DOCSLIB.ORG

Inherent Worth and Dignity of All: Do We Mean It? a Sermon by Renée Zenaida at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Gainesville, Florida 2009 June 28

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Inherent Worth and Dignity of All: Do We Mean It? a Sermon by Renée Zenaida at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Gainesville, Florida 2009 June 28 Sermon Draft 6/28/09 Inherent Worth and Dignity of All: Do We Mean It? Renée Zenaida Please Note: Sermon drafts are provided to aid in following along, and for those unable to attend. Though the drafts are used in delivery, our ministers may do some final writing and editing after the draft is distributed, or diverge and speak extemporaneously when appropriate to the situation. They’re not intended as scripts. Thank you. Inherent Worth and Dignity of All: Do We Mean It? a sermon by Renée Zenaida at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Gainesville, Florida 2009 June 28 You can’t see the wind. That’s a given in the way “we” experience the world. Who are “we”? We are the majority, all experiencing life in different but similar ways. We build our lives, and our world accordingly. But there are others. If tomorrow I wake up in a country where everyone is 7 foot and above, I’ll be at a disadvantage. Thermostats are going to be way too high; I’d need a ladder to put a cup back in a cupboard; chairs would leave me hanging. I, with the help of some of my tall friends, would have to make accommodations. A special chair. A chain pull to turn on a light. If it turns out I’m not alone and that there’s a population of similarly challenged folks, the powers that be might be persuaded that accommodation needs to be made on the public side. All elevator buttons would be where majority and minority folks could reach them. The Americans with Disabilities Act sanctifies inclusion. And it has brought about wonderful changes. I remember when wheelchair ramps were a rarity. No more. Now directional signs include Braille. American Sign Language is becoming common. And children with physical and/or learning challenges are mainstreamed in school, included rather than excluded. It’s good public and private policy. George Washington Carver said that “How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life, you will have been all of these.” Making it into this world comfortably within the bell curve doesn’t guarantee that some accident of fate or bout of illness isn’t going to affect you or a loved one. But it gets complicated. The spectrum of disabilities or challenges is possibly infinite. The ones we can see, can somehow quantify, such as blindness or lameness, are easier to empathize with than disabilities or challenges that we find difficult to perceive. Autism Spectrum Disorder is an excellent example. ©2009 Renée Zenaida Page 1 of 6 Sermon Draft 6/28/09 Inherent Worth and Dignity of All: Do We Mean It? Renée Zenaida “Autistic kids are just brats.” I was outraged by that Shock Jock’s comment. But I realized I didn’t know much about autism at all. A number of years ago, when it was the topic du jour for awhile, I paid attention. Formed some opinions. And didn’t think about it much. I was even suspicious of the sudden explosion in Asperger’s Syndrome diagnoses. There has been some controversy over whether it deserves a separate classification or whether it only marks a level on the autism spectrum, that of high functioning autism. I wasn’t sure whether or not it wasn’t some mania to label the really smart kids, who have social skills difficulties, with some kind of disorder. Turns out they are the really smart kids with social skill difficulties. It not that simple, of course. The autism spectrum is mind boggling, it ranges from individuals who, throughout their lives, interact with the world around them in only the most rudimentary ways to highly successful engineers whose peers overlook a quirk or two. The variation is compounded by the level of support individuals receive. Temple Grandin, who holds a Ph.D. in animal science and has written multiple books on autism and animal behavior, began life on the really scary end of the spectrum. But her mother was hell bent on keeping her out of an institution. She worked with Temple, she worked hard. Other caretakers have worked as hard and harder, and the results still vary widely among individuals. What you do find throughout the spectrum, is a way of viewing the world that is startlingly different from the way “we” neurotypicals, experience the world. Neurotypicals are born with the capacity to flesh out the picture, and start piecing the world together early on. Leaf. Branch. Tree. The categories occur to us so early on that they feel like they’ve always been there. Neurotypicals see the big picture. Autistic folks only see the details. Imagine if you looked at your television screen and saw every pixel…and then had to think up and develop categories and sort the pixels according to whatever criteria you dreamed up--and then had to figure out what you were seeing. You’d be wrong a lot of the time. Temple Grandin talks about her early categories for cats and dogs. Dogs were big. Cats were small. Then her aunt bought a Chihuahua. She refined her categories over and over again. Do you remember a time when you didn’t “just know” the difference between cats and dogs? There are drawbacks to the neurotypical way of seeing things. We miss stuff. In experiments testing people’s attention to detail, subjects were told to watch a basketball game and count the number of passes. During the game, a woman wearing a gorilla suit walked onto the court, beat her chest and walked off. Fifty percent didn’t notice. Subsequent tests proved they did see her, but she wasn’t what they expected to see. The normal brain discarded the information. Commercial airline pilots in flight simulators failed to “notice” a commercial airliner parked on the runway. A quarter of those tested landed right on top of the plane. 