Maladaptive vs. Adaptive and "Insistence on Sameness"
Published June 25, 2009 @ 12:29PM PT
Chicago Tribune has published a pop science piece on UIC study hopes to shed light on autism, 'insistence on sameness'. The assumption that is made is that some chemical or brain anomaly causes "insistence on sameness." In other words, that "insistence on sameness" is a maladaptive behavior that may be correctable. The casual qualitative research that happens in one's head simply from communicating with hundreds of people who share the same experience (i.e. are all on the spectrum) makes me question this assumption, at least for some of us.
The experience of many of us is not that "insistence on sameness" jumps out unbidden and unwanted and makes our lives hard, but that "insistence on sameness" is actually a way of adapting to a confusing and chaotic environment, cueing into volitional action, or compensating for "executive function" difficulties. Routines for some of us are the opposite of unbidden, unwanted, or difficulty-making: they are deliberate, desired, and adaptive. (Which may explain in turn why some of us become unable to function well, or become extremely upset, when our routines are broken.)
Anecdotal stories are not, in themselves, science. They do not "prove" anything other than that a particular person has had a specific experience. However, the starting assumptions or hypothesis that are used in science frequently do come from observation, including observation of people's first hand accounts of their experiences. If you hear enough autistic adults talking, typing, signing, drawing about how frustrated they are about not being able to get quality health care, then you may develop a more testable hypothesis or assumption for use in a study, like "autistic adults often do not receive quality health care."
When reading about these studies that assume autistic behavior is maladaptive, I always wonder if the investigators have spent much time asking autistic people about our experiences or why we may have the behavior they are interested in studying.
Understanding our personal reasons for doing things is really important as it filters down to a practical day-to-day level because a therapy or medication that eliminates or suppresses an adaptive behavior could potentially be harmful, not beneficial, to a person (any person!) in the long run.
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Comments (3)
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Dora is committed to improving quality of life for individuals on the autistic spectrum--including herself! She is Co-director of the Academic Autistic Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education and a member of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network's Board of Directors.
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Yes, exactly. I always park in the same area when I go to the supermarket. That is not because of any "sameness" compulsion, but just because my memory tends to be organized spatially rather than sequentially, and parking in the same place makes finding my car a lot easier.
Posted by Meg Evans on 06/25/2009 @ 05:59PM PT
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Certainly plenty of us (ostensibly) NT types are comforted by routine, and are thrown for a loop when our routine ("sameness"?) is disrupted. As far as I'm concerned, it's all a matter of degree, and of more or less socially "acceptable" (sez who?) things that we insist be "the same".
It also occurs to me that "insistence on sameness" could be a way to characterize the attitude demonstrated by those who want autistic people to be "normal" ("the same as us"?). So who's being maladapted?
Thanks, Dora - a pretty bogus piece of reporting by the Trib.
Posted by Andrew Dell'Antonio on 06/25/2009 @ 10:17PM PT
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Agreed. I often read autism studies that have the basis of "why do they do that?" and think, "if the only asked us, they might be able to focus their research more efficiently and come to the correct data much sooner."
My first thought when reading "insistence on sameness" was that the article would be about the insistence that Autistic people become "indistinguishable from their peers".
Posted by Katie miller on 06/26/2009 @ 05:27AM PT
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