Macquarie School of Education, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism (Autism CRC), Brisbane, Qld, Australia.
J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2022 Apr;63(4):381-396. doi: 10.1111/jcpp.13534. Epub 2021 Nov 3.
Since its initial description, the concept of autism has been firmly rooted within the conventional medical paradigm of child psychiatry. Increasingly, there have been calls from the autistic community and, more recently, nonautistic researchers, to rethink the way in which autism science is framed and conducted. Neurodiversity, where autism is seen as one form of variation within a diversity of minds, has been proposed as a potential alternative paradigm. In this review, we concentrate on three major challenges to the conventional medical paradigm - an overfocus on deficits, an emphasis on the individual as opposed to their broader context and a narrowness of perspective - each of which necessarily constrains what we can know about autism and how we are able to know it. We then outline the ways in which fundamental elements of the neurodiversity paradigm can potentially help researchers respond to the medical model's limitations. We conclude by considering the implications of a shift towards the neurodiversity paradigm for autism science.
自最初描述以来，自闭症的概念一直牢牢植根于儿童精神病学的传统医学范式中。越来越多的自闭症患者和最近的非自闭症研究人员呼吁重新思考自闭症科学的框架和开展方式。神经多样性将自闭症视为多样性思维中的一种变体形式，被提议作为一种潜在的替代范式。在这篇综述中，我们集中讨论了传统医学范式面临的三个主要挑战——过度关注缺陷、强调个体而不是更广泛的背景以及视角狭隘，这些挑战必然限制了我们对自闭症的了解以及我们了解自闭症的方式。然后，我们概述了神经多样性范式的基本要素如何帮助研究人员应对医学模型的局限性。最后，我们考虑了向神经多样性范式转变对自闭症科学的影响。