1 1 Animals in Translation, Temple Grandin ©2009 Renée Zenaida Page 2 of 6 Sermon Draft 6/28/09 Inherent Worth and Dignity of All: Do We Mean It? Renée Zenaida On the extreme other hand, factories are hiring autistic people for quality control. A tee shirt factory hired a team of autistic people to inspect shirts as they come off the assembly line. While neurotypical employees have trouble discerning even obvious differences from shirt to shirt; the autistic team can detect flaws at a nearly microscopic level. You can’t see the wind. Okay. I can’t. But I’m beginning to wonder. Autism research is proliferating. Understandable because autism is the fastest growing developmental disability in the United States with 1 in 150 individuals currently somewhere on the autism spectrum. My understanding of what we know so far is that the neocortex is normal; however, in autistic individuals, the wiring is faulty. Or different. Faulty implies there is something wrong with how autistic folks experience the world. An autism culture is growing. Autistic art, poetry and music are blossoming. People from all along the autism spectrum are looking around and thinking, you know, there are a lot of us. Some are even talking about instead of autistics working so hard to fit in, the majority should just make some room. It’s middle ground that I hope for. Behavior is often the only indicator an outsider has that there’s something “different” about an individual. Language, the complex framework that helps neurotypicals keep the big picture in tact, comes very slowly to the autistic child. In The Siege, Clara Claiborne Park, writes about the first eight years of her autistic daughter’s life, Jessy. At age four, Jessy knew about 31 words. But they were not a working vocabulary. She’d learn a word, then perhaps never say it again. Putting the words together was beyond her abilities, at age four. She improved dramatically though slowly, but language has never become second nature for Jessy. In an epilogue to her book written when Jessy was 23, Park writes “Anybody who hears Jessy speak more than a word or two realizes that something is wrong. She has learned English as a foreign tongue, though far more slowly, and she still speaks it as a stranger. …Autistics vary widely in the extent of their speech deficit, as in other measures of retardation. Fifty percent of them do not learn to speak at all, and most autistics who function as well as Jessy speak far more fluently and idiomatically than she.” Repetitive behaviors are common, sometimes obsessive. They provide comfort and order in a world so saturated with details that chaos reigns. Inappropriate social behaviors, personal questions, speaking out of turn, shouting, even hitting stem from the language deficient, but also from a state of apparent emotional disconnection, and an inability to read nonverbal communication--facial expression, body language. ©2009 Renée Zenaida Page 3 of 6 Sermon Draft 6/28/09 Inherent Worth and Dignity of All: Do We Mean It? Renée Zenaida Acute sensory sensitivity can trigger a full range of behaviors. Sounds can be excruciating. Frightening. Touch. Overwhelming. Taste. Disturbing. Smells. Debilitating. The waistband on a pair of shorts can be unbearable. The sound of an air conditioner clicking on in the next room can drown out all conversation in this room. We’re used to stories about how a deficit in one sense will be balanced with extreme prowess in another sense. Someone who is blind develops an extraordinary sense of hearing.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Joy of Autism: Part 2
    However, even autistic individuals who are profoundly disabled eventually gain the ability to communicate effectively, and to learn, and to reason about their behaviour and about effective ways to exercise control over their environment, their unique individual aspects of autism that go beyond the physiology of autism and the source of the profound intrinsic disabilities will come to light. These aspects of autism involve how they think, how they feel, how they express their sensory preferences and aesthetic sensibilities, and how they experience the world around them. Those aspects of individuality must be accorded the same degree of respect and the same validity of meaning as they would be in a non autistic individual rather than be written off, as they all too often are, as the meaningless products of a monolithically bad affliction." Based on these extremes -- the disabling factors and atypical individuality, Phil says, they are more so disabling because society devalues the atypical aspects and fails to accommodate the disabling ones. That my friends, is what we are working towards -- a place where the group we seek to "help," we listen to. We do not get offended when we are corrected by the group. We are the parents. We have a duty to listen because one day, our children may be the same people correcting others tomorrow. In closing, about assumptions, I post the article written by Ann MacDonald a few days ago in the Seattle Post Intelligencer: By ANNE MCDONALD GUEST COLUMNIST Three years ago, a 6-year-old Seattle girl called Ashley, who had severe disabilities, was, at her parents' request, given a medical treatment called "growth attenuation" to prevent her growing.
