Autism As an Executive Disorder

Rating:
Summary: One of my favorites
Review: Well worth the price. The first chapter, on the neurobiology of autism, is one of the best sources I've seen for lay readers on what is known or suspected about the basic brain biology of autism. The rest of the book is in the main British neuropsychology, to my mind some of the richest psychological thinking on earth, and a paradigm shift for parents and practitioners accustomed to taking a strictly "behavioral" view of the disorder and the people who have it. Behavior management and behavioral teaching methods are certainly essential to children and adults with autism, but they don't take us inside the disorder. That is the project of neuropsychology.

Russell's book is a rebuttal of "theory of mind" proponents by "executive function" (EF) proponents. The theory of mind folks argue that autism involves a core deficit in mind-reading ability; the "executive function" researchers in Russell's book present evidence supporting the position that any apparent theory of mind deficits are secondary to a basic frontal lobe problem in EF.

Executive function is the "ability to plan and execute complex behavior." A person with high EF is able to want to do something, to plan how to do it, and then to stay on track while he is doing what he set out to do. EF is thought to be "modular"; any one of its various components can be impaired while the others are up and running.

An important aspect of EF is the ability to stop doing whatever you're doing when you need to: a person with a healthy EF has the ability not to become "stuck." Of course children with autism get stuck all the time, and Russell's authors present evidence that these children have many abilities they aren't able to access or demonstrate because they can't move on from what they're doing in order to get to higher-order play or communication skills.

For instance, one chapter presents research on pretend play in autism, showing that children with autism may in fact have the capacity and desire to engage in far more pretend play than they do. The reason they don't use this capacity, the researchers argue, is that they get stuck spinning wheels and lining things up. They can't move on.

There is another terrific chapter comparing the EF deficits in ADHD to EF deficits in autism; this was the first time I've encountered an explanation for my frequent sense that ADHD kids are harder to deal with even though "technically" autism is the more challenging diagnosis.

And last but far from least Russell includes a chapter on the particular strengths of people with autism-an approach that is almost never taken here in America, where we focus exclusively on deficits, and tend to see children with autism as one big ball of problems to be remediated.

A wonderful, wonderful book.

Rating:
Summary: One of my favorites
Review: Well worth the price. The first chapter, on the neurobiology of autism, is one of the best sources I've seen for lay readers on what is known or suspected about the basic brain biology of autism. The rest of the book is in the main British neuropsychology, to my mind some of the richest psychological thinking on earth, and a paradigm shift for parents and practitioners accustomed to taking a strictly "behavioral" view of the disorder and the people who have it. Behavior management and behavioral teaching methods are certainly essential to children and adults with autism, but they don't take us inside the disorder. That is the project of neuropsychology.

Russell's book is a rebuttal of "theory of mind" proponents by "executive function" (EF) proponents. The theory of mind folks argue that autism involves a core deficit in mind-reading ability; the "executive function" researchers in Russell's book present evidence supporting the position that any apparent theory of mind deficits are secondary to a basic frontal lobe problem in EF.

Executive function is the "ability to plan and execute complex behavior." A person with high EF is able to want to do something, to plan how to do it, and then to stay on track while he is doing what he set out to do. EF is thought to be "modular"; any one of its various components can be impaired while the others are up and running.

An important aspect of EF is the ability to stop doing whatever you're doing when you need to: a person with a healthy EF has the ability not to become "stuck." Of course children with autism get stuck all the time, and Russell's authors present evidence that these children have many abilities they aren't able to access or demonstrate because they can't move on from what they're doing in order to get to higher-order play or communication skills.

For instance, one chapter presents research on pretend play in autism, showing that children with autism may in fact have the capacity and desire to engage in far more pretend play than they do. The reason they don't use this capacity, the researchers argue, is that they get stuck spinning wheels and lining things up. They can't move on.

There is another terrific chapter comparing the EF deficits in ADHD to EF deficits in autism; this was the first time I've encountered an explanation for my frequent sense that ADHD kids are harder to deal with even though "technically" autism is the more challenging diagnosis.

And last but far from least Russell includes a chapter on the particular strengths of people with autism-an approach that is almost never taken here in America, where we focus exclusively on deficits, and tend to see children with autism as one big ball of problems to be remediated.

A wonderful, wonderful book.