sionnach wrote:

"Paul E. Schoen" wrote:
snip
Anyone who picks up the book is aware of that, and as a insight into the way
some autistic or Asperger's people percieve the world, it's worth reading.
As science, though.... I hae me doots.
I'll add that if I were going to recommend a book to give insight on what
it's like to be autistic, it would be "The Curious Incident of the Dog In
the Nighttime", by Mark Haddon.
snip
For a while I followed alt.support.autism and at that time that book was
frequently criticisized for presenting too much of a stereotype of an
autistic. Rainman had similar criticism. Having read the Curous Incident
I am inclined to agree with their criticism. The term autism encompases
a wide spectrum of characteristics and detailed portrait of a single
character is going to be misleading. Both works found it convenient to
show autistics who are extremely high functionionng in their
mathematical abilities, with extremely poor social skills and insight,
and math focussed obsessions and compulsions. An extreme personality
makes for more interesting reading, but not for general understanding.

Less than half of all autististics are high functioning, not all of
those are high functioning in math, and a small fraction of those ar
geniouses. While autism implies some degree of problems with social
skills the degree is variable and among high funcioning autistics often
compensatable. And while obsessions and compulsions are common (perhaps
as substitutes for social interactions) they need not be math based.

Instead I woud recommend books by neurologists such as Oliver Sachs or
Ramachandran. (I also recommend Klawens and Luria on general neurology,
but they write little about autism.) Their works as a whole cover a
larger variety of forms of autism, but also give more insight into the
general functioning of the brain that can help put the different forms
of autism into perspective.

--
Bill Clodius
los the lost and net the pet to email