Reading Group

This month’s reading group was focused on the relationship between interoception and autism. We provided a reading about how being more in connection to your body can lead to lower levels of anxiety, including for those with autism, and a video providing an overview of interoception. This reading group followed a fascinating lab meeting at […]

The topic for the first Autism Reading Group of the year was Autism in girls and the diagnosis gap. For this meeting, we had a TED talk Niamh McCann: girls with Asperger’s and a reading. Autism has historically been viewed mainly as a male condition. The ratio of boys diagnosed compared to girls is 4:1, but research has found the true ratio

By Prof Nicola Yuill The topic for this session of the reading group was mental health, something that has loomed large in the news during Covid-19 restrictions. We had two readings, one giving figures for conditions that can affect many autistic people, such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and the other being a very thoughtful

Terminology to think about We started off the conversation talking about the useful table included in the reading which gave alternatives for different terminology we can use when talking about autistic people, for example, instead of using ‘at risk of autism’ to use ‘increased likelihood’. There is a drive to specifically change the language we

If you would like to sign up for our next Autism Reading Group please email acorns@sussex.ac.uk What is creativity and how can we measure it? Creativity is hard to define and it’s also hard to pinpoint when someone is being creative or not. In our meeting we said that everyone can be creative and potentially

What is predictive coding Our March meeting looked at predictive coding theory which attempts to explain how our brain predicts things. One of the world expert’s in this field, Professor Andy Clark, came along to tell us how this works. He said the brain makes predictions to give us structure and meaning to our world.

Temple Grandin In our February meeting we discussed a TED Talk by Temple Grandin: “The world needs all kinds of minds”. She celebrated that autistic brains have different ways of thinking and that these different ways of thinking are essential for society to function. It was an interesting talk to hear from her perspective. We

The reading for this meeting was an interesting article ‘A new way to diagnose and treat autism’ by Dr Ami Klin who uses eye-tracking technology to quantify sociability by looking at how autistic children view the world. He found that in early childhood, before a diagnosis would be made, children who are later diagnosed have

Who can come to the Autism Reading Group? Anyone who is interested in autism! We have an optional reading for each meeting for those who are interested in learning more about the topic. Everyone is welcome, whether you have autism yourself, are a parent, teacher, educational psychologist, practitioner working with autistic people or just have