    [Show full text]
  • The Stone Age Origins of Autism
    Chapter 1 The Stone Age Origins of Autism Penny Spikins Additional information is available at the end of the chapter http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/53883 ‘Their strengths and deficits do not deny them humanity but, rather, shape their humanity’ Grinker 2010: 173 [in [1]] © 2013 Spikins; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 4 Recent Advances in Autism Spectrum Disorders - Volume II 1. Introduction 1.1. Minds from a stone age past Our modern societies have been said to house ‘stone age minds’ (see [2]). That is to say that despite all the influences of modern culture our hard wired neurological make-up, instinc‐ tive responses and emotional capacities evolved in the vast depths of time which make up our evolutionary past. Much of what makes us ‘human’ thus rests on the nature of societies in the depths of prehistory thousands or even millions of years ago. Looking back on the archaeological record of the early stone age there is much to be proud of in our ancestry. Not only our remarkable intelligence but also our deep capacities to care about others and work together for a common good come from evolutionary selection on early humans throughout millions of years of the stone age. As far back as 1.6 million years ago we have archaeological evidence from survival of illnesses and trauma that those who were ill were looked after by others, and by the time of Neanderthals extensive care of the ill, infirm and elderly was common, see [3,4].
    [Show full text]
  • Autism, Creativity and Aesthetics
    Open Research Online The Open University’s repository of research publications and other research outputs Autism, Creativity and Aesthetics Journal Item How to cite: Roth, Ilona (2018). Autism, Creativity and Aesthetics. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 17(4) pp. 498–508. For guidance on citations see FAQs. c 2018 Taylor Francis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Version: Accepted Manuscript Link(s) to article on publisher’s website: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1080/14780887.2018.1442763 Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online’s data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. oro.open.ac.uk 1 Autism, Creativity and Aesthetics Ilona Roth Affiliation Dr Ilona Roth, BA (Hons), DPhil, BA (Hons) Hum (Open), CPsychol, AFBPsS Senior Lecturer in Psychology, School of Life, Health and Chemical Sciences, The Open University Contact details School of Life, Health and Chemical Sciences, STEM Faculty, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK 7 6AA, United Kingdom [email protected] Biographical note Ilona Roth is Senior Lecturer in Psychology, School of Life Health and Chemical Sciences, The Open University. With background in cognitive psychology, she has teaching and research specialisms in autism. Roth’s longstanding personal and professional interest in the arts led her recently to complete a degree in Humanities and Romance languages. She is author of film, multi-media and written material on autism, including Roth et.al. (2010) ‘The Autism Spectrum in the 21st Century: Exploring Psychology, Biology and Practice’.
