Everyone’s still talking about NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman. Here are some more reviews:
- by Chavisory
- by Erin Human (TW Nazis)
A woman named Anna Stubblefield was convicted of raping a nonspeaking disabled man in the UK. Although the man in question is capable of communicating using AAC, his testimony was not used in the trial. If you can deal with the triggers that are inherent in this topic, there is some worthwhile analysis of the case
- by Emily Brooks
- by Ibby Grace
- Somewhat relatedly, Monica Heisey on sex education for intellectually disabled students (TW mentions of sex abuse)
Meanwhile, science!
- Emily Morson summarizes research into autistic people’s language skills
- A UK study shows that antipsychotics are inappropriately used to reduce aggressive behaviours in intellectually disabled patients
- John Elder Robison on what he’d like to see from autism research
- Here is some (non-paywalled) actual research that came up during last week’s #autchat about research! Annika Hellendoorn argues that instead of Theory of Mind, we should be thinking of social interaction in terms of affordances.
- Also, anthropologist Elizabeth Fein on the two-way relationship between autistic symptoms and social isolation
- Emily Morson on why the amount of attention babies pay to faces is not a good proxy measurement for their social skills
The U.S. Department of Education criticized overreliance on ABA in developing education plans for autistic students
Donald Trump attributed autism to the use of vaccines in a US presidential primary debate.
- Response by ASAN
- Matt Petronzio lists 9 autism facts that presidential candidates should know
There was some drama at Autcom, a conference for autistic people, because of Autcom’s failure to meet or take seriously people’s access needs, including needs that they’d promised to take seriously in previous years. If you want to read about the drama, here are some good posts:
- by Kassianne Sibley
- by Mitchell from Musings of a Wandering Autistic
- by Beth Ryan
- by the New York City chapter of ASAN
Misc:
- ASAN on disability rights and labour rights
- Jessica Banks on Star Wars
- Dani Alexis Ryskamp on surviving to get to academia (TW abuse)
- Kassianne Sibley on dance classes