Integrating autistic perspectives into autism science: A role for autistic autobiographies.

Lay abstractAutism science faces challenges in how to think about autism and what questions to focus on, and sometimes contributes to stigma against autistic people. We examine one way that non-autistic researchers may start to combat these challenges: by reading and reflecting on autistic people's descriptions of their personal experiences (e.g. autobiographies) of what it is like to be autistic. In this article, we review some of the advantages and challenges of this approach and how it may help combat some of the challenges currently facing autism science by focusing studies on the questions autistic people find most important, counteracting stereotypes, and increasing understanding of autistic experiences

Short report: Can autie-biographies influence non-autistic readers’ views of autism and autistic people?

Autistic testimony can be used to both broaden and constrain current theorizing about autism, and to educate lay people of the experiences of (some) autistic individuals. One way to access this testimony involves reading autistic autobiographies (autie-biographies). Dinishak and Akhtar outline several potential benefits of autie-biographies, including questioning assumptions, counteracting stereotypes, and increasing understanding of autistic experiences. As a first step in examining whether autie-biographies can produce these benefits, we coded book reviews of 52 English autie-biographies for three themes (suggestions for research/policy; changed views of autism; increased empathy/understanding) and found evidence for all three. These results suggest that reading autie-biographies may benefit non-autistic readers. Lay Abstract: One potential way to gain an understanding of autistic perspectives involves reading autistic autobiographies (autie-biographies). If autie-biographies influence readers’ views about autism and autistic people, then book reviews of autie-biographies should indicate changes in the review authors’ views. In this study we examined whether book reviews of autie-biographies: 1) contained suggestions for research and/or policy; 2) suggested changes in the review author's view of autism; and/or 3) mentioned an increased understanding of autistic experiences. We found that most reviews contained one or more of these themes, suggesting that reading autie-biographies might be an effective way to influence non-autistic people’s views about autism

Learning Words through Overhearing

Recent research indicates that toddlers can monitor others\u27 conversations, raising the possibility that they can acquire vocabulary in this way. Three studies examined 2-year-olds\u27 (N= 88) ability to learn novel words when overhearing these words used by others. Children aged 2,6 were equally good at learning novel words— both object labels and action verbs—when they were overhearers as when they were directly addressed. For younger 2-year-olds (2,1), this was true for object labels, but the results were less clear for verbs. The findings demonstrate that 2-year-olds can acquire novel words from overheard speech, and highlight the active role played by toddlers in vocabulary acquisition