Autism

Full article coming soon. Below is a short overview that will be replaced.

How it is defined

The DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) folded autistic disorder, Asperger’s disorder and related labels into a single diagnosis, autism spectrum disorder. It is defined by two domains: differences in social communication and interaction, and restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests or activities, including sensory differences.

Double empathy

Damian Milton (2012) argued that the communication gap between autistic and non-autistic people runs both ways. It is a mutual difference in how people interpret each other, not a deficit sitting only in the autistic person.

Monotropism

Murray, Lesser and Lawson (2005) proposed that autistic attention tends to be deeply focused on a small number of interests at a time. On this account, many traits follow from how attention is allocated.

Connection to Vygotsky

Vygotsky’s writing on disability, collected in The Fundamentals of Defectology (Rieber and Carton, 1993), separates the primary condition from the secondary difficulties that come from how society responds to it. He argued that education should work with a child’s strengths and compensatory routes rather than only count what is missing. The ideas in the Vygotsky article apply directly here.