Tag

Autism Spectrum Disorders
I was just reading an article in The Watertown (NY) Daily Times about a seventeen-year-old named Christopher Durgen who has ADHD and autism.  As a young child, he had trouble getting along with classmates and was frequently suspended from school.  That all changed around the end of his sophomore year in high school when he...
Read More
I’ve been reading a number of blogs that have been critical of the neurodiversity movement.  Generally, they’ve characterized neurodiversity as saying “we don’t want a cure; we don’t want research; we just want to be left alone in our differentness.”  I suspect that only a small minority of neurodiversity activists take this position.  I certainly don’t.  In...
Read More
Yesterday we looked at the impact that Universal Design for Learning tools can have for a neurodiversity classroom.  Today, we examine the role that assistive technologies can have in promoting “niche construction” for neurodiverse brains.  As we noted in our earlier post on neurodiversity and niche construction, one critical ingredient in improving the lives of...
Read More
In my book The Power of Neurodiversity:  Unleashing the Advantages of Your Differently Wired Brain, I explore the idea of niche construction as a way of thinking about neurodiversity.  When I suggest that neurodiverse individuals, such as those with autism or ADHD, might have been labeled gifted in other times and in other cultures, the quick...
Read More
 Over the past sixty years, we’ve witnessed a phenomenal growth in the number of new psychiatric illnesses.  The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, first published in 1952, originally listed about 100 categories of illness.  By the year 2000, that number had tripled.  We’ve become accustomed to hearing in the news about “learning disabilities,”...
Read More
1 4 5 6 7

Article Archives