Open Society

Unravel Error, Weave the Future

The varied and dynamic nature of learning environments necessitates a more flexible and holistic approach.  Published by Human Restoration Project, a 501(c)3 organization restoring humanity to education.

Despite claims of "exploding rates of being trans" and "rapid social contagion," a new Swedish study seems to hint that we have reached an equilibrium of gender transitions.

Autism is a profoundly contested idea. The focus of this book is not what autism is or what autistic people are, but rather, it grapples with the central

Originally published at Change.org on 2009-07-18 04:35:00 UTC As I end my week of guest blogging at change.org I realize that while I hav...

This book aims to define the process of autistic masking and the underlying reasons for its existence. It will consider the social context, including an individual’s response to stigma or trauma, that facilitates impression management.

For systematic education, we are curating timeless concepts for nurturing and describing ecologies of care. Many of the concepts defined below are linked to related articles, each of which links to further sources and related research.

Social power is best understood as a highly addictive and socially corrosive drug. Meaningful education in the era of the sixth mass extinction event has to focus on the majority of the human population that is not power drunk, and on the humane treatment of those who are ready to confront their addiction to power head-on. Conceptualising social power as an addiction provides the majority of the human population with a highly effective bullshit detection tool.

I am a woman who experienced complex trauma and I’ve been recently diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, which I’ve been researching for…

Abstract. Introduction: Autism has typically been characterized by its external manifestations rather than experienced phenomenology, with consequent impacts on both research and practice. There have recently been increasing calls for more phenomenological enquiry in autism, but little actual work reported. Method: A shared participatory phenomenological self-investigation was conducted, by the four authors, of lived experience across the autistic/non-autistic divide. The sample size was chosen as necessary for the feasibility and acceptability to participants of such work in this context. Roles of “researcher” and “interviewee” were purposefully alternated between participants to establish trust and reciprocity. Initial phenomenological reduction or bracketing was applied to the description and recording of each participant’s intimate lived experience in a number of key domains across social relationships, the physical environment, development, and in adult life. These experiences were shared within dialogue to open them to investigation and questioning from the others, with alternating interviewer and respondent roles. A third step synthesized these shared observations across individuals into themes of continuity and difference. Results: A number of emergent themes, such as the need for trust and reliability, and the impact of context on regulation of emotion, sociability, and empathy, showed striking commonalities between all participants. Other themes, such as primary sensory experience and social joining, pointed up more clear differences between autism and non-autism in development and the adult world. Themes of interest-focus and attention were marked by both commonalities and difference. Conclusions: This shared phenomenological method was taken as a first step within a new area of active investigation in autistic phenomenology. It proved successful in eliciting detailed information on self-experience. The results suggested hypotheses for a new understanding of autism within the wider “human” spectrum of experience; for instance, the common basic need for trust and social connection but striking differences in sensory experience. It suggested that some characteristics long thought intrinsic to autism, such as social mis-perception and reduced empathy, may be alternatively understood as state-dependent outcomes contingent on specific contexts and interactions. Implications are suggested for testing in further research, developmental theory, and intervention practice.

Background: There is considerable conceptual overlap between Autistic hyperfocus and flow, yet these phenomena have seldom been associated in the literature. Moreover, no studies have provided an in-depth empirical investigation of Autistic people's flow-like or hyperfocus experiences. In this study, we sought to address this gap by investigating Autistic people's phenomenological experiences of task immersion, and how their experiences relate to existing conceptualizations of flow, hyperfocus, and monotropism. Methods: To address this aim, we drew on data from a broader qualitative study, designed in partnership with Autistic community members, to understand Autistic people's experiences of Autistic inertia. For that broader study, Autistic and non-Autistic researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with 24 Autistic adults about their everyday experiences of starting and stopping tasks. During these interviews, participants repeatedly discussed their experiences of task immersion and the benefits and challenges associated with it. We analyzed these responses specifically, using reflexive thematic analysis, adopting a combination of deductive and inductive approaches within an essentialist framework. Results: Our participants' accounts closely matched conceptual understandings of flow, Autistic hyperfocus, and monotropism. Specifically, the analysis revealed the all-encompassing nature of task immersion experiences, and how it could be difficult to “find the balance” between the joy and other aspects of everyday life. Despite the drawbacks, participants were glad to be immersed because they felt they could be themselves, with no pretences. Conclusions: These results are important for reframing task immersion as a state of great potential value to Autistic people's lives, but one that may require additional support if it is to play its role in enabling Autistic people to flourish.

Monotropism is a fundamental aspect of the autistic life experience. The task of deciding what long-term employment to pursue is one of the…

I am defiantly and stubbornly a weaver. Holding this allegiance while teaching at a highly interdisciplinary college of art and design led to a search for thinking that unites expansive practice wi...

It can be very hard to move on from looping thoughts, whether positive or negative. Switching tasks and moving from one attention tunnel to another can be challenging and exhausting.

