Neurodiversity has remained a controversial concept over the last decade. In its broadest sense the concept of neurodiversity regards atypical neurological development as a normal human difference. The neurodiversity claim contains at least two different aspects. The first aspect is that autism, among other neurological conditions, is first and foremost a natural variation. The other aspect is about conferring rights and in particular value to the neurodiversity condition, demanding recognition and acceptance. Autism can be seen as a natural variation on (...) par with for example homosexuality. The broad version of the neurodiversity claim, covering low-functioning as well as high-functioning autism, is problematic. Only a narrow conception of neurodiversity, referring exclusively to high-functioning autists, is reasonable. We will discuss the effects of DSM categorization and the medical model for high functioning autists. After a discussion of autism as a culture we will analyze various possible strategies for the neurodiversity movement to claim extra resources for autists as members of an underprivileged culture without being labelled disabled or as having a disorder. We will discuss their vulnerable status as a group and what obligation that confers on the majority of neurotypicals. (shrink)

This paper problematizes contemporary cultural understandings of autism. We make use of the developmental psychology concepts of ‘Theory of Mind’ and ‘mindblindness’ to uncover the meaning of autism as expressed in these concepts. Our concern is that autism is depicted as a puzzle and that this depiction governs not only the way Western culture treats autism but also the way in which it governs everyday interactions with autistic people. Moreover, we show how the concepts of Theory of Mind and mindblindness (...) require autism to be a puzzle in the first place. Rather than treat autism as a puzzle that must be solved, we treat autism as a teacher and thus as having something valuable to contribute toward an understanding of the inherent partiality and uncertainty of human communication and collective life. (shrink)

Individuals with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are generally thought to lack empathy. However, according to recent empirical and self-advocacy studies, individuals with ASD identify with others with ASD. Based on mutual understanding, individuals with ASD respond empathically to others with these disorders. Results have shown that typically developing (TD) adults identify with typically developing fictional characters, and that such identification plays a critical role in social cognition. TD individuals retrieve episodes involving TD individuals faster than they retrieve episodes involving (...) ASD individuals. Individuals with ASD also show a “similarity effect” whereby they retrieve stories involving ASD individuals more effectively when the stories have consistent outcomes than when they have inconsistent outcomes. In this context, I hypothesized that similarities between a perceiver and a target facilitate cognitive processing. This hypothesis was named the “similarity hypothesis”. Perceivers empathize with targets similar to themselves, which facilitates subsequent cognitive processing. Behavioral and neuroimaging studies are reviewed based on the similarity hypothesis. (shrink)

We assert that one of the examples used by Keller & Miller (K&M), namely, autism, is indeed common, and heritable, but we question whether it is harmful. We provide a brief review of cognitive science literature in which autistics perform superiorly to non-autistics in perceptual, reasoning, and comprehension tasks; however, these superiorities are often occluded and are instead described as dysfunctions. (Published Online November 9 2006).

A currently popular view traces autistic cognitive abnormalities to a defective capacity for theorizing about other minds. Two prominent researchers, Uta Frith and Francesca Happé, extend this account by tracing further autistic abnormalities to impaired self-consciousness. This paper argues that Frith and Happé's account requires a treatment of autistic self-report that is problematic on both methodological and philosophical grounds. However, the philosophical problems point to an alternative account of self-awareness and self-report in normal individuals; and this account gives us a (...) methodologically more attractive approach to explaining autistic abnormalities. (shrink)