    [Show full text]
  • Cognitive Functions and Calendar Calculation
    Клиническая и специальная психология Clinical Psychology and Special Education 2021. Том 10. № 1. С. 1–14. 2021, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 1–14. DOI: 10.17759/cpse.2021100101 DOI: 10.17759/cpse.2021100101 ISSN: 2304-0394 (online) ISSN: 2304-0394 (online) Психические функции лиц с РАС Mental functions of persons with ASD Клинический случай человека с синдромом саванта из Турции: когнитивные функции и календарный расчет Биджакджи М. Университет Хаджеттепе, г. Анкара, Турция, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6865-9328, e-mail: [email protected] Кексал М.С. Университет Хаджеттепе, г. Анкара, Турция, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2185-5150; e-mail: [email protected] Балоглу М. Университет Хаджеттепе, г. Анкара, Турция, ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1874-9004, e-mail: [email protected] Настоящее исследование представляет собой детальный отчет о клиническом случае человека с синдромом саванта из Турции. Авторы собрали информацию о мужчине 25 лет с синдромом саванта касательно возможностей его когнитивных функций: внимания, кратковременной памяти, автобиографической памяти, общего интеллекта, скорочтения, интерпретации текста и способностей к календарным расчетам. Сбор данных основывался на следующих методах: Тест невербального интеллекта (4-е издание) и пересмотренный Тест интеллекта Векслера для взрослых; цветные прогрессивные матрицы Равена на память; тест d2 на внимание; структурированный текст на чтение; протоколы интервью с семьей; а также протокол индивидуального интервью. Общий интеллектуальный уровень участника исследования составил 85 баллов, при этом незадолго до проведения данного исследования ему (в возрасте 25 лет) был поставлен диагноз общего нарушения развития. Человек с синдромом саванта продемонстрировал ограниченный объем внимания, но отличный уровень кратковременной, рабочей и автобиографической памяти, а также способности к календарным расчетам.
    [Show full text]
  • Autism Offers a Significantly Validating Reading of Apophatic and A-Theological Texts
    Dunster, Ruth M. (2017) Mindfulness of separation: an autistic a- theological hermeneutic. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/8205/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten:Theses http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Mindfulness of separation: an autistic a-theological hermeneutic Ruth M Dunster MA MTh Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD Department of Theology and Religious Studies School of Critical Studies College of Arts University of Glasgow November 2016 ©Ruth M Dunster November 2016 1 Abstract This thesis argues that a literary hermeneutic based on a mythology of autism offers a significantly validating reading of apophatic and a-theological texts. Instead of a disability, this mythologised autism is read as a valid and valuable poetic theological thinking. The thesis argues that a mythological autism could be envisioned as a trinity, analogous to the three-in-one Godhead of Christianity. This means that each facet of the mythological autistic trinity is indissoluble from the others, are all are equally autism. The first element is termed Mindfulness of Separation, and this entails absence and unknowing as has been conceptualised in Baron Cohen’s theory of Mindblindness.
    [Show full text]
  • "Genetics of Mathematical Aptitude" In
    Genetics of Mathematical Advanced article Article Contents Aptitude • Introduction • Quantifying Mathematical Aptitude Varun Warrier, Autism Research Centre, Department of Psychiatry, University of • Mathematical Aptitude, Disability and Talent Cambridge, Cambridge, UK • Individual and Group Differences in MA Simon Baron-Cohen, Autism Research Centre, Department of Psychiatry, Uni- • Molecular Genetic Studies • versity of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK and CLASS Clinic, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Conclusions NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT), Cambridgeshire, UK Online posting date: 16th August 2016 Normative variation in mathematical aptitude and arithmetic, suggesting evolutionary conservation of brain (MA) is relevant to many aspects of societal regions for numerosity (Hubbard et al., 2008). Several studies functioning, in particular for occupations in sci- have established numerosity in infants, suggesting that certain ence, technology, engineering and mathematics aspects of MA may be innate, and these are supported by studies that have identified a heritable component to MA. More recent (STEM). Though elements of numerosity have studies have focused on other aspects of MA, including sub- been identified in some animals, complex MA is domains of MA, and genetic correlation with other traits such uniquely human. Several studies, using a variety as reading and general intelligence (g). These studies have also of designs, have investigated the heritability of investigated changes in heritability of MA with time. A few MA, and the extreme ends of the dimension of this studies have also investigated the heritability of mathematical tal- trait – mathematics learning disability (MLD) and ent (MT) and mathematical learning disability (MLD). Over the mathematical talent (MT). Initial estimates of the last decade, molecular genetic investigations have provided novel heritability of MA ranged from 0.2 to 0.9, while insights into the genetic architecture of MA, suggesting that MA later studies identify more modest heritabilities is polygenic.
