The Autistic Me

Specimen of the typeface Comic Sans. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Personally, I support everyone being able to type and read in whatever typefaces individuals prefer. If you like Comic Sans , then change the font while you type or read online content. If you like Helvetica , use that. The digital world is not print. You can change typefaces. You can change their sizes. You can change colors. There is no reason to argue over what you use to type or to read as long as I can use typefaces that I like. Now, as a design researcher? I'll tell you that type matters a lot to both the biological act of reading and the psychological act of constructing meaning. Statistically, there are "better" and "worse" type for conveying messages. There are also typefaces that are more legible and more readable. Sometimes, legibility does not help readability, either, as a type with overly distinct letters (legibility) can hinder word shapes and decoding (readability). ...

I am posting this by request, to help a doctoral student. Hello, My name is Jungja Park Cardoso and I am a Ph.D. candidate in the environmental psychology program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. I’m seeking participants for my dissertation research that investigates how autistic adults with different conceptions of autism negotiate and navigate the food environment in the US. I’m particularly interested in learning about how certain environmental settings and situations are considered problematic or supportive in relation to everyday foodways - the beliefs and practices involved in growing food, going grocery shopping, cooking and eating food. All information that is collected about participants will be kept confidential. Participants will be entered into a raffle to win one of twenty $25 e-Gift Cards. Once I have completed my study, I will share an electronic copy of my research findings with research participants. The research consists of two phase...

Research participants needed! A graduate student at UMass Amherst is interested in your experiences regarding your education, employment, hobbies, and interests. Your input is very valuable and will help the researcher gain information about daily life of adults with Autism. To participate in this confidential survey, we ask that you are over 18 and diagnosed with Autism, or Social Communication Disorder. This survey will take no more than 10 minutes and can be found at http://bit.ly/MoroneySurvey . Your response is confidential and will be used only for research purposes. Participants will not be paid for participating. For more information, please contact Katharine Moroney at kmoroney@umass.edu .

As is often the case, I write a blog on a topic I'm not currently exploring in my research… only to discover that I'm about to delve into the depths of that exact topic for an academic article or presentation. Only a few weeks ago, I confessed that I had not maintained an active awareness of research on cognitive empathy and business communications. Much business scholarship on empathy studies "normal" (statistically representative and generalizable) groups. Seldom do I stumble upon detailed discussion of autistic traits in the workplace and the challenges those present. Those discussions more frequently appear in psychology journals or publications with a narrow focus on autism. Having acknowledged my lack of awareness, being steeped in the rhetoric of economics for a potential book project, today I stumbled right back into autism while preparing for an academic presentation.  My Carnegie Mellon University colleague Anita Woolley, along withThomas W. Malo...

I am considering two possible full-time posts at the university where I teach part-time. I love where I teach and shifting to full-time would enable me to better support the local performing arts. The university supports my artistic endeavors, and that's refreshing. Accepting a post does not require scholarship if I wish to maintain "teaching track" status in the future, but an administrator told it would be "icing on the cake" and has led to teaching-track faculty being awarded research support and rank promotion (associate, full, etc.). A few colleagues have suggested I compose a research agenda statement and pursue publishing on my dissertation topic. My doctoral research topic was autistic students and online education, though I also conducted two grant-supported surveys on the general experiences of autistics in college writing courses. To revise and publish the research would be a serious undertaking, but I believe one that would serve the community and th...

One of the challenges for autistic writers is the artificial nature of "academic perspective" in college writing. Instead of the concrete "me" and "you" of other genres, academic writing uses the distant, artificial, and abstract, "one" — or nothing at all. Academic writing avoids the first- and second-person point of view vigorously. Emphasizing the personal instead of the general, leading to a "first-person" perspective when inappropriate to the genre Readers of this series of essays will recognize that abstractions pose a problem for many, if not most, students with autism spectrum disorders. Since a diagnostic criteria for ASDs is concrete thinking, writing teachers need to resist the impulse to "fix" the autistic perspective. Instead, I argue that it is academia with the problem, not the students. Writing and literature classes discuss the "constructed author" (or some variation of that phrase). The noti...

In the past, I've written that I do not want to be boxed in as "autistic autism researcher" when I am interested in other aspects of communication that have nothing at all to do with autism. No matter the topic, as long as autism is involved someone will hate the research(er). Yes, people are passionate about other topics, but the "rhetoric of theater" or "rhetoric of fiction" isn't going to lead to quite the same animosity. (However, I do admit that writing about "philosophy and fiction" leads to some pretty nasty emails.) But, the more I read about "autistics and writing" and "autistics and school" that doesn't have anything to do with my experiences or those of other autistics with academic skills, the more I must admit that we need autistic scholars to express their experiences, theories, and to conduct scholarly research. I'm not about to stop pursuing my creative writing, computer programming, or many...

