Talk:Autism spectrum

Frequency

This is described as "1 in 100 children". Autistic children grow into autistic adults so surely "1 in 100" is more accurate. Polymath uk (talk) 21:35, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

that could be the case but Wikipedia should not reach any conclusion that isn't explicitly stated by the sources. The source for that statement is this fact statement by the UN: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/autism-spectrum-disorderswhich clearly says "About 1 in 100 children has autism."

You can read more about this policy in WP:SYNTH and WP:NOR Theaxeisaxe (talk) 11:18, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

"About 1 in 100 children has autism." I did not realize that it was relatively rare. Does the source provide any statistical data? Dimadick (talk) 22:33, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

My brother in Christ, it is in the link that he sent Eldaniay (talk) 03:24, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Proposal to change or remove the infobox image

Hi all. This is something I'd normally be bold about, but because there were two previous inconclusive discussions about this (1 and 2) and because I'm not sure what else I'd put, I'm proposing this here, hopefully with a defintive consensus. I feel like the current image is far from representative enough of ASD to be there and this is for multiple reasons. All children like (and are encouraged) to stack things up; a child stacking up objects in what could be a perfectly neurotypical situation is, to me, not the best image to be the most prominent one in the article. This trait feels way too specific in an article that's about a spectrum. Besides, this trait is far from the most significant, prevalent or relevant one for autism. The image could still be used in its context. Just not in the infobox.
There seems to be a consensus that "any image is better than no image", so the problem of what image to put in its place arises. Some of the previous propositions suggested using an image with an identifiable person, apparently violating Commons' rule that "Images must not unfairly (...) demean the subject". I feel like that's reasonable. So that leaves us with more generic images. File:Autistic Mind 2.png has been suggested. Me, I'd adopt the infinity rainbow. I think both are good choices.
I'm glad to head what people have to say about this. Let's try to reach a consensus this time because, to be honest, I feel like the current image is a really inadequate one. Rkieferbaum (talk) 18:32, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

I do not support the use of File:Autistic Mind 2.png, as it is nothing more than clip art. The infinity rainbow seems like a good choice if you feel we absolutely must have an image. Mind you that in articles, and in infoboxes, images are not mandatory. If there is not a good image, there is no need to have a placeholder or unsatisfactory image. I do agree that the existing image is unsatisfactory, as it is, as you say, not necessarily indicative of a pathology. Kimen8 (talk) 19:50, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

The File:Autistic Mind 2.png is not really useful in representing the condition. I agree that current image of a child stacking up stuff is not a good representation of autism (it is also potentially misleading and stereotyping).

It is very hard to find real-life or graphic representation for autism, unlike other conditions like bipolar disorder or anxiety disorder for example. But we could have a graphical representation of autism that lists core deficits seen in autism with varying "intensities" or "shades" (this is why the rainbow is commonly used).

So the idea is this, as per DSM-5, individuals with autism have difficulties in two main domains:

• A: Social communication and interaction difficulties
  • A1: Deficits in social-emotional reciprocity
  • A2: Deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction
  • A3: Deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships
• B: Restricted, Repetitive Patterns of Behavior, Interests, or Activities
  • B1: Stereotyped or repetitive motor movements, use of objects, or speech (example "lining up toys", echolalia, idiosyncratic phrases)
  • B2: Insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, or ritualized patterns of verbal or nonverbal behavior
  • B3: Highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus
  • B4: Hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input or unusual interest in sensory aspects of the environment

To be diagnosed with ASD, the individual must exhibit both A and B, but they can have varying difficulties in the subset of criteria A1, A2, A3, and B1, B2, B3, B4.

For example, one person with autism may have severe social difficulties (let's say 0.8 on scale of 1 for A1, and 0.5 in A2, but may have 0 in A3) and for B, may have severe repetitive motions (say 0.8 for B1), sameness (0.7 on B2), but may or may not have other two criteria. Regardless, if they anyway meet A and B, it is generally sufficient.

So we can have each color for the two main domains with shades (representing intensities) and each color for the individual criteria within A and B, I think this is probably a better representation autism. A image that comes close to this representation that I could find on the internet are this and this. I'm not good in graphic design so someone else could create something similar and upload to commons. --WikiLinuz (talk) 22:51, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

I really like the second image you suggested, it's way better than the first suggested image. To the user that suggested these images, may I have permission to upload and add the image? Or are you more comfortable uploading it yourself? Tonkarooson (talk) *new editor* 03:23, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

@Tonkarooson: hi there! Those images aren't free so ideally we wouldn't use them, specifically. @WikiLinuz: suggests that someone familiar with graphic design creates something inspired by them. I'd be happy to but I haven't had the time, lately. I do like the suggestion, though. Rkieferbaum (talk) 20:32, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Ah I see, so what kind of picture would be better sourced for Wikipedia? Tonkarooson (talk) *new editor* 22:53, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

A picture under free license, see https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Choosing_a_license --WikiLinuz (talk) 23:54, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

List of Newsgroups Grouped By 'Autism Centricity'

Proposal: Add a section to "ASD in the media" that shows all historic and defunct organizations that cover autism and the many metrics that they can be 'graded' by.

Why? : Newsgroups that focus on covering ASD (or that spend a fraction of their time, money, and coverage on the topic of ASD) are a part of the media that we consume. Therefore, a page that is focused on "ASD in the media" is obliged to include a list documenting some of these organizations in some level of detail.

Definitions

'Austism Centricity': how focused a news organization is on the topic of ASD (for simplicity's sake, we could just include organizations that claim to focus on ASD or organizations that have a massive amount of content on ASD (comparative to the content they have on other topics) and have (or have had) a name that intentionally references some part of ASD (See spectrumnews.org as an example).

