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| Identity, Advocacy, and Autism Pseudoscience |
| Sunday, May 25, 2025 |
| 3:00 PM–3:50 PM |
| Marriott Marquis, M2 Level, Marquis Salon 6 |
| Area: SCI/AUT; Domain: Applied Research |
| Chair: Jonathan W. Pinkston (University of Kansas) |
| CE Instructor: Jonathan W. Pinkston, Ph.D. |
| Presenting Author: STUART A. VYSE (Independent Scholar) |
| Abstract: This presentation will describe how several social movements have changed the way autism and other mental disorders are construed with particular attention to the challenges these changes create for treatment providers, parents, and family members. Topics covered will include, the history of the autism diagnosis and the current implications of the spectrum concept; the conflict between the autism self-advocacy and neurodiversity movements and people on the severe end of the autism spectrum; the resurgence of facilitated communication and its many variants (e.g., rapid prompting method, spelling 2 communicate, and simply “using a letter board”); the spread of the identity-based neurodiversity movement to schizophrenia; and the effort to introduce a diagnosis of severe autism. Finally, although for the last decade or more unsupported and discredited therapies have been spreading with impunity, recently we’ve seen a few modest signs of progress in the effort to discourage pseudoscience and promote evidence-based methods. |
| Instruction Level: Basic |
| Target Audience: Autism practitioners at all levels. |
Learning Objectives: 1. Be able to identify and describe facilitated communication and its variants.
2. Be able to describe the strengths and weaknesses of autism spectrum concept.
3. Be able to describe the drawbacks of autism Identity based advocacy for people with severe autism.
4. Be able to describe some of the current efforts to combat pseudoscience in autism treatment |
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| STUART A. VYSE (Independent Scholar) |
 Stuart Vyse, PhD, is a behavioral scientist, teacher, and writer. He taught at Providence College, the University of Rhode Island, and Connecticut College. Vyse’s book Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition won the 1999 William James Book Award of the American Psychological Association, and his 2020 book Superstition is part of the Oxford University Press’s Very Short Introduction series. He is a contributing editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, where he writes the “Behavior & Belief” column, and a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. |
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