I have been debating the potential for computer artificial intelligence to perform some complex tasks, such as analyzing passages of writing. One of my arguments has been that as we study the brain, we learn more about math, engineering, and programming. That's because the human brain is a type of computer. To my way of thinking, autism is an input/output processing issue. I feel overwhelmed by sensory input. If I could "lower the volume" and "decrease the brightness" of things around me, that would reduce my stress greatly — and my headaches. But we need to know a lot more about the brain before we can address how to redirect or reprogram sensory input. Now, we have an initiative to study the brain as never before: Obama to Unveil Initiative to Map the Human Brain http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/science/obama-to-unveil-initiative-to-map-the-human-brain.html President Obama on Tuesday will announce a broad new research initiative, starting with $100 m...

The conclusion of this column makes a point I've stated repeatedly: we are getting better at diagnosing “autism” — while the criteria also keep changing. Autism Prevalence Is Now At 1 In 50 Children - Forbes : You will probably see a lot of headlines about the 1 in 50. Some organizations might even try to use those numbers to scare people, to talk about an “epidemic” or a “tsunami.” But if you look at the numbers and the report itself, you’ll see that overall, the numbers of people born with autism aren’t necessarily increasing dramatically. It’s just that we’re getting better and better at counting them. The next step is getting better at accepting autistic people, seeing their potential, and ensuring the supports and resources they need to fulfill that potential.

A new study seems to support the stereotype that autistic students and scholars are drawn to the STEM disciplines.  Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Participation Among College Students with an Autism Spectrum Disorder , by Wei, Yu, Shattuck, et al, indicates I am not alone in being drawn to the STEM fields. While I love writing, and consider myself a "writer" before most other roles I might have in life, even my writing tends to embrace my "geekhood." I am a geek. When I'm not writing, I'm experimenting with programming tools, new hardware, and reading all I can on websites like Slashdot and Ars Technica . My bookcases reveal my split-personality: books on art theory sit above books on database programming. I tell myself that programming is simply a special form of writing, but few of my colleagues in English or communications would agree. The idea of a programming poet confounds people, especially in an academic world with traditional di...

I don't want to offer too many details, as they are not yet important, but I am returning to autism-related research projects. For the last few months, I have been considering some questions about autism and I outlined some research concepts. Having thought I'd leave autism research behind when I started my new faculty post — which is focused on professional writing — I don't know why I felt compelled to outline autism research ideas, but I was. Earlier this week, I was informed that I had received grant funding for an autism project related to writing. It was unexpected, to say the least, because it was a project I had only mentioned in broad outlines to faculty and administrators at my university. Still, I believe the project could have important implications for understanding autism, writing, and self-image. So, I'm back to the topic I studied as a doctoral student: autism. Because I have two research concepts outlined, my focus is now on completing those tw...

As an "activist" I will continue to speak out and educate on issues of autism and education. But, I'd rather earn my tenure for research that isn't linked to autism. I don't want to be defined by one word. Leaving "autism" behind as a professor and researcher has been a good thing. Over the last two years, I wrote that I did not want to be the "autistic researching autism" because that strikes me as playing to trends. And yes, "autism" is a trendy word in language research. I've been advised more than once that focusing on autism would be good for my career. It was suggested that I specialize in "disability studies" or whatever the politically correct term might be. No, thank you. I'm far more content working on other projects that have nothing, zero, zilch, nada, to do with autism. I'm going to settle in and research wiki usage. I'll study typography and online design. I'd love to study design tren...

The brain is amazing. It's both fragile and resilient. While researching written language and autism for my doctoral degree, I learned a small fraction of what scientists now understand regarding language cognition. The question I had, and one many others have, is why some autistics are good at written or symbolic language communication, but have either limited verbal abilities or are non-verbal? How can someone write and not speak? Why would someone prefer sign language or pictographs to speaking, especially if he or she can speak? The simplified answer: language is not one thing. Language that is seen is not the same as language that is spoken and heard. Symbolic language and auditory language differ. Braille involves yet another form of language cognition. Somehow, our brains manage to connect and decipher several different "languages" we experience. Most people can "read" postures, expressions, icons, symbols, colors, sounds, gestures, vocal tones, spo...

