"we're all on the spectrum" - what do you think?

[jimjamshaslefttheyurt]

I've never agreed with the above statement.

For someone like DS1 his way of thinking (without language), his way of processing (he probably cannot process speech to any great extent, he sees things differently- without depth and using a lot of peripheral vision), the way he remembers (with a limited sense of time, and by association) is so wildly different from ours that it truly is a different planet.

I also think that if you think we've all got a bit of autism, then there's an idea that you can push someone from the spectrum into 'normal'. That 'normal' is a obtainable and wished for goal. I've observed that many who are high functioning don't want to be NT, there is a developing autism culture and they want to be part of that, and have that culture respected alone, not as being a second class version of normal. They don't see themselves as almost NT, they see themselves as different.

Would be interested in others views on this. It's something I hear quite a bit and I wonder whether I'm just not seeing it from a high functioning perspective. Or am I over analysing and is it just a way of those of us who are NT showing some respect for autism in a kind of 'oh they're human too' type way And if so should it be encouraged?

A philosophical question for a Friday morning. But an interesting one I think. I have my mind open and ready to be changed.

Yes lingle. You see I think even things like theory of mind develop from interaction, but I probably have it the other way round from SBC. I think that people with autism find it difficult to interact because of sensory processing difficulties of the type bullet described- therefore it becomes that much harder to develop ToM. That's quite contentious but there are a few out there who think that.

Bullet- I suspect that my son perceives in a very similar way to you - where you seem to differ is that he cannot organise a response at all, he's literally all over the place. So he's with me and spots the tree (or in his case a letterbox or window) and it unable to do anything except go and look at it. It doesn't matter what's going on around him he is totally unable to override that need to see the object from a certain angle etc etc. And of course he doesn't have the co-ordination to talk and he doesn't have the whatever it is you need to understand sentences so everything is even more jumbled anyway. But I think his general perception is very similar- despite being at the opposite end of the spectrum.

I have that overwhelming urge to look at something and ignore all around me, it's not a conscious, "oh ,let me look at this thing", my eyes drift automatically towards it. But I would say, from a personal viewpoint, that what makes me not be severe, for want of a better word, is that I can redirect my attention away to other things if others want me to or if I need to, though I will start hyperfocusing again as soon as I do not need to interact again. I have difficulties initiating and often physically reacting to things but these are not impossible for me all the time, in fact a lot of the time I can get through them. Hence my Aspergers as it presents to me makes me "high functioning" and combined with my normally typical processing of language ensures that I will present as "typical" most of the time (just probably rather rude )

That's really interesting and I think you have hit on the key to ds1's problems. He has very little control over his attention. It is gone in an instant captured by something else. Incredibly difficult to learn anything like that. But I suspect that's related to processing and one or two senses being dominant and cutting everything else out.

I agree with Chisigirl - I instinctively feel that there are are different autisms ( perhaps with overlaps. But having read this thread - perhaps that is wrong. Perhaps there is a continuum - from nt through to severe autism. I suspect this continuum should connect with other continuums such as ADHD -(ds was initially Dx with ADHD - he has very poor attention control) or dyspraxia.

Bullet, again, so very true of me too. Yesterday whilst waiting for the meeting, I was escorted to a waiting room in which there were some wooden animals for the children strewn randomly across the desk. Those got sorted neatly into order and I then realised the plant in front of me had two leaves that were going yellow and spent the rest of my time contemplating them. Oh, and there was a map on the wall, so that got looked at. In the meeting I can tell you all about the coathook and the picture, but not a thing about what the person looked like other than that she had long blonde hair.

Really interesting research this week in New Scientist in which they say they've found the bit of the brain that's possibly to do with autism. In most people's brains, the brain spends nearly all their time and energy sorting and comparing things - sort of like dreaming - and putting in new connections between events. Not so with people with neurodiversities like autism, apparently. It's probably why we end up not being able to translate simple common sense from one event to the next.

Your theory Jimjam is clear coherent and simple. It all makes sense. Do you know what the arguments against it are? Are there publications available to the public reflecting this idea? If not, I think you and Bullet should write a pamphlet!.

