Ample research has examined the impact of autism for children and families, but less has addressed the effects of this condition for adults. The literature indicates that adults on the autism spectrum suffer from depression and have a heightened risk of suicidal ideation because of their social skills deficits. Research also shows that individuals with high-functioning autism (HFA) can benefit from participating in support groups. In addition, research indicates that use of the term "neurodiversity" rather than other diagnostic labels encourages increased self-esteem to persons on the autism spectrum. This grounded theory study sought to understand the belief of clinicians with regard to the incorporation of the concept of neurodiversity in support groups for adults with HFA. The population for this study comprised clinicians who led support groups for adults with HFA. The specific foundational theories used were Tuckman's stage model of group development and Salzer's peer support model. Data consisted of 3 pilot study interviews and 12 additional interviews. Participant recruitment occurred through LinkedIn, and interviews took place online through the chat modality GoToMeeting. Interview data were entered into NVivo and a Van Kaam coding procedure was used to decipher recurring themes. Key results indicated that clinicians believe that the incorporation of the concept of neurodiversity can help adults with autism to build self-esteem and change the way individuals with HFA consider the condition, which in turn can assist them to build social skills, and relationships with their peers. Positive social change that may result from this study includes encouragement for increased use of the concept of neurodiversity as a tool in support groups for people with HFA, and stimulation of further study of this concept for decreasing bias against those with HFA.

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Created at the end of the nineteenth century, Sherlock Holmes has remained a regular feature of popular culture for now more than a century. However, versions of the detective that have appeared in recent years are strikingly different from the character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, while some characteristics remain similar. This dissertation examines the persistence of Holmes as a function of copyright management that matched shifting literary expectations, following this with an exploration of three categories of discourse in which contemporary Holmes texts participate: feminism, postcolonialism, and neurodiversity. It first locates Holmes's difference from prior detectives in his humanist characteristics and then demonstrates that a restrictive character management strategy shared by Conan Doyle and his sons, the subsequent rights-holders, constructed a base version of the character. When the copyright passed out of their hands, the new owners' more permissive attitudes toward using Holmes matched popular interest in deconstructing characters and ideas, allowing for a variety of new approaches to the detective. The second half of the dissertation explores some of these new approaches, beginning with critiques of Holmes's masculinist, misogynist science that are exposed and repaired through new texts. Following that, a pair of postcolonial texts demonstrates contrasting styles of handling the detective's imperial associations, and a final discussion of Holmes as a neurologically different individual brings him to both neurodiversity and disability studies. Authors' deployment of the detective can contain complex narratives, and while these texts are fascinating the dissertation will conclude with a note of concern regarding their continuing popularity.

This research study provides an insight into the experiences of dyscalculic students in higher education (HE). It explores the nature of dyscalculia from the student perspective, adopting a theoretical framework of the social model of disability combined with socio-cultural theory. This study was not aimed at understanding the neurological reasons for dyscalculia, but focussed on the social effects of being dyscalculic and how society can help support dyscalculic students within an HE context. The study s primary data collection method was 14 semi-structured interviews with officially identified dyscalculic students who were currently, or had been recently, studying in higher education in the UK. A participant selection method was utilised using a network of national learning support practitioners due to the limited number of participants available. A secondary data collection method involved reflective learning support sessions with two students. Data were collected across four research areas: the identification process, HE mathematics, learning support and categorisations of dyscalculia. A fifth area of fitness to practise could not be examined in any depth due to the lack of relevant participants, but the emerging data clearly pinpointed this as a significant area of political importance and identified a need for further research. A framework of five categories of dyscalculic HE student was used for data analysis. Participants who aligned with these categories tended to describe differing experiences or coping behaviours within each of the research areas. The main findings of the study were the importance of learning support practitioners in tackling mathematical anxiety, the categorisations of dyscalculic higher education students, the differing learning styles of dyscalculic and dyslexic students, and the emergence of four under-researched dyscalculic characteristics: iconicity, time perception, comprehension of the existence of numbers that are not whole and dyscalculic students understanding of non-cardinal numbers.

Every music teacher is likely to teach one or more children with autism, given that an average of one in 54 persons in the United States receives a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). ASD persons often show tremendous interest in music, and some even become masterful performers; however, the combination of deficits and abilities associated with ASD can pose unique challenges for music teachers. This experimental study shows that phonomimetic (conducting-like) gestures can be used to teach the expressive qualities of music. Children were asked to watch video recordings of conducting-like gestures and produce vocal sounds to match the gestures. The empirical findings indicate that motor training can strengthen the visual to vocomotor couplings in both populations, suggesting that phonomimetic gesture may be a suitable approach for teaching musical expression in inclusive classrooms.

