Hollin, G orcid.org/0000-0003-4348-8272 and Pilnick, A (2015) Infancy, autism, and the emergence of a socially disordered body. Social Science & Medicine, 143. pp. 279-286. ISSN 0277-9536
Abstract
Twenty academic psychologists and neuroscientists, with an interest in autism and based within the
United Kingdom, were interviewed between 2012 and 2013 on a variety of topics related to the condition.
Within these qualitative interviews researchers often argued that there had been a ‘turn to infancy’
since the beginning of the 21st century with focus moving away from the high functioning adolescent
and towards the pre-diagnostic infant deemed to be ‘at risk’ of autism. The archetypal research of this
type is the ‘infant sibs’ study whereby infants with an elder sibling already diagnosed with autism are
subjected to a range of tests, the results of which are examined only once it becomes apparent whether
that infant has autism. It is claimed in this paper that the turn to infancy has been facilitated by two
phenomena; the autism epidemic of the 1990s and the emergence of various methodological techniques,
largely although not exclusively based within neuroscience, which seek to examine social disorder in the
absence of comprehension or engagement on the part of the participant: these are experiments done to
participants rather than with them. Interviewees claimed that these novel methods allowed researchers
to see a ‘real’ autism that lay ‘behind’ methodology. That claim is disputed here and instead it is argued
that these emerging methodologies other various phenomena, reorienting the social abnormality
believed typical of autism away from language and meaning and towards the body. The paper concludes
by suggesting that an attempt to draw comparisons between the symptoms of autism in infant populations
and adults with the condition inevitably leads to a somaticisation of autism.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). |
Keywords: | United Kingdom; Autism; Neuroscience; Psychology; Infancy |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Sociology and Social Policy (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 15 Aug 2016 10:17 |
Last Modified: | 27 Nov 2020 10:11 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.07.050 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.07.050 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:98377 |