The Relief of Diagnosis: Autism Spectrum Diagnosis in Adults

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"learning style" while accurate leaves out such things sensory and different ways of communicating.
But the idea about the lack of knowledge of adult and female autism is discussed in one form or another pretty much every day on WP.

I guess another thing with "learning style" that was bothering me but I somehow couldn't quite describe at the time is this:
There are all different kinds of autistic people. Verbal/nonverbal. Visual/no so visual. Etc.., etc.

Surely this implies that autistic people have multiple learning styles?

Maybe I don't understand what they mean by learning style.

Nice article----thanks, for posting it, AU!

I sorta liked the term "learning style"----it seems less "offensive" than "learning disabled", because I can learn----I just have a different way of going-about it. (I said "sorta" because the phrase is so new to me, that it hasn't quite sunk-in, yet.) Maybe the reason that it bothers you, Adamantium, is because "style" seems to suggest that one CHOOSES "it"----like, style of clothing, or room decor? I'm thinking most of us don't feel like we have ANY "say" in the matter, what-so-ever (meaning it's most definitely NOT "a choice").

I have actually been thinking about posting something roughly along the lines that a core feature of autism is an atypical learning style, but by "learning style" I mean something more fundamental than the visual/auditory/kinesthetic learning styles. I would propose that the autistic learning style is self-referential, meaning that learning occurs most easily and naturally via self-instruction, internal motivation, and building relationships between new material and personal experience.

I came up with this idea by taking together the following autistic traits:

disinclination to imitate and difficulty imitating (everything from peek-a-boo to prosody)

excellent learning of personal interests combined with sometimes poor learning of imposed subjects (such as school curriculum over which there is no choice); large, unexplainable gaps in ability levels

ideasthesia and synesthesia

and perhaps one or two others that I cannot remember at the moment.

You know who else doesn't seem to want to hear from adult autistics? Young autistics.

I can't relate specifics here, but it's becoming clear to me that young people who "identify" as being on the autism spectrum often are not open to hearing from adults (30s and over) who are also on the autism spectrum but have had different paths and have different perspectives. Often the perspective they don't want to hear is encouraging and positive. A lot of young people want to hear about what's wrong and how disadvantaged they are, not what strengths they have and what good they can do.