Autism, empathy and dyspraxia

The other day, a student said something to me that has both shaken up and transformed my understanding of both dyspraxia and autism. He said that he had once heard the following defintion of dyspraxia as: "autism with empathy". Like any definition this can't allow for everything but it's made a lot of things make sense and I don't think I'll ever see autism or dyspraxia in the same way again - nor perhaps empathy.

Some very initial attemptions at finding the source of the quotation and putting this in the context of current research/debate:

Dziuk, M. A., Larson, J. C., Apostu, A., Mahone, E. M., Denckla, M. B., & Mostofsky, S. H. (2007). Dyspraxia in autism: association with motor, social, and communicative deficits. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 49 (10), 734-739.

Could dyspraxia be misdiagnosed as asperger's?

Selections from the Dyspraxic Adults site

Comments welcome!

 

End of Classics site and toolkit news

Happy New Year! A couple of quick updates

First: I've begun the process of pulling together my various blogging activities into a single site, The End of Classics, which includes links to this one plus my blogs on classical mythology and on Athena. Do please visit it! The address is here

Second: I've completed the HEA (Higher Education Academy) Equality and Diversity toolkit for classics practitioners mentioned in the previous posting. I'll supply the link once it's published.