I just found the best site ever: the Institute for the Study of the Neurotypical.  Obviously, autistic people have no sense of humor whatsoever.   ::rolls eyes::

It's somewhat a fad among researchers (thank you, Simon Baron-Cohen) to claim that people with ASD lack a "theory of mind."  More or less broadly construed, this means the ability to ( Read more... )

This is how the NIH describes people with Asperger's syndrome:

• "The most distinguishing symptom of AS is a child’s obsessive interest in a single object or topic to the exclusion of any other."
• "Children with AS want to know everything about their topic of interest and their conversations with others will be ( Read more... )

Greetings, everyone.  Today, we're going to start a series of posts about why checklist-based psychological or educational diagnosis is a BAD IDEA.  What better way to do this than to actually look at some of these checklists?  We'll start with Gifted (where at least the repercussions of getting it wrong are likely to be less damaging).  Then we'll ( Read more... )

It sometimes amazes me what I need to explain to people.

For example, I shouldn't have had to spend so much time writing this yesterday:

( you have the right to free speech not the right to be an asshole )

This is the day from hell. I've been having writer's block, so I'm now 5 days behind on my daily writing journal, plus I have a 4-5 page paper due tomorrow. (Why, oh why, did I take that composition class?!) All of this I knew, but on top of that, while checking my email, I remembered that I had a housing form to fill out and cog sci homework I ( Read more... )

NOTE: I have reservations about making this entry public but I think the point is valuable enough and needs to be spread enough that I'm doing so anyway ( Read more... )

If I were trapped on a desert island and forced to choose between reading Gobbo and Chi's article on expertise in children* and an empty cereal box, I would probably choose the cereal box. Both are equally informative and entertaining, but the cereal box does not require me to translate jargon ( Read more... )

Just got the new mailing from FIRE (a free speech organization; their name stands for Foundation for Individual Rights in Education).

Apparently speech codes are still alive and kicking.  Did you know...

Davidson College in North Carolina's speech code prohibits "comments or inquiries about dating," "patronizing remarks," "innuendoes," and " ( Read more... )

As you probably all know, my pet issue is gifted education, advocating for them, etc. etc.  So here's a rant relating to this about one of my pet peeves: people who call gifted advocates "elitist" as if it's somehow evil.  Well elitism is not evil, and here's why.

( Elitism is Not Evil )

I've given up reading fantasy books for a while because they were starting to bore me. They all seemed cliched after a while simply because I have read hundreds of fantasy books by now. My brother is constantly playing RPGs, so I discovered that they're even worse. I have yet to play a game with a decent (i.e., not cheesy) story--it's like bad ( Read more... )