THE ROUGH GUIDE TO PSYCHOLOGYfive away from the true figure. After TMS, she made six out of twenty
guesses that were within five blobs of the true figure. Snyder’s team think
that by temporarily inhibiting activity in the temporal lobe, the TMS
made the participants’ brains act more like an autistic brain, focusing on
the raw data and ignoring the distraction of random patterns.
ADHD
ADHD stands for “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder”, a devel-
opmental condition that, as the name suggests, is characterized by an
inability to concentrate, poor impulse-control and excessive energy. It’s
very much a syndrome – some children show only the attentional aspect,
others just the hyperactive element. Although it begins in childhood, it
can persist into adulthood, causing problems throughout life.
Autistic Pride
Every year on 18 June, people on the autistic spectrum congregate
to celebrate Autistic Pride day. The movement was founded by Amy
Roberts and Gareth Nelson, both of whom have been diagnosed with
Asperger’s Syndrome. The idea of the movement is to celebrate the
strengths of autism and to challenge the notion that the condition is
a disease that needs curing. Roberts, Nelson and their followers prefer
to see autism as a form of “neurodiversity”, as distinct from non-autistic
“neurotypicals”. Rather than pursuing cures for the condition, they
would like society to be more sensitive to the autistic way of thinking
and behaving. For example, people on the autism spectrum are
typically thought of as being antisocial. However, the emergence of
virtual worlds such as Second Life and technologies like email and
instant messaging has shown that people with autism can be highly
sociable, it’s just that they don’t like face-to-face contact.
The Autistic Pride movement also opposes the development of
pre-natal screening for autism, which may one day become available.
Supporters of the movement point out that if screening had existed in
the past, then geniuses like Albert Einstein and Michelangelo – who
today would probably be diagnosed as autistic – would have been lost
to the world.
The Pride movement is not without opponents. The parents of some
children with severe autism say their plight is often unbearable and
that treatments should be welcomed. These critics point out that the
bulk of the Autistic Pride movement is made up of “highly functioning”
people with Asperger’s Syndrome, for whom the strengths of their
condition outweigh the costs.