Customer Reviews

Autism: Explaining the Enigma (Cognitive Development)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As a professional counselor who recently started a support group for parents with autistic children this book has given me vital information on how to conceptualize this disorder. This knowledge has enabled me to connect with parents in a very realistic manner. When I interact with them and answer their questions, they hear the ring of truth in what I communicate to them about their child's behaviors and reality. I am very grateful to Uta Frith for writing such a fine book.

Having recently been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, I have been collecting books on autism and asperger's syndrome, and this one is one of the best in my collection. I like the way Uta Frith writes, she always has lots of data, hers are always good solid scientific books. One interesting thing is the picture on the cover. First, I thought well, it's just some picture Frith likes, and then in the book she starts analyzing it. Wow, it's about some people working to cheat another person! This is held up to be some kind of healthy normality that we poor people with autism spectrum disorders can't "enjoy". Well I want no part of it. To me it's far more interesting to look at the clothing the people are wearing in the picture, I have spent hours looking at it - the clothing of that time is incredible, and further, the artist had to have good enough paints to reproduce it in the painting. Now that's interesting! I guess that's a lot of the difference right there, here's Uta Frith crying in her Wheaties because people like me are behind in appreciating cheating, and meanwhile I'm more interested in how incredible the picture is visually, and have no desire to cheat anyone. Uta Frith quotes some fairy tale about a mermaid who tried to become human and never could walk right and hurt all the time, and wasn't liked anyway among humans, etc. and compares that to autism-spectrum people, which isn't very nice, and she also talks about autism like it's physically painful or something, which it's not, but all in all I still really like her books because they're scientific. I agree with the lack of "theory of mind" stuff and now that I know the exact definitions of the words, I agree that at least in my case I have "sympathy" but not "empathy". I think this book can be a big help to someone who wants to understand autism.

This is a book for researchers primarily. It introduces Frith's theory of weak central coherence as an underlying mechanism in autism. The theory runs (in a nutshell) that autistic individuals do not exhibit context appropriate responses to situation, events, etc. Relevance theory (cf. Sperber & Wilson) oils the wheels of Frith's theory.

The book opens with a long exegesis on a historical case and performs more than a bit of post mortem diagnosis. Such rational reconstructions of the past can be either very rivetting or tiresome. I wasn't convinced that the story avoided the latter pitfall. More enjoyable if shortened.

The rest of the book concentrates on theories of autism and their testability. The tussle between theory of mind (cf. Baron-Cohen's book: Mindblindness) is discussed and gives a brief foretaste of disputes that dominated the nineties'. However, the difficulty that central coherence itself faces is how to shape it into a coherent scientific theory? Frith doesn't entirely skirt this issue and there is much to be gained from simply reflecting on her approach to theory development.

Be warned that lighting up the research stage is a major focus of the work, and this will limit it's appeal. My final comment is not to buy this edition of the book, but to wait for the June 2003 edition. It can only be better.

I got interested in autism/Asperger's in 2003 after hearing an NPR interview on Autism (i.e. the growing rates of autism in Silicon Valley and Sacramento). I realized that Asperger's Syndrome must have been what was wrong with a manager I worked for a few years earlier at a major aerospace company (up until this point I thought he was just a jerk with a PhD). I then read a couple of articles in Wired magazine on the Geek Syndrome which really motivated me to do some extensive reading on the subject. Then I ran across Firth's book "Autism: Explaining the Enigma".

Of all of the books and articles I have read to date on autism this book is the finest introduction to the subject for those who are interested in what autism is and is not. Anyone with an ounce of intellectual curiosity will find this a highly rewarding book, however, if you are looking for a "how to" book on curing or helping someone with autism you will be disappointed. This book provides insight not answers.

What Firth tries to address in this book is identifying what the essence of Autism is. This is extremely important since many of the characteristic features of autism show up in other disorders which are not autism. Firth has a very high clarity of thought in her effort to identify what is and isn't the essence of autism. For example, while mental retardation is very common in autism (>75% according to some accounts), it is not the characteristic that makes someone autistic, since there are mentally retarded individuals who are not autistic.

What I really like about Firth's book is not only her clarity of thinking but the quality of intellectual honesty in dissecting the autism question. This is not to say that she has the last word on this topic - I think she would be the first to admit this - but rather that she has done the best job to date of sorting out the research and models of autism that have been proposed up to the date of her book.

The book is noteworthy for its readability. One does not need a graduate degree in psychology or cognitive science to read it. And Firth has done an excellent job of making this read an interesting subject through out the book. All said, I give this book a solid A rating.