Newsgroup: any group that assumes/claims a role in the distribution of (factual) information (although it might be interesting to include and the amount of attention paid to ASD by satirical news networks)

Other Potential Solutions

- A wikipedia page/list of all groups that claim to 'dispense news', sorted by their primary foci and every other metric that we care to sort by.

- Another page that would categorize newsgroups by their coverage of and focus on ASD.

Thanks for reading this. This is my first time joining a talk channel on Wikipedia besides 2 minor edits I made on two other articles that I wanted to appends reasons for those edits to. I hope that this suggestion is decent and actionable, and that this did not read terribly. My reason for suggesting this was that I found this group called spectrumnews.org and their about page seemed pretty terrible. Naturally, I looked to Wikipedia for answers and was met with nothing but a linkless mention to this group in a disambiguation page for spectrum news.

If anything I wrote here was downright terrible, please feel free to let me know. If this falls into the category of original research, please let me know. Sorry if this was a bad 'idea commit'. In the case that this is a bad 'idea commit', please know that I did not intent for it to be so. Robitium (talk) 17:09, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

I skimmed this a little bit but it seems (great) (wonderful), I would most likely wouldn't add much since there is this already here, as well is this here and some other articles that are similar. So I would add that "main article here" thing. But I'll leave it to more experienced editors than me about this. Tonkarooson (talk) 01:19, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Should “neurodevelopmental disorder and disability” be added?

Many sources, including the CDC and the National Autistic Society (UK), state it as such. It is also a disability from a medical and legal standpoint. PicoMath (talk) 00:59, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Draft:Special interest (autism)

It's been started by a new editor. Notifying in case you'd be interested in providing feedback or helping out. Best, — Usedtobecool ☎️ 03:14, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

There has to be greater diversity of gender, ethnicity and age ranges in the pictures

Autism is not a diagnosis explicit to children; children grow up into adults and many children are also unidentified until well into adulthood. All the pictures except one are pictures of young boys below the age of 3 years old; all but one picture is of a white person. Furthermore, none of the pictures show groups of autistics together or provide examples of autism activism in practice. While Temple Grandin is a known public speaker on autism, and it's great that she at least counters the overall image the article implies to be a diagnosis for young white boys, she's also a very stereotypical example that not everyone can or will relate to. There are better examples of famous autistic people than Temple Grandin that also convey the broader range of autism as a spectrum among people.

I would also advocate to change or remove the box of how to identify autism, because it seems to be explicitly written on how to identify it in children i.e. lining up toys, not engaging in pretend play, despite other portions of the article trying to remain age neutral.

Also, this article is too damn long in general and should be broken up or reorganized. Finally, remove the Autism Speaks logotype as an example of an autistic representation logo, since the organization is highly controversial and it's better to dedicate a separate article to explain what they are. Entr0pic08 (talk) 18:26, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to change it. We encourage you to be bold in updating pages, because wikis like ours develop faster when everybody edits. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. You can always preview your edits before you publish them or test them out in the sandbox. If you need additional help, check out our getting started page or ask the friendly folks at the Teahouse. -- NotCharizard ^🗨 23:56, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Failed edit

I'm trying to publish an edit but it's not working with an error message saying, "Unable to determine wikitext upload result." What is this and what does it mean? Tonkarooson (talk) *new editor* 00:55, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

I got the edit but not the reference Tonkarooson (talk) *new editor* 05:30, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Request to change the word "symptoms" to "traits" in infobox

Autism Spectrum Disorder is not a disease or illness and I feel like this should be changed in any way possible. I think adding a new template (if that can happen) named "traits" would be better for medical diagnosis that are similar to Autism. Tonkarooson (talk) *new editor* 03:34, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

I've removed the word "disorder" from the infobox title, so it matches the article title.

Per the link from the word "Symptoms" in the infobox ({{Infobox medical condition}}), with my emphasis here:

Signs and symptoms are the observed or detectable signs, and experienced symptoms of an illness, injury, or condition.

Symptoms are not limited to disease or illness, so I do not think any change is required. Mitch Ames (talk) 04:03, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

I never had a problem with the word "disorder". Autism is also not a disease or illness, and most people with Autism (including me) prefer the word "traits" over "symptoms". It could also give the perspective that Autism is a bad thing.

I'm not trying to make this a big issue, I just wanted to make this article feel more friendly, since this can be a sensitive subject to be discussed, and there's some controversy too. Tonkarooson (talk) *new editor* 02:38, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Proposal to merge Asperger syndrome here

As Asperger syndrome is a form of ASD ("6A02.0 Autism spectrum disorder without disorder of intellectual development and with mild or no impairment of functional language", ICD-11 for Morality and Morbidity Statistics, 2018-06-18{{citation}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)), shouldn't it be here instead of on its own page?
COArSe D1RTxxx (talk) 23:34, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose - It is a good point, and some rearrangement would make a lot of sense, but on purely practical grounds, Autism spectrum is over 8,500 words and Asperger syndrome is nearly 6,000. Even allowing for much duplication, the resulting article would just be too big. And who is going to carry out that merge? A better solution would be to treat Asperger syndrome as a spin-out subject, giving it a heading on this page and a link. Then duplication on Asperger's syndrome could be reduced. Causes and such like are already covered here, and could simply be linked from that page to the appropriate section. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 07:20, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

  I do agree with you about both articles being joined together it will only make the article long and duplicate the words , as someone who was diagnosed with aspergers i would find this really frustrating,but that's just me and its not about me but others. Cobyc09 (talk) 10:56, 9 May 2024 (UTC)