r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jan 30 '25

Neuroscience A low-cost tool accurately distinguishes neurotypical children from children with autism just by watching them copy the dance moves of an on-screen avatar for a minute. It can even tell autism from ADHD, conditions that commonly overlap.

https://newatlas.com/adhd-autism/autism-motion-detection-diagnosis/
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u/FloRidinLawn Jan 30 '25

Probably a different thing going on. That said, all “weird” is becoming lumped into autism. Good that it has more attention, but I think I see it becoming a thing. I lack the words for it. A gateway or excuse or overly easy applied label, it will diminish it? If too many claim to have it, it makes it harder for those who actually do, too

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u/ZoeBlade Jan 30 '25

That said, all “weird” is becoming lumped into autism.

The only thing that was lumped into autism was Asperger syndrome, and for very good reasons, that basically boil down to "Hans Asperger was employed by Nazis to separate the 'good' autistic people from the 'bad' (or, in some memorable instances, Jewish) autistic people, and Asperger's syndrome is just a phrase he made up for the former".

If too many claim to have it, it makes it harder for those who actually do, too

Not really. If you're talking about having a phrase to differentiate profoundly autistic people from mildly autistic people, then we already have that: levels three, two, and one.

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u/FloRidinLawn Jan 30 '25

I see a lot of people claiming to be or have it.

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u/ZoeBlade Jan 30 '25

I mean, it depends on who exactly you're talking about, but a lot of people (including older people who weren't diagnosed as children because they happened not to be stereotypical) have realised that these nagging issues they had could all be explained as traits of one single disability, which also explains a bunch of other issues they struggled with but assumed that was just part of the human condition that everyone has to deal with, when actually it wasn't. At least, that's pretty much how it was for me.

The amount of actually autistic people, now that doctors and scientists and everyone else are starting to realise that not everyone's stereotypical, is turning out to be a lot higher than previously imagined. This is the same as all other largely invisible minorities -- see, for instance, the classic chart of the number of openly lefthanded people going up as it ceased to be so demonised.

Maybe we just move in different social circles (inevitably, especially these days), but I see a lot of autistic people who struggled unnecessarily because they didn't get to have it as a label until very recently.