Normocentric world
-
Autism advantage: Laurent Mottron (left) collaborates in his research with many individuals who have autism, such as Michelle Dawson (right).
Here at SFARI.org, most of the researchers we write about, whether geneticists, neuroscientists or clinicians, are trying to understand the intricacies of the autistic mind — and some, ultimately, are trying to ‘normalize’ it.
Laurent Mottron, professor of psychiatry at the University of Montreal in Canada, has long argued against this notion of ‘normal.’
As he wrote in a Nature commentary earlier this month, Mottron believes that "autism should be described and investigated as a variant within the human species,” not as a defect to be suppressed.
His argument reminds me of a popular psychological test called the Strength Deployment Inventory, or SDI, that companies often use to train managers. The test is based on the premise that an individual’s weaknesses are merely misplaced strengths. Arrogance is misplaced confidence, according to this logic, an indecisive individual is one who is flexible, and a gullible person is often trusting.
The same dual perspective can be applied to autism. People who don’t have autism — or, as Mottron calls them, "normocentric" — often describe the features of autism as deficits: delayed, obsessive, narrowly focused, socially awkward, uncommunicative.
But some of these traits can, in the right circumstances, be advantageous. An obsessive person might be passionate, and one who's narrowly focused probably has exceptional attention to detail.
Mottron argues that the normocentric attitude is pervasive in the scientific literature of autism, and he has a point. For example, he points out that some brain imaging studies find that people with autism have abnormally thick cortical layers, whereas others find them abnormally thin, but in either case, the findings are called deficits. And many autism papers end with a paragraph about how the data could help treat the disorder.
That said, I think Mottron sometimes goes too far in his emphasis on the abilities of those with autism. When I interviewed him in April about a meta-analysis of brain imaging studies, he told me that in a region called the fusiform gyrus, people with autism "display the highest level of superiority and activity in comparison to non-autistics."
As other experts pointed out, we can't say whether one brain signature is superior to another, only that people with autism seem to be using a different brain network than controls to complete the same task.
And there are, of course, many children with autism who cannot speak and have severe intellectual disability. As Mottron himself points out in the commentary, nine out of ten adults with autism do not have a regular job, and four out of five depend on their parents.
It's great that a scientist is highlighting the strengths, rather than weaknesses, of people with autism in a high-profile journal — especially because, as Mottron points out, people with autism can be particularly good researchers and analytical thinkers. For seven years he has collaborated with Michelle Dawson, a woman who has autism, and seven other people with the disorder have also worked in his lab.
For all autism researchers, even those focused on treatments, it's important to remember the people on the spectrum who don't want to — or need to — be recalibrated to someone else’s idea of ‘normal.’
Comments
Hi Mrs Hugues
Thank you for your comment. Regarding April's study, I cannot have said "display the highest level of superiority and activity in comparison to non-autistics." but "display the highest level of superiority of activity in comparison to non-autistics.". This is just factual, and do not involve an interpretation that superior activity equates superior performance, but indicates that, among visual regons, FG is that which shows the highest level superior involvment (expressed it term of activity) in multiple tasks. I do not see in what this is excessive, ore erroneous. It just paraphrases the finding of the meta-analysis.
Another précision. The term ''normocentrism'' not refer to agroup,as seems implicated by your sentence ''People who don’t have autism — or, as Mottron calls them, "normocentric"'', but as the cognitive bias which equates the characteristic of the neurotypicals as normalcy when it differs from that possessed by a minority. This word was coined in analogy to the word ethnocentrism.
see Mottron, L., Dawson, M., Soulières*, I.(2008) A different memory: are distinctions drawn from the study of nonautistic memory appropriate to describe memory in autism? In: Memory in Autism, J.Boucher & D.Bowler editors, pp 311-329, Cambridge University Press
Hi Dr. Mottron,
Thanks very much for reading SFARI.org and for clarifying what you meant by that comment. More importantly, thanks for writing the commentary. I've been covering autism-related news at the Society for Neuroscience conference this week, and I can tell you that I've thought about these ideas during every session.
I have a question for you. You say in the commentary that children with severe problems -- head banging, no speech, etc. -- do need treatments. So how do you think the field should draw the line? Certainly when researchers frame their work in terms of finding treatments, this is the subgroup they're hoping to help.
Regarding autistics without speech, I would not call what they need ''treatment'', in the same extent than sign language is not a treatment for deafness that cannot be cured through surgery. It is a way to transmit information. So our main purpose with autistic without speech is to maintain a channel of transmission of information even if not predominantly socially oriented. Access to an information which is mapping on speech secondarily (as eg written material) is the priority
regarding self injury, I would see a first division between an expression of negative emotions (which is no more to be cured than its equivalent in non autistics, as tantrums), and which is not dangerous for the person, and emergency situations where the self injury, whatever its cause, reaches a level where it represent a danger for the person. I think that the second situation is the final outcomeof a long process, probably resulting from an absence of communication channel, of an absence of effective factual communication even if the channel is established.
We are preparing an answer to to comments on our meta-analysis on SFARI site. Somes comments are factually wrong, other deserve discussion
I see heavy self injury
"For all autism researchers, even those focused on treatments, it's important to remember the people on the spectrum who don't want to — or need to — be recalibrated to someone else’s idea of ‘normal.’"
It is also equally important to remember that this small minority of people with autism should not be speaking for the needs of people who are more severely disabled by autism, aka the overwhelming majority. It is a shame that a vocal minority's opinion is taken as fact for what more disabled need, especially in light of the fact that the more disabled are less likely to be able to advocate on their own behalf.
Mottron et al can pontificate all them want about what autism is and isn't and theorize about the "strengths" of autism until they are blue in the face. None of that will give a child back the abilities that autism has taken from them. None of that will allow them to be able to ever live independently or give them the ability to communicate effectively with the world. Only appropriate treatments, support, and a lot of hard work can do that.
People with autism need real help, not vague and rather inane statements like "I think that the second situation is the final outcome of a long process, probably resulting from an absence of communication channel, of an absence of effective factual communication even if the channel is established."
Absence of a communication channel, no, really? Have you seen the clinical definition of autistic disorder? Have you ever come out of the ivory tower and spent some time working with children who are actually disabled by their autism? If you haven't, you might want to try it sometime, it might be an eye opening experience.
Statements like this show a complete lack of knowledge about the basics of what autism can be like for a child. Many children with autism lack any "communication channel" let alone "effective factual communication" - that is one of the major reasons that they have a diagnosis in the first place. And trying to create this effective communication channel is one of the primary reasons for "treating" autism.
Statements like these also show a complete unawareness of behaviors like self injury in autism. In my experience, while self injury can sometimes be tied to or compounded by a lack of communication, it is often caused by other factors. For example, in my daughter it was being caused by what seems to be seasonal depression. Once we treated the seasonal depression appropriately, the self injury largely went away.
P.S. If you (Laurent Mottron) think that an autistic meltdown with self-injury, or what you can "an expression of negative emotions", doesn't need to be "cured", i.e. teaching the child a more appropriate way of dealing with stress and expressing their emotions, then I would suggest that you haven't seen many meltdowns. These meltdowns are not healthy for anyone - least of all the child.