1. Farrugia D.{{ Exploring stigma: medical knowledge and the stigmatisation of parents of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder}}. {Sociol Health Illn};2009 (Jul 29)
This paper analyses 12 parent interviews to investigate the stigmatisation of parents of children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. Drawing on poststructural accounts of the relationship between knowledge and subjectivity, the stigma concept is critically interrogated in order to address previous individualistic constructions of stigmatisation and to place stigma within the power dynamics of social control. The results of the study indicate that a child’s diagnosis with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is critical for parents to resist stigmatisation. Parents experienced considerable enacted stigma, but successfully resisted felt stigma by deploying medical knowledge to articulate unspoiled subject positions. The institutionalisation of medical knowledge within the autism community was critical to this process. Resistance to enacted stigma was successful to the degree that medical constructions of deviance deployed by parents were accepted by others, notably those in power within institutions. It is concluded that poststructural accounts of subjectivity and social control provide a useful way of conceptualising stigmatisation. An acceptance of the painful nature of stigma as lived experience co-exists with an emphasis on the constantly negotiated nature of embodied subjectivity as a contingent social process to illustrate the conditions for active resistance to stigmatisation.
2. Mouridsen SE, Rich B, Isager T. {{Selected testosterone-related diseases in women who have given birth to a child with infantile autism}}. {Psychiatry Clin Neurosci};2009 (Aug);63(4):586-590.
AIM: The objective of the current study was to compare the prevalence of three testosterone-related cancer diseases in the mothers of 111 individuals diagnosed as children with infantile autism (IA) with a matched comparison group of mothers of 330 children from the general population. METHOD: All mothers were screened through the nationwide Danish National Hospital Register. We inquired about breast-, uterine-, and ovarian cancer diseases during an observation period of 27 years. RESULTS: At follow up a similar proportion of case and control mothers had a diagnosis of any cancer disease: 6.3% vs 8.5%. In addition, no single cancer disease was significantly more frequent among mothers of children with IA. CONCLUSION: Our study provides no support for an (eventually androgen-mediated) increased rate of cancer in mothers of persons with IA.
3. Murphy P, Brady N, Fitzgerald M, Troje NF. {{No evidence for impaired perception of biological motion in adults with autistic spectrum disorders}}. {Neuropsychologia};2009 (Aug 8)
A central feature of autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs) is a difficulty in identifying and reading human expressions, including those present in the moving human form. One previous study, by Blake et al. (2003), reports decreased sensitivity for perceiving biological motion in children with autism, suggesting that perceptual anomalies underlie problems in social cognition. We revisited this issue using a novel psychophysical task. 16 adults with ASDs and 16 controls were asked to detect the direction of movement of human point-light walkers which were presented in both normal and spatially scrambled forms in a background of noise. Unlike convention direction discrimination tasks, in which walkers walk ‘on the spot’ while facing left or right, we added translatory motion to the stimulus so that the walkers physically moved across the screen. Therefore, while a cue of coherent, translatory motion was available in both the normal and scrambled walker forms, the normal walker alone contained information about the configuration and kinematics of the human body. There was a significant effect of walker type, with reduced response times and error when the normal walker was present. Most importantly, these improvements were the same for both participant groups, suggesting that people with ASDs do not have difficulty integrating local visual information into a global percept of the moving human form. The discrepancy between these and previous findings of impaired biological motion perception in ASDs are discussed with reference to differences in the age and diagnosis of the participants, and the nature of the task.
4. van Roekel E, Scholte RH, Didden R. {{Bullying Among Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorders: Prevalence and Perception}}. {J Autism Dev Disord};2009 (Aug 8)
This study examined: (a) the prevalence of bullying and victimization among adolescents with ASD, (b) whether they correctly perceived bullying and victimization, and (c) whether Theory of Mind (ToM) and bullying involvement were related to this perception. Data were collected among 230 adolescents with ASD attending special education schools. We found prevalence rates of bullying and victimization between 6 and 46%, with teachers reporting significantly higher rates than peers. Furthermore, adolescents who scored high on teacher- and self-reported victimization were more likely to misinterpret non-bullying situations as bullying. The more often adolescents bullied, according to teachers and peers, and the less developed their ToM, the more they misinterpreted bullying situations as non-bullying. Implications for clinical practice are discussed.
