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That Shouldn't Happen: The Just World Fallacy and Autism

Everyday, we hear about tragedies, some that hit too close to home for comfort, and our reactions...

Heaviness: Euthanasia For Expediency

It's all over the internet now, the story of the twin brothers in Belgium who were deaf and going...

What's the Harm: When Reality and Wishful Thinking Clash

I'm digging around for posts people have written on what to say/what not to say to autistic people...

Facilitated Communication: Same As It Ever Was (Same As It Ever Was)

In the past couple years, I’ve written over a dozen articles examining facilitated communication...

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Kim WomblesRSS Feed of this column.

Instructor of English and psychology and mother to three on the autism spectrum.

Writer of the site countering.us (where most of these articles will have first appeared) and co-administrator

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“An overall cognitive deficit is not a defining feature of autism. “ –Amiet et al. (2008)

"Empathy is one of those ski
Yap, Angley, Veselkov, Holmes, Lindon, and Nicholson (2010) have ignited a lightning storm of interest with their theoretical urine test for autism that could prevent autism, at least according to study author Nicholson, speaking to Richard Alleyne of the Telegraph:

"Professor Jeremy Nicholson, the author of the study, said: "Children with autism have very unusual gut microbes which we can test for before the full blown symptoms of the disease come through.

'If that is the case then it might become a preventable disease.'"

Yap et al. write that “Autism has been shown to have strong associations with various metabolic abnormalities, immunological function and gastrointestinal disturbances, although their mechanistic significance is unknown.5–8”
Occasionally, as a mother of three on the spectrum and an active autism-related blogger, I need a break from all things autism. Just as the psychology of religion is one of my areas of interest, so too is cultural psychology.


When I did my master's degree, I split my areas of interest: my thesis and several projects leading up to it focused on a fairly complex intersection of how personality traits, explanatory style, religious well-being and spiritual well-being impacted satisfaction with life and adaptive coping in individuals dealing with pain. I wanted to focus my attention on something that didn't revolve around autism, that directly impacted me, and certainly impacted my mother, and before her, her mother. But I kept getting drawn back to autism, in an intense need to understand everything I could first about my son, and as I dedicated projects towards aspects of autism, to my daughters as well.