Michelle Dawson on Autism and Atypicality
Conversations with Tyler
Conversations with Tyler
4.8 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 1 August 2018
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Perhaps no one else in the world more appreciates the challenges facing a better understanding of autism than Michelle Dawson. An autistic herself, she began researching her condition after experiencing discrimination at her job. "Because I had to address these legal issues and questions," she tells Tyler, "I did actually look at the autism literature, and suddenly I had information I could really work with. Suddenly there it was, this information that I was supposed to be too stupid to work with." And so she continued reading papers - lots and lots of papers - and is now an influential researcher in her own right.
For Michelle, the best way to understand autism is to think of it as atypical information processing. Autistic brains function differently, and these highly varied divergences lead to biases and misunderstanding among typical thinkers, including autism researchers.
In her conversation with Tyler, she outlines the current thinking on autism, including her ideas about cognitive versatility and optionality, hyperlexia and other autistic strengths, why different tests yield wildly different measures of IQ among autistics, her 'massive bias' against segregating autistics, how autistic memory is different, why sometimes a triangle is just a freaking triangle, and more.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.
Recorded July 9th, 2018
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, |
| 0:08.3 | bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. |
| 0:12.5 | Learn more at mercatis.org. |
| 0:15.2 | And for more conversations, including videos, transcripts, and upcoming dates, visit |
| 0:20.4 | ConversationsWithT Tyler.com. |
| 0:28.8 | Today we're up in Montreal and I'm very honored to be here with Michelle Dawson. |
| 0:33.7 | Michelle is one of the people I admire most, actually. |
| 0:37.6 | She has become a very well-known and very influential autism researcher. |
| 0:42.8 | Her background, she is herself autistic. |
| 0:45.8 | In some regards, you could describe her as self-taught, but she has become a kind of one-woman |
| 0:51.6 | force advocating for more science and you're shaking your head now. |
| 0:58.0 | Non-navigate. |
| 0:59.0 | She is arguing for science and ethics being brought into the autism discourse and discourse |
| 1:06.0 | more generally. |
| 1:07.0 | Would you accept that description of what you do? |
| 1:09.5 | Oh, good enough. |
| 1:10.7 | Good enough, okay. |
| 1:11.8 | Let me start with a very general question. |
| 1:13.8 | If you ask, what would be the most underrated, non-accountable, and mysterious force controlling |
| 1:20.7 | people's lives? |
| 1:22.2 | And I said that right now it was actually something called the DSM, Diagnostic and Statistical |
| 1:27.6 | Manual of Mental Disorders, which influences a lot of issues in the law, what insurance |
... |
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