Most descriptions of ASD that I've seen are an intellectual muddle - I just can't respect them. But I actually went to bed last night feeling excited about this!

Now, instead of groaning if DS2 wants to turn on the light switch again, I can instead watch with interest the way that he processes and focusses - eg the way he can spot a number at 50 paces! Still don't think he's "got" ASD but as others have said, there's maybe some relation to SLI/speech delay.

This is so interesting.

I can agree and disagree with 'we're all on the spectrum' now. Perhaps it depends on how you interpret it.

Bullet and amber - brilliant posts. I can identify with pretty much all of what you're saying. Does this mean I have HFA? I'm inclined to think not, but I do have specific learning difficulties so I have common symptoms/signs/behaviours/traits, and I think this is wherein lies the dichotomy. This, of course, was far better put by lingle.

So in terms of phenotype, could it be argued we're all on the spectrum, in that some of us - NT or not - display the same behaviours? At the same time, I can absolutely agree that you're no more 'a little bit autistic' than you are 'a little bit pregnant.' You are or you aren't - it's not a sliding scale.

Most of the work into autism hasn't taken account of sensory processing difficulties lingle, so it looks art behaviours and cognition downstream from the cause. So 'children with autism are autistic because they don't have theory of mind' rather than 'children with autism don't have theory of mind because because they haven't been able to interact in the same way because of sensory processing difficulties'. It would be incredibly hard to get that view published - although Stuart Shanker wrote a very god article saying exactly that in Theory and Psychology.

You might be interested in looking up 'weak central coherence' - that gives rise to things like spotting a number at 50 yards (or in ds1's case a tiny plane miles away whilst sat in his pushchair). The more I read about weak central coherence, the more I like it as an explanation for a lot of the features you see in autism.

Another reason why I think that autism and NT are different. We don't all process information in that way. And I think we'd be very lost if suddenly we found our bodies doing that for us.

Autism is whatever the diagnostic criteria say it is so it is a back to front diagnosis to some extent. I think there is an underlying condition or conditions but defining and clarifying what they are is problematic hence all the debate. There is the reductionist view that autism does not really exist - that there is mental impairment/retardation at one end of the scale and personality difference/disorder at the other end and that this was how autism was understood in previous eras - and still is in many non western cultures.

Thank goodness for the modern MRI-type scanning that so clearly shows the brain differences in those with autism.

Wow, this is such fascinating reading. Have been thinking about it since I first saw jimjams' post yesterday, but haven't much more to add as you've all made such eloquent points already.

I actually often do think of it as being one vast spectrum, which in my mind is like a pantone colour chart, running from black to white, with severest autism being the darkest shade. I think the many people who have mild autistic traits but are generally considered NT are very pale grey, and there is a shade of grey whereafter autistic traits become pronounced enough that an individual would need help to function within society.

Chisigirl, I'm totally with you. I just can't see that my ds' difficulties are due to sensory processing issues, or that he's severe enough to be on the spectrum, yet he certainly isn't developing typically enough to be definitely NT. If the spectrum did range from black to white, he would be very light grey I feel!

It is rumoured that sensory issues will be in DSM V. So a child/adult will have to have sensory 'issues' to receive a diagnosis.

that's the latest version of the diagnostic criteria, yes?

One of them. I'm not sure how there'll use it. DS1's sensory issues were fairly well hidden when he was little as he was passive and smiley and didn't react particularly negatively to anything. He avoided stuff but not in a very obvious way.

so it wouldn't fit with the whole "obvious by age 3" approach.

It depends what you mean obvious by 3. I suspected autism in ds1 at 17 months, I think it was fairly obvious by the time he was 2 (looking back) and yet we were told by an autism specialist (when he was 2) that he definitely wasn't autistic - because he was 'too interactive'. He was diagnosed with 'mild language delay' and we were told that he would be fine by the time he was 5 .

He's severely autistic and non-verbal. That costly mistake (we weren't even allowed on the Hanen programme because he was 'too able') ended up wasting an entire year of intervention and we were scurrying round looking up everything else trying to work out why on earth he wasn't talking if it wasn't autism.

He's still interactive, but he's still severely autistic and always will be.

