Touch screen devices are a way of life for many of us. We use them not only to be productive, but also for entertainment (watching videos, playing games), tracking expenses, shopping online, reading news – you name an activity, and it’s highly likely that these devices can help us accomp…

Steve Silberman’s book Neurotribes is a must-read that raises some interesting questions about the history of the autism diagnosis.  Part of what he writes will be familiar if you’ve read the original Asperger and Kanner papers, but even then he’s found some striking new twists that were b…

When we engage in the creation of our own art forms, we receive big benefits to our minds, both physically and mentally. When we produce art with our own hands, there is increased neural connectivity in the area of the brain that deals with introspection, memory, and self-monitoring. by Caileigh Fl…

By Stephie King I was going stir crazy as usual. I needed an outlet. My modus operandi was to be emotional while having no outlet and to seek emotionlessness in thought. I stifled myself until I couldn’t handle stress. Usually I would cry. I used to cry all day. This went on for years. Over se…

“There’s this one thing a friend of the Dalai Lama said after being tortured and imprisoned: to solve his imprisonment, he had compassion for his torturers, not anger, but compassion. Replace anger with compassion and you get a happier person,” Ben By Nancy Lea Speer It is said that if a Great B…

by Heather Galloway As a “girl” with autism, the subject of girls and autism is dear to my heart. In spite of the questions I get about girls and autism, until now, I hadn’t prepared an adequate response. I simply told people what it was like for me and gave a really general answer. So, I decided to…

One of the tenets of ABA is to provide evidence-based practice. The best way to help us do this is to keep up with the literature! Each month, Sam Blanco, PhD, LBA, BCBA will select one journal article and provide discussion questions for professionals working within the ABA community. The following…

Body language signals can tell if your date is bored By Engelbert Lau Based on my personal experience, dating can be challenging for someone on the autistic spectrum.  I find it very difficult to read body language.  Body language is confusing, as two people can have very different reactions to the …

Brain scans of people with autism reveal many things — structures that are unusually large or small, or atypical patterns of activity. But increasing evidence suggests that autism begins well before birth. By the time a person is diagnosed, her brain may have already adjusted to compensate for the c…

For Savannah Treviño-Casias, this week’s news about the U.S. college admissions cheating scandal was galling, considering how much red tape the Arizona State University senior went through to get disability accommodations when she took the SAT exam. “It felt like such a big slap in the face,” said T…

Doing the same task over and over improves most people’s speed and efficiency, and helps them do it in a new context. But for people with autism, too much repetition can make it difficult to apply the learned skill to a new situation, suggests a study published 5 October in Nature Neuroscience1. “We…

Today’s news that autists Stephen Shore and Valerie Paradiz have joined the Autism Speaks Board of Directors came as a surprise to many.  The announcement follows on the heels of other big news from that organization:Mr. Wright has stepped down as chairman and resigned from the board;Mrs. Wrigh…

By Keri Bowers In sharing poems & art for peace throughout the month of September, we support the belief that peace begins within each of us, calling forth individual, collective action to manifest it in the world. The actual day of commemoration each year is September 21st. In a sadly ironic a…

An interview with Joe Biel, founder of Microcosm Publishing, and author of “Good Trouble: Building a Successful Life & Business with Asperger’s” What age were you when you were diagnosed with Aspergers? I was 32 when I was ​first ​diagnosed​ with 99% certainty and I was 37 whe…