This book explains very clearly what autism is and what it isnt. The book reads almost like a detective story as Frith guides the reader gradually into building an understanding of the nature of autism. She begins by simultaneously attacking the questions of how long autism has been affecting humans and whether bad parenting causes autism by reviewing the literature concerning wild or neglected children. She notes that some of the famous cases of wild children, such as the wild boy of Aveyron were probably autistic, based on their behavior following discovery, while others such as Genie were not, in spite of extreme neglect. Her argument is that if horrific abuse and neglect did not result in autism in Genie, then certainly any parents who treat their children better than Genies parents treated her could not be blamed in any way for causing autism in their children.

Friths central claim is that autism consists of a lack of drive towards central coherence. That is, autistic individuals are unable to or unmotivated to put different pieces of information together to construct a whole. This results in delayed language development, since autistic children lack the drive to distinguish speech sounds from random background noises, or deduce rules of grammar from sentences they are exposed to. Autistic individuals also have trouble learning social skills for the same reason, and they develop a very literal understanding of language. To support this theory, Frith draws on numerous ingeniously designed psychological studies that tease apart what autistic individuals can and cannot do.

While Frith doesnt have any definite answers of what causes autism or how it can be prevented, she notes that there may be genetic causes in some cases. She also points out that about 75% of autistic individuals also have additional mental handicaps. She suggests that in many cases, perhaps even the majority, autism is just one of the problems in a brain that has suffered some sort of damage or injury during development. Towards the end of the book, the author notes that she doesnt provide many specific ideas for treatment. Instead, she offers her scientific explorations into the nature of autism, in the hope that others might use this information to help autistic individuals develop ways to cope with or compensate for their challenges.

This book is highly academic and it draws on hundreds of published studies. It will be an essential reference for anyone interested in the topic.

A classic of modern research into autism, this book explains clearly and readably the theory that autism is caused by the neurologically-caused lack of a "theory of mind", which makes the actions of others confusing and baffling to the person with autism.

Autism is one of the most fascinating psychological conditions. It sprang to attention of many people, me included, with the wide success of the movie "Rain Man." Dustin Hoffman's brilliant portrayal of an adult with autism won him an Oscar, and created an idea in the minds of the general public of how an autistic individual behaves and interacts. However, the particular kind of autism that is portrayed in that movie is actually rather exceptional, and this condition comes in many different forms and degrees.

This very short introduction does a very good job of describing various forms that autism can take, and presents the reader with the typical behavioral patterns of a few chosen case study individuals with autism. It helps dispel many myths about autism, including the myth that all autistic individuals are capable of certain extraordinary intellectual feats in some very specific areas. Such autistic individuals are known as idiot savants, and constitute no more than 10% of all people with autism.

Autism has actually been considered a separate psychological condition for a relatively short time. Autistic individuals have of course always existed, but have generally been either miscategorized or more tragically ignored. A better way of diagnosing autism from the very early in child's development has helped many parents deal with such children from very early on. However, this increase in diagnosing autism has also sparked impressions that there are some environmental causes of this disease, of which the most frequently blamed culprit is the early childhood vaccination. This book is very adamant in pointing out that so far there has been no evidence for the environmental causes of autism. On the contrary - most reliable evidence indicates that there is a very strong genetic component in autism. Unfortunately, we still don't know what sort of genetic mechanisms are at play, or even what autism is on a very deep neurological level. There have been many speculations over the years, and this book presents most of the more plausible ones, with strengths and weaknesses of each one of those hypotheses. This might be the biggest weakness of this book - even though it aims to provide a solid basis for understanding of autism, too much of it is rather speculative. It could indeed be that autism is still such an unknown condition that we really don't know all that much about it. However, my impression is that more of the book could have been used for verified facts and the latest research. Overall, however, I feel that this is an important book to read for anyone who has even the most cursory interest in autism.

The book explains Autism in easy to understand language. I have read a lot of books and articles on this subject,plus worked with several autistis children.This is an excellent book ,for all readers.

I am currently reading this book for a graduate course at Sierra Nevada College......if you are interested in Autism...buy it....great info., history, case studies, and insights. Highly recommended.

I am a fan of these "Very Short Introductions" by OUP, and own about a dozen of them. This introduction by Frith has the advantage of being written by one of the leading scholars in the field of autism. Its strength is that it is highly readable. However, I think that it is slightly lightweight in terms of the issues covered, and in comparison to some of the other "Very Short Introductions" I've read, many of which go into quite a bit of sophisticated detail (the one on Kant, for example!). I wonder how much real insight one is going to get from this book beyond what is available elsewhere (even for free on-line). I suppose part of the problem is that the intended audience is likely a mix of parents/caregivers with autistic children and scholars/students of autism in various fields like psychology. I still think that even the former readership would prefer more detail and scholarship, which Frith could certainly provide.

I also own Frith's edited volume "Autism and Asperger's Syndrome" and while it is old and perhaps slightly out of date (1992) I found it much more engaging and interesting. I would highly recommend that book for people interested in more scholarship on questions related to autism and other ASD.