Books shape our definition of the world; including, how we conceive , others, and, for young readers, even ourselves. Hitherto, for neurodivergent people , the lack of appropriate narrative representations in young adult literature disrupts this formative process. Previously, authors included neurodivergent characters only as stock characters possessing little definition aside from their disabilities and having minimal impacts on the plots and other characters within the novels. More recently, however, young adult novels featuring neurodivergent characters have developed into a popular subgenre, including stories of young people with atypical cognition, neurochemistry, or neurodevelopment such as Autism or Down Syndrome. Inspired by the emergence of the neurodiversity movement which seeks to define these variations as neutral and natural, this fiction increasingly provides representation to these previously neglected communities. This study explores the representation of neurodivergent characters within the young adult novels in contrast to the larger genre of young adult literature through the lens of neurodiversity.

The experiences of dyslexic adults in education as well as the 'caring professions' of nursing, teaching and social work continue to be fertile ground for academic study. This study extends the range of current academic knowledge of dyslexia in the workplace by exploring the experiences of dyslexic police officers across England and Wales. The context is the extension of disability-related equality legislation to the police service in 2004. The overarching aim of the study is to examine the experiences and perceptions of dyslexic police officers who are 'on-the-streets' and not in the classroom environment. This research is underpinned by the principles of the social model of disability (Oliver 1990) and in it, dyslexia is understood not as a stand-alone difference but rather as an aspect of neurodiversity (Cooper 2009) A qualitative and exploratory research strategy was adopted. Data was collected by way of self-completed questionnaires and from face-to-face semi-structured interviews with twenty-five serving or recently resigned dyslexic police officers from ten police services from across England and Wales. The data was analysed using Layder's theory of domains and his adaptive theory (Layder 2005 & 2013). This study identified that the overwhelming majority of dyslexic police officers experienced a broad range of attitudinal, procedural and police 'barriers' to their full integration into the police organisation. All of the participants in this study had disclosed to their employing police service that they were dyslexic. Participant understanding of dyslexia and disability was deeply rooted within the medical model rather than the social model. The study identified substantial evidence of bullying, and discrimination was identified across the broad range of police services as well as significant failings in the provision of workplace assessments by Job Centre staff. Despite this treatment very few participants complained or sought redress. The dominance of the medical model of disability in wider society, together with negative aspects of police 'occupational' culture, were identified as key factors in the participants' decision making processes. This research concludes that institutional disablism in terms of dyslexia is widespread across some police services in England and Wales despite the extension of the disability discrimination legislation to the police service. The research concludes with some recommendations for policy and practice.

This dissertation examines lived experiences of mental disability and neurodivergency in contemporary women’s writing. It demonstrates that social forces and identifications across race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability mediate experiences with mental disability in the contemporary era. I draw from disability studies, feminist cultural studies, feminist philosophy, critical race studies, and affect studies in order to explore interdisciplinary questions about mental illness, neurodivergency, and mental disability in contemporary literature and culture. I bring an intersectional feminist disability studies methodology to the archetype of the “madwoman,” theorized by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar in their groundbreaking 1979 work, The Madwoman in the Attic. Moving away from “madness” and toward “mental disability” in order to focus on how social logics and medical industrial systems produce mental disability, I argue for literary study as a way to better understand disability as a lived experience. I read Claudia Rankine’s poetry, Joyce Carol Oates’s and Dorothy Allison’s novels, and Amy Bloom’s and Esmé Weijun Wang’s short stories in order to investigate race, class, and sexuality across a range of feminine and nonbinary experiences with mental disability and neurodiversity in the contemporary era. I choose women as a primary category of analysis because they, in particular, have been hystericized, pathologized, and even incarcerated due to disabilities. These violences and inequities disproportionally affect women of color. I reveal how social logics, such as racism, and systems, such as the medical industrial complex, cause harm to those with mental illnesses and neurodivergencies. In some ways, mental disability may be an identity; in other ways, it may be a trauma; in other ways, it may be a stigmatizing force.

