‘Travel in parallel with us for a while’: sensory geographies of autism

Abstract

Drawing on autobiographies by authors with autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs), we consider how ASD authors use travel analogies and spatial metaphors to explore questions of difference in autistic sensory experience. ASD authors often appeal to the geographical imagination in an effort to communicate with 'neuro-typical' others for whom autistic behaviour can seem so peculiar as to be almost alien. Blurring the boundaries between pathology and normality, ASD authors counter typically negative and/or dismissive assessments of deficiency, disability and deviance with explanations of reasonable difference in environmental response. This paper takes up the challenge of ASD authors to 'travel in parallel', circumventing biomedical 'checkpoints', if only temporarily, in order to better understand the construction and experience of autistic lifeworlds, wherein spatial and embodied coherence is challenged at every turn and 'sensory mapping' is a means of survival. Rather than viewing perceptual and processing challenges characteristic of ASDs as problems to be fixed, we suggest non-autistic others might instead attempt toThe Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe canadien 54, no 4 (2010) 462-475

Empathizing with sensory and movement differences: moving toward sensitive understanding of autism

“…Neurotypicals do not naturally recognize the full reasons for sensory-movement differences, and their centrality to communication differences, because they involve areas they process intuitively. Critically, as scientific evidence on the presence and importance of autistic people's sensory-movement differences mounts, it increasingly reflects autistic people's lived experiences (Chamak et al, 2008; Davidson and Henderson, 2010; Robledo et al, 2012). What society does with this knowledge will test everyone's sensitivity and understanding.…”

Living with Autistic Spectrum Disorders: Families, Homes and the Disruption of Space

“…For people with ASD ‘no thing, person or place is predictable in its perceptual impact, and situations must be precisely the same – not similar or ‘close to’ the other, in distance or any other sense – but actually identical if disorientation is to be avoided’ (Davidson and Henderson, , 470). This led to various obsessions, routines and rituals; 60% of the sample experienced some form of rigid, obsessive or controlling behaviour.…”

“…Geographical literature on ASD is exceptionally sparse, centred on five papers. Four of these analysed autobiographies of people with ASD, addressing issues of identity and mobility rather than family relationships, and online communities created by people with ASD (Davidson, ; Davidson and Parr, ; Davidson and Henderson, 2010a; 2010b). A fifth study examined the experiences of mothers of young children with ASD in public spaces (Ryan, ).…”

Geographies of Medical and Health Humanities: A Cross-Disciplinary Conversation

“…As de Leeuw and Donovan (this issue) argue, engaging with patients' lived experiences promotes a holistic and historical understanding of mental health beyond the neurobiological, neuropsychiatric, and psychological, and adds sensitivity to the social, the spatial, and the corporeal. Methods of narration, storytelling, and graphic memoirs have proven to be valuable in emphasizing the meaningful aspects of life with a condition (e.g., Davidson 2000Davidson , 2010Davidson and Henderson 2010;Donovan 2014b;, but less effective in highlighting the role of the contextual everyday in structuring experience. Inspired by poststructural advances in geographical methodology, which seek to foreground encounters in the here and now over rationally processed reflections from a temporal and often locational difference (e.g., McCormack 2003), this piece augments patient perspectives with an emphasis on the momentary and in situ.…”