29/03/2016
CAN YOU BRIEFLY TELL ME WHAT AUTISM IS PLEASE?
AUTISM IS: A Different Way of Perceiving, Thinking, Being
Autism is a legitimate natural human neurological variation that occurs in over two percent of the population, hitherto classified as a pervasive developmental condition by psychiatrists, but now more understood as a human social difference.
It is remarkably genetic in nature, with the balance, the "on" button, most likely to be genomic or environmental in origin.
There is no "cure" and there need not ever be from the perspective of all international autistic advocates. The world has been mistaken all along.
Although its discovery is rapidly becoming more common of late, it is not a new condition and exists in all parts of the world, in both children and adults of all ages and every grouping.
The terms “autistic” and “autism spectrum” are often used to refer inclusively to people who have an official diagnosis on the autism spectrum or those who either self-identify or are peer-recognised as being a part of the Autistic community.
Autistics with what has been called in the past 'Asperger's Syndrome' are by far the great bulk of this community. Males currently outnumber females by 3 or 4 to 1, probably because of bias in tests and tools and the extra social-knowledge presentation typical in many females that camouflages.
While all Autistics are as unique as any other human beings, and often surprisingly different from each other, ranging from those unable to fully care for themselves to those capable of leading whole nations, they share some common characteristics typical of all autism.
1. Different sensory experiences, especially in the way their brain senses and processes sensory inputs. For example, heightened sensitivity to light, challenges in interpreting internal physical sensations, hearing loud sounds as soft and soft sounds as loud, or even the less common experiences like synesthesia or pattern spotting.
2. Non-standard ways of learning and approaching problem solving. For example, learning “advanced” tasks (e.g. multiplication) before “simple” tasks (e.g. addition), challenges with “executive functions" as to comprehension or speed, or being simultaneously gifted at tasks requiring fluid intelligence and less able with tasks requiring social or verbal skills.
3. Deeply focused thinking and passionate interest in specific subjects. “Narrow but deep,” these “special interests” could be anything from mathematics to ballet, from trains to physics, from politics to bits of shiny foil.
4. Atypical, sometimes repetitive, movement. This includes “stereotyped” and “self-stimulatory” or "self-calming" behaviours such as rocking or flapping, and also challenges with motor skills and motor planning associated through terms like apraxia or dyspraxia.
5. Need for consistency, routine, and order in some contexts. For example, holidays may be experienced more with anxiety than pleasure, as they mean time off from school and the disruption of the usual order of things. People on the autistic spectrum may take great pleasure in organizing and arranging items. What is not seen is the variation of what they are thinking or feeling each time they engage in such seemingly repetitive tasks.
6. Challenges in understanding and expressing language as used in societally-dominant forms of communication, both verbal and non-verbal. This may manifest similarly to semantic-pragmatic language disorder. It is often because a young child does not seem to be developing expected language on-cue or to a listed 'milestone date' that a parent first seeks to have a child evaluated. As adults, people with an autism spectrum diagnosis often continue to struggle to use language to explain their emotions and internal state, and to articulate concepts (which is not in any way to say they do not fully experience and understand these internally). With use of a computer or other suitable facility, this can often be quite amazingly overcome.
7. Challenges in understanding and expressing more numerous or dominant types of social interaction. For example, preferring parallel interactions, having delayed responses to common social stimulus, or not behaving in a dominantly-accepted manner for many given social contexts (for example, not saying “hi” immediately after another person says “hi”, or *only* saying "hi" - by way of a co-occurring condition called 'echolalia'). Autistics often have a more extensive approach to reciprocity, reciprocating over time rather than immediately.
Autism is either discovered by the individual (to be preferred) or diagnosed based on elimination of alternative diagnoses, history-taking, tests and observation by a diagnostician or multi-disciplinary team of diagnosticians (e.g. neuropsychologist, psychologist, psychiatrist, paediatrician, specialist GP, etc.).
Autism can be accompanied by one or many more of a widening list of co-occurring conditions/features that range from no or incomplete corpus callosum (right/left brain communication corridor), prosapagnosia, incomprehension towards language, non-speaking, irritability, hyper-empathy, to over 100 more recognised or studied features that present little or no challenge - sometimes the contrary.
Autistics refer to those who are not autistic usually as "NT's" or "neurotypicals" or - preferably - "allistics". Autistics situate themselves and their cause in the wider "Neurodiversity Movement" that includes folk with dyslexia, dycalculia, dyssemia, dyspraxia, Tourette Syndrome, William Syndrome, Prader-Willi Syndrome, ADHD, etc. As alternative living, not defective living.
Autism is, thankfully, here to stay if we all care enough to cease with progress towards extermination through eugenics. Acceptance and Love is indeed the way to go, as it is always. Accommodations from those who can most accommodate are asked for. Care in all you say and do.
Few autistics are fully aware that the best part of being autistic is all of that which they do not know of because they innocently presume all others alive experience the world the same way they do, when in fact they clearly (to others) do not. It takes years for many autistics to reach this truth sadly. Can you help please?
Autism is a profoundly different way of experiencing the world, a profoundly different way of being, and no matter how different... we remain equal to all.
(c) ASNZ 2012
~ ʎllɐǝɹƃ uɥoɾ
