Revisiting Autism and Asperger's Syndrome: Building Family and School Communities That Value Diversity
Year: 1997
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This study explores the question, "How might we work together t o build communities that value diversity, especially the cognitive difference pathologized as high-functioning autism?"Based on the testimony of autistic writers, the case is made that many autistic behaviours are not unintelligent or illogical but, rather, highly adaptive in response to environmental hypersensitivity.Many caregivers fail to realize this and high-functioning autistic spectrum children are subjected t o "normalizing interventions" that confuse and isolate them.Through hermeneutic inquiry, the study explores the lived experience of parenting a child with Asperger's Syndrome, and the positive change in communication that occurred when the child's fixation became an organizing axis for conversations.It focusses particularly on the potential of reading response in creating locations that invite collective reinterpretation of complex relations.
Author: Ruth Falk Wiebe
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W141515915