Tag: autism

I updated “Neurodiversity in the Classroom” with a selection from “Inclusive Education for Autistic Children: Helping Children and Young People to Learn and Flourish in the Classroom”.

understanding the perspectives and experiences of autistic children and adults in particular was essential. Time and again I found that issues aired say, by teachers, would be completely reframed when the autistic adults discussed the same points.

Source: Inclusive Education for Autistic Children: Helping Children and Young People to Learn and Flourish in the Classroom

I also added headings to break up the length and removed some dead links and embeds.

Time and again I found that issues aired say, by teachers, would be completely reframed when the autistic adults discussed the same points.

Source: Inclusive Education for Autistic Children: Helping Children and Young People to Learn and Flourish in the Classroom

Via:

But despite these signs of increased understanding, I’m not convinced that in our schools there is a sufficiently nuanced appreciation of this multi-faceted phenomenon, which potentially influences a whole range of physical and perceptual processes (Bogdashina 2016). Indeed, the school environment can present autistic children with a multi-sensory onslaught in terms of sounds, smells, textures and visual impacts that constitutes both a distraction and a source of discomfort (Ashburner, Ziviani and Rodger 2008; Caldwell 2008). There was also clear evidence from my own study that sensory issues, and noise in particular, can be highly exclusionary factors for autistic children in schools.

Source: Inclusive Education for Autistic Children: Helping Children and Young People to Learn and Flourish in the Classroom

Believe the autistic person when he tells you how he is experiencing sensory input. However improbable, however vastly different from anything you might perceive this may be, it is absolutely clear that many autistic people process senses very different from the PNT.

The privilege of being oneself is a gift many take for granted, but for the autistic person, being allowed to be oneself is the greatest and rarest gift of all.

Source: Autism and Asperger Syndrome in Childhood: For parents and carers of the newly diagnosed

In a nutshell, monotropism is the tendency for our interests to pull us in more strongly than most people. It rests on a model of the mind as an ‘interest system’: we are all interested in many things, and our interests help direct our attention. Different interests are salient at different times. In a monotropic mind, fewer interests tend to be aroused at any time, and they attract more of our processing resources, making it harder to deal with things outside of our current attention tunnel.

Source: Me and Monotropism: A unified theory of autism | The Psychologist

Monotropism is promising as a unifying theory for both autism and ADHD. This list of 6 common features of autistic thinking applies also to ADHD. Autism and ADHD are interest-based operating systems.

Why don’t we know what PTSD looks like in autistic children? Why don’t we have a clear idea how many are experiencing it? I sense that this is because of the deeply problematic core belief in society that autistic distress is a ‘problem behaviour’ that is to be trained out of us. Looking at that list, anger, depression, aggression, irritability, panic, hypervigilance…. I’m mindful of how many behavioural-intervention checklists I see where those items are listed as ‘autism symptoms’ and the individual is relentlessly trained and rewarded for making their internal terror invisible to outsiders.

Source: Ann’s Autism Blog: Autistic children – Are we helping them after trauma? PTSD. cPTSD.

I am repeatedly struck with the realisation that carers are unnecessarily complicating childhood and family life – while believing they have no choice. They would probably say that it isn’t their fault, autism did it. Or that they’re just trying to help their child to succeed. Or that noone else can understand (“Walk in my shoes!”). After many years of hearing this same bullshit, I realise it simply isn’t true. Autism didn’t make your kid’s childhood disappear – them being put into hours of therapy every week did that. Autism didn’t make your child feel like someone was always watching them – the constant attempts to correct their natural ways of being did that. Autism didn’t make your child stressed – ableism did. You did.

The movement that I want to see, is one toward more simplicity for our disabled children. Autism isn’t destroying your children – you are. And you can’t stop doing it if you won’t evaluate your role in it.

Source: Suburban Autistics: Simple childhoods.

Selections on Monotropism from Autism: A New Introduction to Psychological Theory and Current Debate

Another theoretical account which might fall under the broad heading of integration and complexity is the interest-based theory, monotropism (Murray et al., 2005). This theory, developed by autistic academics, posits that the defining feature of autism is atypical allocation of attention. The difference between autistic and non-autistic people is characterised as follows: “It is the difference between having few interests highly aroused, the monotropic tendency, and having many interests less highly aroused, the polytropic tendency” (ibid., p. 140). Consequently, this model places causal primacy on the intense focus apparent in the diagnostic domain of RRBIs, with other diagnostic features following from this underlying difference. To the extent that social interaction requires diffuse and distributed attention, autistic people are not well suited to that activity. Monotropic theory, which awaits empirical testing, provides a vivid description of the autistic experience of novelty and change, giving a valuable insight into the autistic experience of a crisis, or “meltdown”:

To a person in an attention tunnel every unanticipated change is abrupt and is truly, if briefly, catastrophic: a complete disconnection from a previous safe state, a plunge into a meaningless blizzard of sensations, a frightening experience which may occur many times in a single day. (Ibid., p. 147)

Monotropic attention would lead to the development of specialised skills but also difficultly dealing with change.

The only theory I’m aware of that seems to make a decent stab at explaining the many seemingly disparate features of autistic psychology – from inertia to communication problems to hyperfocus and spiky profiles – is monotropism. However, this theory (formulated by autistics who aren’t professional psychologists) has received relatively little attention from psychologists and awaits direct empirical verification.

Source: Happé, Francesca. Autism (p. 128, 129, 150). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

And quite commonly on Twitter, I’ve seen people call ABA “dog training for children.”

When I see that, I tend to go on Twitter rants in reply to it, because from everything I have read and seen of ABA, it is NOT “dog training” for children.

…I would never treat a dog that way.

In any case, very few dog trainers use the radical behaviourism that’s employed in ABA.

Most of the dog trainers I know mix and match behaviourism with other cognitive science research and other methods to create a more holistic approach to training their dogs. This is because dog trainers understand the limits of behaviourism on canines, because it doesn’t address the whole dog.

One would hope that someone considering using radical behaviourism on a human being would also recognize its limits.

So if it isn’t sufficient to properly train a dog, is it sufficient in educating a child?

A good dog trainer doesn’t extinguish behaviours which improve the dog’s mental health and happiness. But an ABA practitioner may not think twice before doing this to a human child.

Dog trainers understand that dogs need to chew and bark and dig, but ABA therapists don’t understand that autistic children need to repeat words and sentences, flap their hands, and sit quietly rocking in a corner when things get too much.

Source: Is ABA Really “Dog Training for Children”?  A Professional Dog Trainer Weighs In. | The Aspergian | A Neurodivergent Collective

Via: Is ABA Really “Dog Training for Children”?  A… – neurowonderful