Autistic in the UK

Before I forget how to blog again, some excerpts from alive Q& A I did in the UK recently, while at theCentre for Research in Autism and Education in London. I ' ve corrected one typo. It was very hard to do but the questions were excellent.Darren Sharif:Was research something you always felt you had been quite good at, statistics, numbers etc? And what support network did you have to start this job?Michelle Dawson:No, I ran into research by accident--as I was trying to sort out legal issues. Then suddenly I had information I could really work with. Before that I had been totally discouraged from even looking at research--I was told that autistics could not understand research.I haven ' t really had support, I just leveled a lot of criticism at a research group I took seriously and they offered me an affiliation.Peter:Hi Michelle, really interesting to hear your answers to the last questions. What sort of advice would you give to autistic people here in the UK who would like to get into research?Michelle Dawson:My main advice is--read a lot of papers! Find out what you ' re interested in and what you can do well. You need a lot of critical thinking and it helps to not decide ahead of time what you should find.I also suggest reading the scientific literature involving the typical population to get an idea of the often higher standards there--and then use these higher standards to interpret the autism literature.It is hard for me to give advice at the usual levels because I hav...
Source: The Autism Crisis - Category: Child Development Source Type: blogs