    [Show full text]
  • The Autistic Art of Failure? Unknowing Imperfect Systems of Sexuality and Gender
    The Autistic Art of Failure? Unknowing Imperfect Systems of Sexuality and Gender Jackson-Perry, D. (2020). The Autistic Art of Failure? Unknowing Imperfect Systems of Sexuality and Gender. Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 22(1), 221-229. https://doi.org/10.16993/sjdr.634 Published in: Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Queen's University Belfast - Research Portal: Link to publication record in Queen's University Belfast Research Portal Publisher rights Copyright 2020 the authors. This is an open access article published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the author and source are cited. General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Queen's University Belfast Research Portal is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The Research Portal is Queen's institutional repository that provides access to Queen's research output. Every effort has been made to ensure that content in the Research Portal does not infringe any person's rights, or applicable UK laws. If you discover content in the Research Portal that you believe breaches copyright or violates any law, please contact [email protected]. Download date:01. Oct. 2021 Jackson-Perry, David. (2020). The Autistic Art of Failure? Unknowing Imperfect Systems of Sexuality and Gender. Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 22(1): 221–229.
    [Show full text]
  • Evaluating Atypical Imagination and Cognition in Autism: Working in the Arts/Science Interspace
    Open Research Online The Open University’s repository of research publications and other research outputs Evaluating Atypical Imagination and Cognition in Autism: Working in the Arts/Science Interspace Book Section How to cite: Roth, Ilona (2019). Evaluating Atypical Imagination and Cognition in Autism: Working in the Arts/Science Interspace. In: Shaughnessy, Nicola and Barnard, Philip eds. Performing Psychologies: Imagination, Creativity and Dramas of the Mind. Performance and Science: Interdisciplinary Dialogues. Bloomsbury, pp. 69–84. For guidance on citations see FAQs. c [not recorded] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Version: Accepted Manuscript Link(s) to article on publisher’s website: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/performing-psychologies-9781474260855/ Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online’s data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. oro.open.ac.uk 4 Evaluating atypical imagination and cognition in autism: working in the arts science interspace Ilona Roth Hans Asperger, writing in 1944, and later translated by Uta Frith observed that ‘Autistic children are able to produce original ideas. Indeed they can only be original, and mechanical learning is hard for them…..the special abilities and disabilities of autistic people are interwoven.’1 Yet in 1991 Frith wrote: ‘The appearance of rapt attention and deep absorption in their own preoccupations may be partly
    [Show full text]
  • Evidence-Based Practices for Students with Autism Spectrum
    EVIDENCE–BASED PRACTICES FOR STUDENTS WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Doctorate In Educational Leadership By Lindsey M. Denniston 2017 SIGNATURE PAGE DISSERTATION: EVIDENCE-BASEDPRACTICES FOR AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER AUTHOR: Lindsey M. Denniston DATE SUBMITTED: Summer 2017 College of Education and Integrative Studies Dr. Amy Gimino Dissertation Committee Chair Department of Education Dr. Joanne Van Boxtel Department of Education Dr. Shannon Avery Principal Pinion Hills Elementary School ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to thank my family and friends who offered support from simply asking “How is it going?” to listening to me rant and rave over the last three years. Every word was helpful and meaningful to me. To my committee for offering support and pushing me to better myself in ways I would not have thought possible three years ago. Thank you. A special thank you to my sisters Jamie and Amber, and brother-in-law Joe who stepped up and listened to me talk endlessly about my topic and lent an ear for me often. Maybe one day you “will actually read” the whole thing. You were and are appreciated. Mom, you “always knew I was smart”. From the bottom of my heart I love you and thank you for shaping me into the person I am today. That little girl with her hair sticking out everywhere, papers flying, and dragging her jacket became a doctor! Kalise and Kylan, I love you more than anything in the world. I’ll remember working on “homework” while watching endlessly the Lion King, Cars and your latest obsessions as “cuddle time”.
