I thought it was a little superficial to be honest. What did it tell us?
50 years ago people diagnosed with autism clearly were people with problems, witness the black and white footage of the boy at the start of the programme, later featured as an adult who clearly does have some problems with language and communication.
Nowadays the diagnosis is a lot wider. It seems that those diagnosed with it are unable to pick up on simple inferences that are obvious to the rest of us (like the triangle cartoons) but also that they can be much more able to focus on details than the rest of us (like the Where's Wally challenge). They're not obviously people who have something wrong with them, just people who are a bit different. I thought the young black boy in particular seemed rather likeable, rather than having any social problems.
Somebody in Scotland 250 years ago probably had autism.
We could have been told all that in fifteen minutes. There were much more interesting angles that could have been explored, in particular:
How are we to view people with autism now that the diagnosis has widened so much? Clearly they have some abilities that the rest of us don't. In what fields can these abilities be put to use?
Simon Baron Cohen drew a bell chart of the autism spectrum on an iPad. Autistic people were on the right of the chart and most people in the middle. What about the people on the left? No mention was made of them. Surely what these people are like would have been a very interesting question to explore, but neither academic made any reference to it at all.
I thought it was a little superficial to be honest. What did it tell us?
50 years ago people diagnosed with autism clearly were people with problems, witness the black and white footage of the boy at the start of the programme, later featured as an adult who clearly does have some problems with language and communication.
Nowadays the diagnosis is a lot wider. It seems that those diagnosed with it are unable to pick up on simple inferences that are obvious to the rest of us (like the triangle cartoons) but also that they can be much more able to focus on details than the rest of us (like the Where's Wally challenge). They're not obviously people who have something wrong with them, just people who are a bit different. I thought the young black boy in particular seemed rather likeable, rather than having any social problems.
Somebody in Scotland 250 years ago probably had autism.
We could have been told all that in fifteen minutes. There were much more interesting angles that could have been explored, in particular:
How are we to view people with autism now that the diagnosis has widened so much? Clearly they have some abilities that the rest of us don't. In what fields can these abilities be put to use?
Simon Baron Cohen drew a bell chart of the autism spectrum on an iPad. Autistic people were on the right of the chart and most people in the middle. What about the people on the left? No mention was made of them. Surely what these people are like would have been a very interesting question to explore, but neither academic made any reference to it at all.