A predominant metaphor in the autism community is that the neurotypical world is a "wrong planet" in which people with autism do not belong, and I assert that the university is one such wrong planet. I examine the rhetorical history of autism and argue that the construction and reconstruction of autism have led to learning spaces in higher education that Other students on the autism spectrum. I draw upon Krista Ratcliffe's rhetorical listening as a way to address the inequities that persist in college writing classrooms. However, to avoid a bias toward neurotypicality, I recast rhetorical listening as rhetorical sensing, a term that encompasses the multiple ways of experiencing the world rather than privileging one modality.I apply rhetorical sensing to four aspects of higher education. First, I look at the ways in which students with autism are programmed to rhetorically sense neurotypicals through therapy models such as Social Thinking. I argue that such training is not true rhetorical sensing because the burden of sensing is placed solely on students with ASDs, further marginalizing them. Next, I turn my attention to the college composition classroom and present ways for instructors to rhetorically sense their students with autism. I provide strategies based on universal design that can help all students, regardless of neurodifference, thrive. I then turn my attention to composition instructors who parent children with autism. Drawing upon a rich body of research on working conditions for women in rhetoric and composition, I describe the ways in which adjunctification has left caregivers over-worked, under-paid, and under-insured as they try to provide for their children. Drawing upon Aimee Carrillo Rowe's power lines and Andrea O'Reilly's gynocentric mothering, I propose ways to improve conditions for teachers who parent children with autism. Finally, I focus on ways in which writing program administrators can make programmatic changes in order to foster inclusive learning practices. I propose low-cost training and partnership models that can create an inclusive planet that supports neurodiverse students, faculty, and writing programs.

In the four papers presented in this dissertation I analyze and discuss various value statements and moral stances, which I regard as unjustifiably harmful for persons with Autism and obstacles for the creation of an Autism-friendly society. In the papers I try to show that the positions underpinning the Autism-phobic moral stances are not warranted and cannot be defended in a good way. In doing so, I hope to transform the harmful moral intuitions underlying these positions into autism-friendly ones. The first paper investigates the Neurodiversity claim that ‘Autism is a natural variation’. The claim is interpreted and investigated and an argument is given that, contrary to Low-Functioning Autism, High-Functioning Autism can indeed be seen as a natural variation, without necessarily being seen as a disability. The second paper focuses on the problem for persons with Autism to adapt to prosocial lying, which is saying something not true but socially acceptable in a situation. By comparing a Kantian approach and a care ethics approach, the paper ends up recommending teaching persons with Autism to lie in a rule based and empathic way. The third paper deals with the morality of embryo selection in IVF. Based on a widely shared intuition of natural capabilities, arguments are given that it is morally legitimate to choose an Autistic embryo instead of a ‘normal’ one, contrary to arguments given by proponents of ‘every child should have the best chance of the best life’. The fourth paper deals with moral education. An argument is given that due to problems with cognitive empathy children with Autism should be taught pro-social behavior in a rule based way. / I de fyra artiklarna, som presenteras i denna avhandling, analyserar och diskuterar jag olika värdeuttalanden och moraliska ställningstaganden, vilka jag anser inte kan berättigas och är skadliga för personer med autism och utgör hinder för skapandet av ett autismvänligt samhälle. I artiklarna försöker jag visa att de ståndpunkter som ligger till grund för autism - fobiska moraliska ställningstaganden inte kan berättigas eller försvaras på ett rimligt sätt. På så sätt hoppas jag att omvandla de skadliga moraliska intuitioner som ligger bakom dessa positioner till autismvänliga sådana. Den första artikeln undersöker påståendet från förespråkare av neurodiversitet att ”autism är en naturlig variation”. Påståendet tolkas och utreds och ett argument ges att, i motsats till låg fungerande autism, kan högfungerande autism faktiskt ses som en naturlig variation, utan att nödvändigtvis ses som ett handikapp. Den andra artikeln fokuserar på problem för personer med autism för att anpassa sig till att ljuga prosocialt, nämligen att säga något som är osant men socialt lämpligt i en viss situation. Genom att jämföra en Kantiansk strategi med en omsorgsetisk strategi rekommenderar artikeln att undervisning i att ljuga på ett regelbaserat och empatiskt sätt bör ges till personer med autism. Den tredje artikeln behandlar moralen kring väljande av embryo i IVF. Baserat på en allmänt delad intuition om förekomsten och betydelsen av naturliga förmågor ges ett argument för att det är moraliskt legitimt att välja ett autistiskt embryo i stället för ett ”normalt”, i motsats till argument som ges av förespråkarna för ”varje barn ska få bästa chansen till det bästa livet”. Den fjärde artikeln handlar om hur barn ska bibringas moral genom utbildning. Ett argument ges att på grund av problem med kognitiv empati så bör barn med autism undervisas i pro - socialt beteende på ett regelbaserat sätt. / <p>The series name<strong> Dissertations on Health and Society</strong> is incomplete. The correct and complete name is <strong>Linköping Dissertations on Health and Society</strong>.</p>