Supporting Autistic People in Health Care, Education, and The Criminal Justice System: An Interview with CRAE’s Laura Crane

May 8, 2018January 31, 2022 by Shannon Des Roches Rosa

Shannon Rosa from Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism and Corina Becker from Autism Women’s Network interviewed Laura Crane from CRAE, the UK-based Centre for Research in Autism and Education about her work in supporting best practices in health care and education for autistic people, and also demonstrating that Autistics, children specifically, can be reliable witnesses during criminal investigations. Laura Crane | Photo: CRAE [image: Smiling white woman with long brown hair.] Shannon Rosa: Why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about the work that you’re doing for CRAE, because it seems like you’re involved in so many things. Laura Crane: My research focuses on two main areas. The first is looking at how we can support autistic children and adults within the criminal and family justice systems. A lot of that work has come from police officers and barristers and other legal professionals assuming that autistic children and…

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IMFAR: Now With More Autistic Priorities! TPGA’s 2017 Conference Report

June 3, 2017January 31, 2022 by Shannon Des Roches Rosa

Shannon Des Roches Rosa Senior Editor, TPGA Welcome to IMFAR 2017! [image: three white autistic folks: Corina Becker, Steven Kapp, & Carol Greenburg, posing by the “Welcome to IMFAR 2017” sign.] We have been reporting from IMFAR, the annual International Meeting for Autism Research, since 2011. This year we provided general live coverage via Twitter, with select roundups including the Press Conference, and highlights from sessions such as Autism and Aging, Understanding Barriers to Autism Diagnoses for Children from Racial/Ethnic Minority Groups in the U.S., Mental Health Crises in Autistic Youth, and Autism and Sexuality. We also co-hosted the #AutIMFAR chat with autistic and autism research community members. While the research presented at IMFAR continues to be varied in scope, and is still too disproportionately skewed towards prenatal, infant, and early childhood findings, our takeaway is that the 2017 meeting in San Francisco had the biggest increase in neurodiversity-oriented content and attendees we’ve seen so far.…

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Autism and Biowearables: An interview with Matthew Goodwin at IMFAR 2017

May 23, 2017January 31, 2022 by Shannon Des Roches Rosa

Carol Greenburg and Matthew Goodwin at the IMFAR 2017 Press Conference [image: White woman with short platinum hair and glasses posing with a taller white man with a shaved head and goatee.] Northeastern University researcher Matthew Goodwin gave an IMFAR 2017 keynote speech about his work on “Wearable Sensor-Based Physiological and Physical Activity Biomarkers for Use in Laboratory and Naturalistic Environments to Assess Arousal and Repetitive Motor Movements in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder.” Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism’s Carol Greenburg and Shannon Rosa, and Autism Women’s Network’s Corina Becker, spoke to Goodwin after the IMFAR press conference, about the real-life applications of his work, and how they can benefit autistic people. Carol Greenburg: What constitutes a behavior, insofar as it’s something that needs to be mitigated? A behavior like flapping or other “stims” may mean something different to the person who’s doing the intervention, as opposed to the autistic person themselves.…

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Autism and Suicidality: Conversations Between Researchers and Autistic People

May 10, 2017January 31, 2022 by Shannon Des Roches Rosa

Photo © Gayan Gunawardana | Creative Commons [image: Backlit photo of a sad ponytailed person with their head down, in profile in front of an ocean sunset.] Dr. Sarah Cassidy co-chaired a SIG (Special Interest Group) on Autism and Suicidality at IMFAR 2016, in Baltimore. We weren’t able to attend her session, but Dr. Cassidy was kind enough to take time, later that same day, to talk with TPGA editors Shannon Rosa and Carol Greenburg, autistic autism researcher Dr. Steven Kapp, and Autistic Self Advocacy Network Executive Director Julia Bascom. The following is a transcript of our conversation. —- Shannon Rosa: Tell us about what you discussed in the SIG. What has your research revealed about suicidality in autistic people? Dr. Cassidy: We’ve published two studies so far. The first study we did, which is free to access in the new Lancet (Psychiatry) journal, was a medical chart review, a…

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#AutIMFAR Twitter Chat: Conversations Between Autism Researchers and Autistic Community Members

May 1, 2017January 31, 2022 by Shannon Des Roches Rosa

A delighted announcement: TPGA is partnering with The Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN), NOS Magazine, Autism Women’s Network (AWN), and autchat to host #AutIMFAR: a Twitter-based conversation between autism researchers and autistic community members. #AutIMFAR Partner Orgs: autchat, ASAN, AWN, NOS Magazine, and TPGA [image: The Twitter logos for five organizations: autchat: a rainbow background with a black infinity symbol and black text reading: “#autchat”; The Autistic Self Advocacy Network: a spiraling rainbow heptagon on a white background; Autism Women’s Network: a pink lowercase “a” overlaid on a light-blue-and-brown illustrations of dragonflies and flowers, above the lowercase black text “autism women’s network”; NOS Magazine: a black circle on a white background, with an illustration of an incandescent light bulb drawn in white and surround by a sunburst in dashed rainbow colors; and Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism: All-caps black text on a white background reading “Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism,” with “Person’s” in white text on a black arrow.]…