    [Show full text]
  • Autism, Parallel Embodiment, and Elemental Empathy
    Scheherazade’s Sea – autism, parallel embodiment, and elemental empathy. Dawn-joy Sau Mun Leong A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy UNSW Art & Design April 2016 PLEASE TYPE THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES Thesis/Dissertation Sheet Surname or Family name: Leong First name: Dawn-joy Other name/s: Sau Mun Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: PhD School: UNSW Art & Design Faculty: Title: Scheherazade’s Sea – autism, parallel embodiment and elemental empathy Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE) Epic expedition. Ability and disability. Approbation and excoriation. Admiration and derision. Traversing alien social interactional landscapes, balancing contradicting extremes of mental anguish and physical pain, with unadulterated wonderment; the autist grapples constantly with a heightened consciousness of Parallel Embodiment: juxtaposed oxymoronic existence of Self within the realm of Other, as if awake inside a silent, roaring dreamscape. “Scheherazade’s Sea – autism, parallel embodiment, and elemental empathy” is not merely an investigation of compelling phenomena, or a crafted showcase of autism. It is an invitation to enter and partake of a parallel- embodied domain, sharing sympathetic resonances via channels through which the autist apprehends and experiences the world: intrinsic detail-focused cognition, and sensory portals of touch, smell, taste, hearing and sight. The ‘social deficits’ ascribed to Autism Spectrum Condition in current authoritative diagnostic systems
    [Show full text]
  • The Use of Clinical Judgment in Differentiating Symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder from Those of Other Childhood Conditions: a Delphi Study
    University of Denver Digital Commons @ DU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies 1-1-2019 The Use of Clinical Judgment in Differentiating Symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder from Those of Other Childhood Conditions: A Delphi Study Staci Jordan University of Denver Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd Part of the School Psychology Commons Recommended Citation Jordan, Staci, "The Use of Clinical Judgment in Differentiating Symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder from Those of Other Childhood Conditions: A Delphi Study" (2019). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1587. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/1587 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. The Use of Clinical Judgment in Differentiating Symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder From Those of Other Childhood Conditions: A Delphi Study A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Morgridge College of Education University of Denver ____________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy ____________ by Staci Jordan June 2019 Advisor: Dr. Devadrita Talapatra ©Copyright by Staci Jordan 2019 All Rights Reserved Abstract Author: Staci Jordan Title: The Use of Clinical Judgment in Differentiating Symptoms of Autism Spectrum Disorder From Those of Other Childhood Conditions: A Delphi Study Advisor: Dr. Devadrita Talapatra Degree Date: June 2019 Abstract More and more, due to long waiting lists at diagnostic clinics and access barriers for certain segments of the population, schools are often the first environment in which children are evaluated for ASD (Sullivan, 2013).
    [Show full text]
  • Emotional Sensory
    ADULT ASD (Level1/2)/Asperger’s TRAITS LIST By Tip of the Asperg. 2018 Emotional Sensory High to extreme levels of anxiety or autonomic Sensory Processing Disorder is commonly arousal from a young age (panic, palpitations, associated with those on the spectrum. Please hyperventilation, etc). note however, that not all people with ASD will also have SPD and vice versa. Tendency to become depressed or despondent from an early age. Will often have fluctuating sensory needs; alternates between an extreme need/yearning for Often switches rapidly between utter elation/joy sensory input/stimulation (sensory and anger or despondence. seeking/hyposensitivity) to being overwhelmed and resisting or avoiding stimulation or sensory input Seems to have an emotional wisdom well beyond (sensory avoidance/hypersensitivity). their years. Clothing choices dependant on sensory needs. Cares a great deal and often has a higher than usual Often very particular about fabrics, textures, tags, level of empathy but struggles to access, express or necklines, colour choices, etc. Dresses for comfort communicate such complex and overwhelming rather than fashion. emotion. Can negatively react to synthetic, chemical or Unusually deep, sensitive, curious or psychologically unnatural smells, fabrics or other sensory withdrawn from a young age. stimulants. Has a tendency to magnetise towards pure or natural products for this reason. High-anxiety or shyness can be misread by others as being rude, cold or uninterested. Synaesthesia; ability to feel or taste colours, see visual auras, etc. Appears avoidant due to heightened levels of anxiety or hypersensitivity. May have an ability to feel or sense energy. Some people on the spectrum even communicate Prone to emotional meltdowns, shutdowns, burn- through energy when other means are inaccessible out, chronic fatigue.
    [Show full text]