Open Society

I'm often asked about children's gaming and screen time. Here's what I see.

For decades, education reformers have proposed academic performance, measured by standardized testing, as the solution to inequality. It doesn’t work, and it’s losing Democrats votes. But most important, it’s costing kids the opportunity to learn through play.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a law that protects the rights of people with disabilities. The disability community fought hard to get the ADA passed into law, and we continue to fight hard to protect it. This year, we’re celebrating the 30th anniversary of the ADA becoming the…

On election day, people pick who they want to represent them in elected office. This process is an important part of life in the community. It matters because people who make policy decisions change our everyday lives. Everything from curb cuts to anti-discrimination laws can change based on who holds…

Not every autism organization helps autistic people. Here's how you can tell the difference, with examples.

Full normalisation of autism would require a substantially broader concept of ‘normality’ and acceptance of autistic people.

NEWS New Works Conchita Hernández Legorreta, a disability rights activist and co-founder of the National Coalition of Latinx with Disabilities, writes about growing up as an undocumented blind Latina for Refinery29. “I continue to fight for institutional change and inclusion for disabled BIPOC immigrants,” she writes, ”yet I don’t pretend that this is enough, nor that being included in a capitalist, ableist, racist, xenophobic system is the answer to our problems.”

“Disabled is a legal term, not really a medical term."

The U.S. Access Board is a federal agency that promotes equality for people with disabilities through leadership in accessible design and the development of accessibility guidelines and standards for the built environment, transportation, communication, medical diagnostic equipment, and information technology.

The U.S. Access Board is a federal agency that promotes equality for people with disabilities through leadership in accessible design and the development of accessibility guidelines and standards for the built environment, transportation, communication, medical diagnostic equipment, and information technology.

Ticket Purchasing and Seating Every section of The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park is ADA accessible with designated seats available in all seating areas. ADA seating for both transfer and non-transfer wheelchairs, companion and semi-ambulatory are available at each performance, and can be purchased online or through the Ticket Office. For questions regarding accessible seating or to request an accommodation, please contact our Ticket Office in advance at 619.235.0804 or tickets@sandiegosymphony.org.

Join the Conference to Restore Humanity! 2022: System Reboot. Together, we will reimagine and recreate systems that support students and teachers toward a greater purpose and motivation.

Diversity in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) is a buzz phrase these days. For about 10 years, I fought to get other…

Are believers in polyvagal theory and trauma-focused treatment practicing unproven and dangerous medicine on themselves and their family members?

Adolescents live at the fault lines of a culture, exposing our weak spots.

Executive functions (EFs) in childhood predict important life outcomes. Thus, there is great interest in attempts to improve EFs early in life. Many interventions are led by trained adults, including structured training activities in the lab, and less-structured activities implemented in schools. Such programs have yielded gains in children's externally-driven executive functioning, where they are instructed on what goal-directed actions to carry out and when. However, it is less clear how children's experiences relate to their development of self-directed executive functioning, where they must determine on their own what goal-directed actions to carry out and when. We hypothesized that time spent in less-structured activities would give children opportunities to practice self-directed executive functioning, and lead to benefits. To investigate this possibility, we collected information from parents about their 6–7 year-old children's daily, annual, and typical schedules. We categorized children's activities as “structured” or “less-structured” based on categorization schemes from prior studies on child leisure time use. We assessed children's self-directed executive functioning using a well-established verbal fluency task, in which children generate members of a category and can decide on their own when to switch from one subcategory to another. The more time that children spent in less-structured activities, the better their self-directed executive functioning. The oppos...

To forget oneself- to lose oneself in the music, in the moment- that kind of absorption seems to be at the heart of every creative…

A Demigirl (also called a Demiwoman, Demifemale or a Demilady) is a gender identity describing someone who partially identifies as a woman or girl. In addition to feeling partially like a girl or woman, demigirls also feel partly outside the binary. That can include anything under the non-binary umbrella like agender, genderqueer, or xenogenders for example. Demifemme is a superset of demigirl. It is for someone who isn't comfortable with having a gendered term like female, woman, girl, etc. in

Background There is growing recognition that some autistic people engage in ‘compensation’, showing few behavioural symptoms (e.g. neurotypical social skills), despite continuing to experience autism-related cognitive difficulties (e.g. difficulties in social cognition). One way this might be achieved is by individuals consciously employing ‘compensatory strategies’ during everyday social interaction. However, very little is currently known about the broad range of these strategies, their mechanisms and consequences for clinical presentation and diagnosis. Methods We aimed to measure compensatory strategies in autism for the first time. Using a novel checklist, we quantified self-reported social compensatory strategies in 117 adults (58 with autism, 59 without autism) and explored the relationships between compensation scores and autism diagnostic status, autistic traits, education level, sex and age at diagnosis. Results Higher compensation scores—representing a greater repertoire of compensatory strategies—were associated with having an autism diagnosis, more autistic traits and a higher education level. The link between autism diagnostic status and compensation scores was, however, explained by autistic traits and education level. Compensation scores were unrelated to sex or age at diagnosis. Limitations Our sample was self-selected and predominantly comprised of intellectually able females; therefore, our findings may not generalise to the wider autistic population. Conclusions Together, our findings suggest that many intellectually able adults, with and without a clinical diagnosis of autism, report using compensatory strategies to modify their social behaviour. We discuss the clinical utility of measuring self-reported compensation (e.g., using our checklist), with important implications for the accurate diagnosis and management of autism and related conditions.

Abstract. Using a cost of illness (COI) framework, this article examines the economic impact of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in childhood and