Healthcare is in crisis across most of the globe, and perhaps particularly in our two countries of the United States and the United Kingdom, both of which appear more disunited than ever by the greed and carelessness that drive socioeconomic and political polarisation, and the systematic degradation of our planet. There are two possible responses to this crisis. The first assumes that this is simply a crisis of organisation, efficiency, information, technology, and scale. It sees people as insufficiently studied biological machines, as sparsely detailed clouds of data, as inadequately monitored and regulated physiologies. The increasingly ruthless pipedream is that, if only the healthcare industry could access and use everyone’s biomedical and socioeconomic data, then their needs could be predicted, and a healthy future would be assured for all. Industry is already reaching out through the sale of technological devices on wrists and in pockets, in homes and at work, encouraging their consumers to act, cajole, or force action or recruit others to prevent disease and suffering; all the while forgetting that, in the end, everyone must die. The biomedical science and technology discovery machine produces tests and treatments to be delivered by chatbots to isolated consumers without the frictions and costs of having to deal with other people. They are set to operate in healthcare systems at scales of speed and reach that are only possible when we abandon the idea that care is only possible between people. This response fuels the ever greater involvement of large retail and data corporations in healthcare, and drives the increasing consumption of pharmaceuticals and medical technology, all of which wilfully ignores the consequences for the planet. The second response assumes this is a crisis of care in and of itself. Care happens in the space between people, in an unhurried encounter. Only …

Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) are known for failing to support the mental health of Autistic children. Unfortunately this is not the only issue with such services, they are often responsible for the assessment and diagnosis of neurodivergence such as autism or ADHD. Within the context of autism, there have been numerous reports

Lots of resources – time, money, energy – have been spent comparing the number of words autistic and non-autistic individuals can list from a given category (e.g., animals) in a short amount of time ...

A new study, involving an extensive international sample of 1,001 children across 43 languages, offers groundbreaking insights into how infants and toddlers learn language.

Based on my experiences, accounts from other autistic people, and experimental findings, I do think that autistic hyper-focus can be either endogenous or exogenous. Expanding the monotropism account to recognize the role of exogenous attention capture in autism helps us explain important aspects of autistic experiences, such as sensory overload.

PDF | Controversies regarding the neurodiversity movement (NDM) may be exacerbated by confusion over its meaning. For example, some suggest... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

(what a title!) The longer I lead remote teams, the more clear it becomes to me, that there are things which take on an outsized importance within a remote team – especially within an all-rem…

Author(s): Dwyer, Patrick | Advisor(s): Rivera, Susan M | Abstract: This report presents preliminary data from an ongoing study of attention and sensory experiences in autistic adolescents. Although sensory differences in autism are widely-reported and impactful, particularly in the auditory modality, autism literature has only recently begun to attempt to distinguish auditory sensory phenotypes, such as emotional misophonic reactions to potentially-soft trigger sounds, versus hyperacusis-like reactions of finding highly intense sounds distressing, painful, or overwhelming; therefore, the first chapter of this thesis focuses on characterizing auditory sensory experiences in autism. Furthermore, although the monotropism hypothesis proposes that autistic hyper-focus is central to many autistic experiences, it has received little direct empirical research attention, particularly in cognitive science; the second chapter of this thesis aims to address this gap. Both chapters use a mixture of laboratory-based tasks and questionnaires.The preliminary sample includes 14 autistic and 17 typically-developing adolescents, aged 11–16 years. In Chapter 1, autistic participants exhibited psychoacoustic evidence of hyperacusis-like reactions, and questionnaire reports indicated they experienced more auditory sensory fear/overload, anxiety/avoidance, and generalized hyperreactivity. Psychoacoustic and self-report measures of misophonia, but not hyperacusis, appeared to converge with one another. In Chapter 2, caregiver-report questionnaires suggested autistic people experienced elevated hyper-focus; both caregivers and autistic people appeared to view hyper-focus somewhat favourably on average, with considerable individual variability in perspective. However, group differences in hyper-focus did not extend to laboratory task paradigms, emphasizing the need for further research to rigorously characterize the cognitive underpinnings of the hyper-focus experienced by autistic people in the real world. Interestingly, autistic people seemed to self-report less hyper-focus (Chapter 2) and fewer atypical sensory experiences (Chapter 1) than their caregivers’ proxy-reports indicated, whereas the opposite pattern characterized the comparison group. This pattern is not consistent with prior autism sensory literature, and possible interpretations are discussed.

Unlike in adults, suicide risk among children is lowest during the summer and higher during the school year. Understanding these patterns can help prevent and treat suicidality

Autistic people experience more co-occurring health conditions and, on average, die younger than non-autistic people. Despite growing awareness of health inequi...

Autistic people live with more mental and physical health conditions and, on average, die younger than non-autistic people. Despite widespread commitments to tackling these issues, autistic people still report various barriers to accessing healthcare. This article aims to explore the area in depth, …