And looking back I would still say it was obvious at 2. Yes he sat on my lap and cuddled me and laughed and pretended to do things he wasn't allowed, but he couldn't imitate, he didn't point, he'd lost the words he'd had, he produced vowel sounds and had lost his consonants (again he'd had them), during the assessment he lay down on his side and ran a box backwards and forwards in front of his eyes, he spotted planes at 50 yards and he had a stupid interest in numbers. There was enough there to get alarm bells ringing.

I don;t know what went through the specialist's mind really- I was worried about autism so I mentioned all the things that went with autism. When he started running the toys in front of his eyes she said 'does he do that a lot' "all the time" I replied, "oh well it is an autism sign she said' before sending us off with 'mild language delay'. I can only think that she had a stereotype of autism in mind which consisted of distressed and difficult children who can't communicate at all. When of course its not like that.

50 yards? that would be easy 500 yards teeny tiny dots in the distance that I could barely see!

If I have read the thread correctly JJ are you saying that that processing (or rather a specific differences in processing) is the underlying foundation of autism? Would this be true of all neurobiological disorders (different processing disorders)? This I can relate to.
I can also look back and see signs that could have indicated autism at under 2 but were put down to other things.

I personally think so (along with other things that tend to go with autism such as problems with imitation etc). I suspect that sensory processing in some form is the fundamental problem. I suspect others will disagree.

I'm sad about that specialist and that year Jimjam.
How's he doing now? How are you doing?

Now the imitation one is an interesting one because in many ways Ds1 overimitates. He often can not distinguish between what are words and what are just sounds when he's repeating someone back, so if someone coughs when speaking Ds1 will cough too. If they place their hand to their face to flick away their hair when speaking, Ds1 copies that too. Not in a "let's be funny" way, but in a "this is what you're supposed to do" way.

I think everyone has aspects of sprectrum behaviour- and if its a proper spectrum then it starts at entirely NT (bit like the colour spectrum starts with white and goes to black, iyswim? cept some science bod will say but.... but you know what I mean).

there are poeple know with no traits whatsoever that are visible but then there are lots like me who have loads, but wouldn;t refer to themselves as as as they don't have any form of dx and never will.

I dont think there's an implication you can move along the spextrum (my paed says you can but am not convinced, i think children have potential to develop but place stays fixed.

ds1 does that now bullet, since he learned to imitate. Someone claps on the radio he claps (not surprising really since the poor child had 'do this' drilled into him), but until he was 7 he had no concept of imitation at all. It wasn't that he couldn't do it or reproduce it, he just didn't have any concept of it. So 'do it like this' was meaningless. He really changed when he learned to imitate. He has always been happy to be around people and on the sidelines but with imitation he started to join in. Immediately. It was like a flick of a switch 'ah I see I can do that too'.

Lingle- a question I dread form the parents of littlies as I never know how to answer it. He's 9 now. We're very happy with how he's doing. He's been surfing this year, and camping and rock climbing (all this in part made possible by him finally cracking imitation). He is finally learning Makaton, he's very able to communicate with PECS and he is starting to use text. But he still has major language problems, and he's still non-verbal (he has one word which is said beautifully- Mummy). If he didn't have severe verbal dyspraxia as well as autism he would be talking at a single word level. If I'd looked ahead and seen him now when he was 2 I would have seen a tragedy. In fact I don't see him like that at all. I used to, until he started being able to do stuff he really likes (walking on Dartmoor, climbing etc). At which stage I decided life's about experiences and he is getting plenty of them and enjoying them as much as me. He's happy, at a good school with very caring staff and lovely kids. His life is good tbh.

Exciting! I have no doubt what so ever that processing (sensory included) is at the root of Ds LD ASD and ADHD. His inability to understand 2 dimentional pictures of 3 dimentional objects is part of that- he also cannot draw a square because he gets lost. I have always had trouble with the label of autism (although it was not me but a paed that said at 3.5 he was not autistic because he was too happy to be with and interact with people) because he likes company- very much on his terms and egocentrically. Indeed he hates being alone or in a quiet place. He needs noise and movement and people in close proximity. His eyecontact can be devastatingly good (ie uncomfortable to others) when he wants attention.