Microsoft suspends autistic boy's X-box account for "cheating," which apparently means being too good at gaming.
Oy vey. Not that this kind of ridiculousness is unexpected from Microsoft, but still. I disagree, however, with the implication made by someone quoted in the article claiming that it wouldn't occur to an autistic child to cheat. Uh, no. And as for the commentators who don't think it's possible for an autistic kid to be good at video games? Ha. Ha. And also, ha.
North Carolina Disability rights groups quite rightly object to a new state policy allowing community colleges to refuse admission to applicants deemed "threatening to campus security."
This policy is pretty gross, but sadly not very surprising given the surveillance that neuro-atypical students on college campuses are subjected to. I have to wonder if the Arizona shootings played a role in this. Way to let the terrorists win, guys. This is particularly distressing because community colleges are supposed to be open to everyone, and can be particularly helpful in helping low-income students and/or people with disabilities to access higher education. But in North Carolina the policy of open admissions is now being revoked in favor of the ever-nebulous concept of "security."
New DSM V criteria for autism revealed, including explanation of severity levels.
I think the criteria themselves are better than the previous criteria which was proposed, as well as the current DSM IV, largely because it is so much more specific and therefore less open to misinterpretation. Still far from perfect and does not, I think, really capture all of the major aspects of the autistic experience. And I am really not a fan of the "severity" labels, which I don't think are very useful for describing individuals. The information that someone has, say, a "level two autism diagnosis," doesn't really tell you much about that person as an individual, what their specific challenges and strengths are, etc. I can easily see how this system can be used to put autistic people in particular boxes, with all sorts of consequences, without any regards to individual needs. "Sorry, we don't provide x service to Level One autistics." "A level three autistic cannot be mainstreamed." This could very well happen, and it is scary. I would hate to think that one system of ranking autistic people according to perceived worth and ability is going to be dismantled only to put another, arguably more rigid one, in its place. Why can't we just have individualized diagnoses? Yes, it is "harder" (for diagnosticians, service providers, etc.) but that fact should not prevent autistic people from receiving the best possible services according to individual needs.
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7 comments:
"A level three autistic cannot be mainstreamed."
Sarah, the fact is that level 3 and most level 2 type of autistics cannot be mainstreamed and mainstreaming wouldn't actually be good for them. However, if Leve 2 and 3 can receive added support in a supporting environment, even if that means segregration, is best for them and will help achieve an optimum outcome.
Sarah, I agree with you on the autism severity criteria being rather arbitrary. I think it's sad that there are no severity criteria for the dialy living impairment. Other than that, I like the newly proposed criteria.
Dear Sarah,
I'm going to leave a couple of comments
#1
Turns out the young XBox player in fact did get help -- "cheating" in Microsoftvillia. And his mother knew that he'd gotten help, but she didn't recognize it as "cheating"
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/107371-Autistic-Xbox-Players-Mother-Admits-He-Cheated
Jennifer Zdenek made Microsoft out to be a cruel overlord, telling the media that her autistic son Julius Jackson's only form of entertainment had been ruined. All of his achievements were taken away and it now said "Cheater" next to Jackson's Xbox Live Gamertag. Microsoft's head of Xbox Live enforcement Stephen Toulouse was adamant that the boy cheated to acquire certain achievements, having checked out the situation himself.
Zdenek now tells Q13 Fox News that her son gave his Xbox Live information to a third party, who used illegitimate methods to give Jackson Halo 3's Recon Armor. She shared an email from Toulouse that says:
I am not sure what I think about the new DSM-5 criteria & severity levels. Among other things I haven't seen a discussion on how severity levels can change over time, or even fluctuate -- or that a person may have a given "severity level" in one domain & another level in a second domain.
I just don't know.
I think that the reduction to the two dimensional categories they chose, which are themselves only sequelae of more fundamental characteristics or differences, is problematic to begin with. The choices are utterly tautological: they represent the things that the assessment instruments that some of the authors had already developed measure. It's like the old joke about the drunk who loses his keys in the alley but is looking for them out on the main street because the street lamps there provide better light. With only those two dimensions as a result, the "severity" scales cannot hope to capture the variety of peaks and valleys of ability and disability in the autistic population. And "severity" is the wrong term to use. I fear that there will be widespread denial of services to people in need, and significant under- and misdiagnosis, as a consequence of the proposed DSM-5 language and severity scales.
I think the social criteria are too restrictive. I know plenty of people (myself included) who meet one or two of those criteria and are currently considered autistic.
Regarding subtyping, I think rather than subtyping by severity, they should subtype by clinical features. For example, autism with nonverbal learning disability (high verbal skills & low nonverbal), Newson Syndrome (autism with manipulative demand avoidance and pretend play), visual-spatial autism (autism with spatial skills better than verbal), regressive autism (autism with developmental regression in early-to-mid childhood), catatonic autism (autism with catatonic features, such as freezing, involuntary movements, etc), Multiple-Complex Developmental Disorder (combo of autism, mood disorders and psychotic features) - all of those are subtypes with at least some empirical support for dividing them, and could be useful in predicting how the child will respond to treatments (eg catatonic autism results in very high risk of adverse reactions to neuroleptics, Newson Syndrome kids respond better to nondirective prompts than to straightforward commands, NLD/autistic respond less well to visual prompts than visual/spatial autism, etc).
Do the new diagnostic criteria mention the need for a consultation with a medical geneticist to get a proper medical diagnosis of whatever genetic syndrome the apparently-autistic person being investigated might have?
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