I was recently talking with a very bright college freshman who excels in science and foreign languages. She was telling me about her friends, the people she studied with, and the travels she had completed, including a recent visit to Japan. We also talked about organic chemistry and some of the nuances of chemical crystal structure. It was clear that she had an inherent desire to learn and a breadth of interests she was happily pursuing in college. I have been very fortunate indeed to have been a college professor for more than 40 years and to have met quite a number of students such as this young woman who are passionate about learning, highly intelligent, and an absolute delight to teach.<\/p>\n
But this conversation took a different turn when she told me that some of her friends were pointedly asking whether she was \u201cneurodiverse.\u201d Some were even suggesting she is \u201con the spectrum,\u201d referring to the autism spectrum. Evidently, for some, the term \u201cneurodiverse\u201d can be synonymous with being \u201con the spectrum.\u201d I wondered whether these questions were prompted by the fact that she is highly intelligent and keenly interested in topics and ideas that others in her group may not be.<\/p>\n
This characterization came as an unhappy surprise to me because my background in autism and autism spectrum disorders and supporting autistic<\/a> children and their families has provided a context for thinking about autism and the different ways that autistic children learn, communicate, and interact with people. Although the autism spectrum has expanded dramatically since I first learned about autism in the 1980s and 1990s, it was nonetheless surprising that this social, highly intelligent, engaging student would be viewed through the lens of being “on the spectrum.\u201d Enjoying conversations about linguistics, eastern languages, organic chemistry, and crystal structure are probably not universal traits in the general population of young people, among college freshmen, or even most people in society, but in no way should that, unto itself, be viewed as a \u201cclinical\u201d condition.<\/p>\n Understanding Neurodiversity and Neurotypical Terminology <\/p>\n This leads to foundational questions regarding the term \u201cneurodiversity<\/a>\u201d and, perhaps more importantly, the contrasting term \u201cneurotypical.\u201d An article by Nicole Baumer, M.D., MEd, and Julia Frueh, M.D., entitled \u201cWhat is neurodiversity?[1]<\/a>\u201d provides important context: \u201cThe word neurodiversity refers to the diversity of all people, but it is often used in the context of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), as well as other neurological or developmental conditions such as ADHD<\/a> or learning disabilities.” [emphasis added] I wholeheartedly applaud the idea in this article which states, \u201cNeurodiversity describes the idea that people experience and interact with the world around them in many different ways; there is no one ‘right’ way of thinking, learning, and behaving, and differences are not viewed as deficits.\u201d However, does this mean that neurodiversity is inherently an autistic trait or a symptom of ADHD or a learning disability?<\/p>\n In contrast, \u201cneurotypical\u201d was described in an article from the Cleveland Clinic as meaning “your brain developed and works like the brains of most people,\u201d which added that neurotypical people “generally have brains that operate at about the same level across different types of skills. Some of the skill areas include things like memory<\/a>, math, and written or spoken language.” [2]<\/a> This definition is\u2014in some ways\u2014quite shocking. For many years, neuroscientists have been reporting that there are profound individual differences in neural development and neural functioning. I challenge any neuroscientist<\/a> (or radiologist for that matter) to look at a brain scan and accurately identify that scan as coming from a \u201cneurotypical\u201d or \u201cneurodiverse\u201d individual.<\/p>\n As with brain scans, it is not common for anyone to \u201coperate at the same level across different types of skills.\u201d Many years ago, neuropsychologist Richard Woodcock and I published an article on sex<\/a> differences in the cognitive abilities of more than 10,000 participants[3]<\/a>. Although females and males display highly similar overall levels of intellectual ability, the distribution of relative strengths and weaknesses in broad abilities such as processing speed, auditory processing, visual spatial reasoning, comprehension knowledge (language ability), and so on were quite distinct in males and females. A striking finding was a significant female advantage in processing speed (the ability to complete tasks of moderate difficulty quickly and accurately), especially in adolescent females as compared to adolescent males: \u201cThe results indicated that males scored significantly lower on estimates of Gs (processing speed) in all three normative samples, with the largest difference evident in adolescent subgroups.\u201d This cognitive advantage translated into a similar female advantage in reading fluency and writing fluency.<\/p>\n Male and Female Architecture <\/p>\n