I've been sitting on this report for a month or two while I did a bit more research on the original sources and similar studies. As regular readers of this blog know, I believe autism is better described as "autisms" and that likely contributors include de novo genetic complications (sometimes called pre-natal genetic copy variation). In these forms of autism, genes replication introduces errors. This is not the genetic of heredity, a common misconception when the term "genetic" is used to describe some forms of autism. From CBS News: Children with autism have distinct facial features For the study - published in the Oct. 14 issue of Molecular Autism - researchers compared facial features in 64 boys with autism with faces of 41 typically developing boys, all 8-12 years old, with a 3-D camera system. After mapping out 17 points on faces, the researchers found significant differences between the two groups.  The study found children with autism had wider ey...

Experts critique statistics, conclusion of autism twin study - News & Commentary - Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) : "For example, in March, Shiva Singh's group at the University of Western Ontario analyzed the genomes of identical twins among whom only one twin has schizophrenia. Singh's team found that identical twins carry different spontaneous genetic mutations." It is difficult for many laypeople, and even some with science backgrounds, to accept that "genetic" does not mean hereditary. I've written about this several times. Genes mutate during development of the fetus. During the first six to eight stages of development, minor errors in replication can affect all future development. Changing one cell among millions isn't so bad. Changing one cell among hundreds? That leads to potentially serious spontaneous genetic replication ("copy number variant") errors.

The following is an abstract. The full article is available only for paid subscribers, sadly. Note: The "autism rate" refers only to what we define as autism during evaluations. The "rate" is subjective, due to the nature of autism screening. Still, that's autism research for you. Epidemiology of Autism Spectrum Disorders in Adults  in the Community in England Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2011;68(5):459-465. doi:10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2011.38 Traolach S. Brugha, MD(NUI), FRCPsych; Sally McManus, MSc; John Bankart, MSc, PhD; Fiona Scott, PhD, CPsychol; Susan Purdon, MSc, PhD; Jane Smith, BSc;Paul Bebbington, PhD, FRCPsych; Rachel Jenkins, MD, FRCPsych; Howard Meltzer, PhD Context   To our knowledge, there is no published information on the epidemiology of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) in adults. If the prevalence of autism is increasing, rates in older adults would be expected to be lower than rates among yo...

From the American Association of Universities: H.R. 1, the FY11 continuing resolution introduced last week in the House, […] would truly harm this nation’s capacity for innovation by slashing research spending for nearly every agency that sponsors scientific research. This is exactly the wrong approach to deficit reduction, and it is our hope that the Senate, the President, and ultimately the House will agree on deficit reduction measures that enhance, not stifle, innovation and long-term economic growth. We are concerned that the President’s proposal to eliminate the in-school interest subsidy on loans to graduate students as a means of covering some of the costs of the Pell program may discourage American students from attending graduate school at a time when the nation needs to encourage its own best talent. We look forward to working with the Administration and with Congress to mitigate any negative impact on these students. It is likely I am leaving autism research behind, as the...

There is substantial blog and Twitter traffic on this issue. Again, not much call for me to comment, as anything I write will be nuanced and not change any minds. Still, this is a good read: Autism-vaccine link debunked — too little, too late - latimes.com It's frustrating for any researcher. I've tried to explain quantitative and qualitative research statistics. I've tried to explain science seldom claims to be "certain" — but the public demands certainty, just like they see on television dramas. Vaccines are valuable, important, and statistically safer than having unvaccinated children in our communities. Nothing, nothing, nothing in life is 100% safe. Sadly, humans are bad at measuring and understanding risks.

Secrets of the MMR scare: How the vaccine crisis was meant to make money I'm merely suggesting readers follow the link over to LB/RB for the comments and links. Yes, follow the money. Turns out to be great advice when you wonder why anyone would fabricate data and analyses.

I don't think I need to write much. Read the full story at USA Today and I'm sure dozens of other news organizations will have more in-depth coverage. From USA Today: Report linking vaccine to autism 'an elaborate fraud' By Liz Szabo, USA TODAY January 5, 2011 An infamous 1998 study that ignited a worldwide scare over vaccines and autism — and led millions of parents to delay or decline potentiatly lifesaving shots for their children — was "an elaborate fraud," according to a scathing three-part investigation in the British medical journal BMJ. Bad science would be enough, but fraud? The article continues: Now, the BMJ reports that Wakefield, who was paid more than $675,000 by a lawyer hoping to sue vaccine makers, was not just unethical — he falsified data in the study, which suggested that children developed autism after getting a shot against measles, mumps and rubella. In fact, the children's medical records show that some clearly had symptom...