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The State of Autism Research: TPGA Takeaways From IMFAR 2016

May 23, 2016January 31, 2022 by Shannon Des Roches Rosa

Shannon Des Roches Rosa with Carol Greenburg Your faithful TPGA editors spent most of last week in Baltimore, Maryland at IMFAR, the International Meeting for Autism Research. We gleaned as much as we could from the 2000 scientists, professionals, autistic people, and family members from all over the world who spent three full days talking about the most current findings and trends in autism research. But we didn’t cover everything or meet everyone we wanted to, because doing so is not physically possibly without a Time Turner. (If you ever want to experience abject FOMO — fear of missing out — by all means, go to IMFAR.) Overview Ninety-nine percent of the researchers at IMFAR are the nicest, most well-meaning scientists one could ever meet, which makes for a friendly atmosphere. We were happy to see significant progress on some research fronts: only a single presentation about vaccines, and it…

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Going to IMFAR 2016? Read These Articles About Autism Research And Presentations First

May 9, 2016January 31, 2022 by Shannon Des Roches Rosa

Photo © Bobby Wade/Flickr [image: White woman with long brown hair and glasses, giving a presentation at a TEDx autism conference.] Our editors Carol and Shannon are spending the latter half of this week at IMFAR, the International Meeting for Autism Research, which is May 11 – 14 in Baltimore, MD. If you’re going, say hi! You can also follow us on Twitter at @ThinkingAutism, @ShannonRosa, and (Carol) @AspieAdvocate. IMFAR has improved a lot: We are glad to see the annual conference welcome increasing numbers of autistic speakers and attendees, so that autism researchers can listen to the people whose lives they are studying (and ideally trying to benefit), and vice versa. But since our editorial roles include being autism research ethics gadflies, we have to note that IMFAR is still mostly about the medical model view of autism and disability (curing and fixing), rather than the social view (understanding…

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Whither Autism Research? Observations From IMFAR 2015

June 4, 2015January 31, 2022 by Shannon Des Roches Rosa

Shannon Des Roches Rosa www.ThinkingAutismGuide.com twitter.com/shannonrosa TPGA has made a point of attending IMFAR, the annual International Meeting for Autism Research, since 2011. We believe it is important to go beyond learning about the current state of autism research by talking with and listening to researchers directly — and not just about current research, but about how research can better benefit autistic people, in addition to those who love, live, and work with autistic people of all ages and abilities. Here is what we learned and observed at IMFAR 2015, which took place last month in Salt Lake City, Utah. Note that the IMFAR conference itself — with scores of presentations and hundreds of posters — is overwhelming, and we only got to see part of what was actually presented and discussed in the full conference. We also live-tweeted several sessions from the conference, and compiled that coverage at Storify.…

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John Robison at IMFAR: On Autism Rights, Ethics, & Priorities

May 23, 2014January 31, 2022 by Shannon Des Roches Rosa

John Elder Robison was a discussant for the Autism Social, Legal, and Ethical Research Special Interest Group at the 2014 International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR). He ended up taking the group to task, stating that the autism science community is headed for disaster if it does not change course on several factors – and noting for context the larger size of the US autistic community in proportion to other minority groups such as Jewish or Native American communities. Mr. Robison asserted that autistic people need to be the ones providing oversight and governance for autism research. He condemned the use of words like “cure.” He pointed out that researchers’ explicit or implicit efforts to eradicate autistic people is a formula for disaster and needs to stop. And he affirmed that memoirs and narratives written by autistic people are more trustworthy than writing about autism by nonautistics. Many thanks to…

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IMFAR 2012: Toward Better Psychopharmacological Management of Anxiety In ASD

July 20, 2012January 31, 2022 by Shannon Des Roches Rosa

This is one of four talks from the IMFAR 2012 symposium Anxiety in Autism Spectrum Disorders: From Biology to Treatment. The overall session theme: It’s clear that anxiety is a major problem for kids and adults on the autism spectrum, now we need to figure out how to treat it. This summary is not intended nor should be taken as medical advice. Please consult a medical doctor for any decisions regarding psychopharmaceuticals. Any errors or omissions in the edited-down transcription below are on me. Dr. Scahill also presented data and slides from several studies, that information has either been summarized or omitted. INSAR members can download the full audio file of Dr. Scahill’s talk. -SR —- Lawrence Scahill School of Medicine, Yale University There are so few data on this topic that he actually had to change the talk. The story starts in 2002, with a study in the New…