart of a new lab to explore developmental disorders in Toddlers. The Wohl Wolfson ToddlerLab, based at Birkbeck, University of London, will see children from 18 months to four years have their brain activity...
Changing the Face of Autism Research Together is an arts collaboration between Dr Kinga Bercsenyi, a molecular biologist at Kings’ College London; artist Mario Ruiz Sorube; and podcaster and digital artist, Jon Adams. They teamed up with 21 autism researchers, clinicians,...
Autism is still widely seen as mysterious – so much so that the most widely recognised symbol of it (unpopular in the autistic community) is a puzzle piece. Various psychological theories of autism haven’t helped all that much, largely because all of the most...
I was diagnosed with autism aged 27, and all of a sudden my life made a lot more sense.
But why did I go under the radar for so long? And are there many more women out there who don’t know that they are autistic? What distinguishes girls and women...
As an autistic academic and parent to an autistic son, it is usually with some trepidation that I approach media representations of autistic people. This program was no exception, having followed on from a survey entitled 'How autistic are you?'. The program was, however,...
When I graduated, oppositional defiance disorder had yet to be ‘discovered’. Borderline personality disorder, autism/Asperger’s syndrome, and ADHD were still obscure footnotes. Today, mental disorders dominate explanations for ‘problem’ behaviour. Explanations from mainstream...
While rates of autism are seemingly disproportionately high among British Somali people, a new study has revealed that more than half of families do not fully understand the condition, and many face huge barriers to receiving treatment. The report by charity Autism...