Aspiedent's Blog

Lucy Blackman is an autistic adult with no functional speech. She learned to communicate via 'facilitated communication' when she was 14 and published a book describing her childhood until she started university in 1999: 'Lucy's Story: Autism and Other Adventures'. Lucy's autism is primarily about sensory issues. In this article, we explore Lucy's autism and the impact of her sensory issues. When Lucy was 14, she learnt to type via facilitated communication and when she was 19, she went for Berard Auditory Integration Training. The impact of these interventions is also explored.

There have been many attempts to explain autism and few have held up to scrutiny, but is it possible that leading brain plasticity researcher Dr. Michael Merzenich has come up with an explanation that does hold up to scrutiny. This theory of autism is that autism occurs when critical periods of development, when the brain absorbs and organises information are cut short. After this time, learning is more effortful. In this article, we discuss both how it is consistent with Olga Bogdashina's sensory framework. We also consider aspects of autism it may fail to explain as well as some of the pitfalls of applying this theory without a full understanding of autism.

Social interaction is a key part of everyday life. Issues relating to an individual's ability to engage in it form a fundamental part of the diagnostic criteria for autism. This article begins to explore why these difficulties occur through first identifying what is required to make social interaction easy for a person and what is involved when people interact with one another socially.

Theory of mind is essential for social interaction. A few autistic people develop a high level of theory of mind, but are not able to demonstrate this in conversation because of various factors to do with their autism. Others develop theory of mind to a lesser degree. However, theory of mind can be taught. Theory of mind should therefore not be thought of as a key barrier for learning social skills in autism.

Being able to do social emotional reciprocity is vitally important for social interaction and building emotional connection. Some autistic people can do this but others cannot. When teaching social interaction, it is important to adapt the approach based on the presence or lack of this ability. The differences in approaches are explored.

If you understand how someone ticks, you can communicate better, create a better connection, build trust and build a long lasting sales relationship. The key to this is to understand cognitive diversity. This provides the key to identifying how someone ticks.

Discover how the uncanny valley applies to autism. Learn why social barriers prevent autistic people from fully mimicking non-autistic communication, and what this means for interaction.

People often say ADHD and autism create a brain in conflict, but that idea is misleading. Learn why the reality is more complex, and how cognitive profiling offers a better way forward.

James Lovatt shares how learning about the Integrative Cognitive Profiling Framework helped him shift from managing for convenience to managing for performance, and why that matters for every team, not just in autism-specific contexts.

If your team keeps making mistakes despite clear instructions, it may not be due to incompetence. This blog explores fragmented processing: an often-missed reason why employees struggle to retain and act on information.