I’m an autistic adult and also an advanced degree expert is autism. I could say a lot but I want to point out three key things:
Autism is underdiagnosed, not overdiagnosed
Engaging in pretend play has nothing to do with autism. Some autistic kids don’t, some do.
Your last little theory is actually very close to the current leading theory behind what causes autism—a lack of synaptic pruning in the brain during early development. Synaptic pruning helps create ‘highways’ between brain regions and lessens the intensity of the information input we recieve. That doesn’t happen for autistic people. Also what you describe as the specific disconnect between the brain and mouth in speech is called speech apraxia and is the main reason why there are late-talking or non-speaking autistic people.
Those aren’t mutually exclusive—see here for example. I have no opinion either way on whether there are lots of kids with autism who aren’t getting diagnosed with autism (I’ve never looked into it), but if that’s true, I don’t see why it would give me any reason to be skeptical of Camarata’s claims here. Can you explain?
Engaging in pretend play has nothing to do with autism. Some autistic kids don’t, some do.
“Nothing to do” is a strong claim—IIUC, you’re claiming that there’s no correlation whatsoever between autism and pretend play. My quick literature / google search strongly suggests that this is not true. Do you have a reference or anything? Or how did you come to believe that? Do you have a sense of how common this position is among experts?
Also what you describe as the specific disconnect between the brain and mouth in speech is called speech apraxia and is the main reason why there are late-talking or non-speaking autistic people.
I’m not in a position to adjudicate this debate, but FWIW Camarata claims that apraxia is vanishingly rare as a cause of delayed speech. He describes showing a video of a child with (what he calls) real speech apraxia to an audience of speech pathologists, and he said `have any of you seen a kid like this’, and everyone said ‘no, never’, and he said ‘OK so why are you guys diagnosing apraxia all the time?’ (That’s a paraphrase; I don’t have the book on-hand.) (I myself was diagnosed with speech apraxia when my parents brought me in for a diagnosis at age 2.something in the 1980s; my parents had kept the records from the hospital.)
Also, Camarata has at least one thing right, which is that ABA (which I have good reason to beleive is where the “strapping children to chairs” practice is coming from) is traumatizing and inappropriate for all children, including autistic kids of any ability level or challenges.
I’m an autistic adult and also an advanced degree expert is autism. I could say a lot but I want to point out three key things:
Autism is underdiagnosed, not overdiagnosed
Engaging in pretend play has nothing to do with autism. Some autistic kids don’t, some do.
Your last little theory is actually very close to the current leading theory behind what causes autism—a lack of synaptic pruning in the brain during early development. Synaptic pruning helps create ‘highways’ between brain regions and lessens the intensity of the information input we recieve. That doesn’t happen for autistic people. Also what you describe as the specific disconnect between the brain and mouth in speech is called speech apraxia and is the main reason why there are late-talking or non-speaking autistic people.
Those aren’t mutually exclusive—see here for example. I have no opinion either way on whether there are lots of kids with autism who aren’t getting diagnosed with autism (I’ve never looked into it), but if that’s true, I don’t see why it would give me any reason to be skeptical of Camarata’s claims here. Can you explain?
“Nothing to do” is a strong claim—IIUC, you’re claiming that there’s no correlation whatsoever between autism and pretend play. My quick literature / google search strongly suggests that this is not true. Do you have a reference or anything? Or how did you come to believe that? Do you have a sense of how common this position is among experts?
I’m not in a position to adjudicate this debate, but FWIW Camarata claims that apraxia is vanishingly rare as a cause of delayed speech. He describes showing a video of a child with (what he calls) real speech apraxia to an audience of speech pathologists, and he said `have any of you seen a kid like this’, and everyone said ‘no, never’, and he said ‘OK so why are you guys diagnosing apraxia all the time?’ (That’s a paraphrase; I don’t have the book on-hand.) (I myself was diagnosed with speech apraxia when my parents brought me in for a diagnosis at age 2.something in the 1980s; my parents had kept the records from the hospital.)
Also, Camarata has at least one thing right, which is that ABA (which I have good reason to beleive is where the “strapping children to chairs” practice is coming from) is traumatizing and inappropriate for all children, including autistic kids of any ability level or challenges.