Comments on: A cultural understanding of autism

By: Howard

Howard — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 00:40:35 +0000

To be just a little skeptical; food comes to mind as an example of how some basic commonality underlies a behavior or psychological attribute however much variation there may be. There may be a cultural component but at the core autism is a clinical reality.
It’s very tempting to become enthusiastic over little discrepancies.
If something like language has a biological core, whatever the variation in culture- so too autism.
The burden is upon you to build a plausible model capturing both culture and biology that goes beyond suggestive hints

By: Lisa Jo Rudy

Lisa Jo Rudy — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 12:56:28 +0000

Terrific article! I particularly appreciate your willingness to parse out different levels of autism. I agree that there is clearly a “real” disorder (or probably several “real” disorders) within what is now called the autism spectrum, but that there are also many people with the autism label in the North and West who would never be labeled in other parts of the world. Not only is the issue cultural in that eye contact, etc., is a matter of social norms, but it is also cultural in the sense of physical settings. The person who lives in a agricultural society which places great value on strength and physical ability is not judged for his ability to take tests, sit still, manage loud concerts, and so forth. In fact, those skills don’t even come up because they’re irrelevant!

By: Zemanski

Zemanski — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 12:20:44 +0000

Cultural norms for eye contact have been recognised as variable in education at least since the 80s when I did my teacher training – I would never expect eye contact from an Asian child when telling them off, for example, as I would be asking them to do something disrespectful.
It is recognised diagnostically by many clinicians that it is not lack of eye contact itself that is significant in autism, but atypical eye contact, unusual or inappropriate eye contact, and this would obviously take into account cultural norms, providing the clinician was aware of them.The criteria themselves do not state a “lack” as the significant factor, my son meets the criteria and has full diagnosis but his eye contact is over-intense.
ADOS and ADI are seriously out of date and need revising at the very least – they are also biased against the diagnosis of females because they focus on the overt male behaviours rather than the more subtle presentations. Time to look again at the way we test for ASCs.