Sensory Perceptual Issues in Autism and Asperger Syndrome
Sensory Perceptual Issues in Autism and Asperger Syndrome

Author: Olga Bogdashina

Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers

Published: 2003-01-01

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 9781843101666

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This book will assist practitioners who work with autistic people to comprehend sensory perceptual differences in autism. Strategies for dealing with sensory integration dysfunction are presented in a manner that can easily be understood by practitioners and carers.

A Shot in the Dark
A Shot in the Dark

Author: Harris Livermore Coulter

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 1991-01-01

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780895294630

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Every week, tens of thousands of children across America are injected with the DPT (diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus) vaccine. The law requires it, and most children will get four DPT shots before they are two years old. But what if one of the components of the vaccine was not safe? What if it caused not only pain, swelling, screaming, and high fever, but also shock, convulsions, brain damage, and even death? And, to make matters worse, what if there were a safer alternative but parents didn't know about it? Wouldn't the government require the drug manufacturers to produce the safer vaccine to protect the lives of the children who might otherwise suffer the shot's crippling side effects? The answer is, unfortunately, no. A Shot in the Dark is a chilling account of just how dangerous the whole-cell pertussis vaccine (the "P" part of the DPT shot) has proven to be. It provides accurate research into the history of the vaccine's development and usage. It exposes the roles played by the FDA and drug companies. It tells the tragic stories of the young victims of the vaccine. This book is also a guide for rightfully concerned parents who are looking for answers to important questions. What are the warning signs to look for to tell if your child is likely to be sensitive to the vaccine? What should parents ask their doctors about the vaccine and their child's medical profile? What is being done, here and in other countries, to combat this frightening situation? What can parents do now to help? A Shot in the Dark is a responsible, eye-opening look at a potential problem that every parent of every young child living in this country must face. Armed with the facts in this important book, parents will be able to make informed decisions about their real medical options. Book jacket.

Retrotopia
Retrotopia

Author: Zygmunt Bauman

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2017-03-06

Total Pages: 133

ISBN-13: 1509515356

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We have long since lost our faith in the idea that human beings could achieve human happiness in some future ideal state—a state that Thomas More, writing five centuries ago, tied to a topos, a fixed place, a land, an island, a sovereign state under a wise and benevolent ruler. But while we have lost our faith in utopias of all hues, the human aspiration that made this vision so compelling has not died. Instead it is re-emerging today as a vision focused not on the future but on the past, not on a future-to-be-created but on an abandoned and undead past that we could call retrotopia. The emergence of retrotopia is interwoven with the deepening gulf between power and politics that is a defining feature of our contemporary liquid-modern world—the gulf between the ability to get things done and the capability of deciding what things need to be done, a capability once vested with the territorially sovereign state. This deepening gulf has rendered nation-states unable to deliver on their promises, giving rise to a widespread disenchantment with the idea that the future will improve the human condition and a mistrust in the ability of nation-states to make this happen. True to the utopian spirit, retrotopia derives its stimulus from the urge to rectify the failings of the present human condition—though now by resurrecting the failed and forgotten potentials of the past. Imagined aspects of the past, genuine or putative, serve as the main landmarks today in drawing the road-map to a better world. Having lost all faith in the idea of building an alternative society of the future, many turn instead to the grand ideas of the past, buried but not yet dead. Such is retrotopia, the contours of which are examined by Zygmunt Bauman in this sharp dissection of our contemporary romance with the past.

Impossible Languages
Impossible Languages

Author: Andrea Moro

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2016-09-02

Total Pages: 157

ISBN-13: 0262034891

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An investigation into the possibility of impossible languages, searching for the indelible “fingerprint” of human language. Can there be such a thing as an impossible human language? A biologist could describe an impossible animal as one that goes against the physical laws of nature (entropy, for example, or gravity). Are there any such laws that constrain languages? In this book, Andrea Moro—a distinguished linguist and neuroscientist—investigates the possibility of impossible languages, searching, as he does so, for the indelible “fingerprint” of human language. Moro shows how the very notion of impossible languages has helped shape research on the ultimate aim of linguistics: to define the class of possible human languages. He takes us beyond the boundaries of Babel, to the set of properties that, despite appearances, all languages share, and explores the sources of that order, drawing on scientific experiments he himself helped design. Moro compares syntax to the reverse side of a tapestry revealing a hidden and apparently intricate structure. He describes the brain as a sieve, considers the reality of (linguistic) trees, and listens for the sound of thought by recording electrical activity in the brain. Words and sentences, he tells us, are like symphonies and constellations: they have no content of their own; they exist because we listen to them and look at them. We are part of the data.

Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind
Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind

Author: Mark Pagel

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2012-02-07

Total Pages: 431

ISBN-13: 0393065871

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A fascinating, far-reaching study of how our species' innate capacity for culture altered the course of our social and evolutionary history. A unique trait of the human species is that our personalities, lifestyles, and worldviews are shaped by an accident of birth—namely, the culture into which we are born. It is our cultures and not our genes that determine which foods we eat, which languages we speak, which people we love and marry, and which people we kill in war. But how did our species develop a mind that is hardwired for culture—and why? Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel tracks this intriguing question through the last 80,000 years of human evolution, revealing how an innate propensity to contribute and conform to the culture of our birth not only enabled human survival and progress in the past but also continues to influence our behavior today. Shedding light on our species’ defining attributes—from art, morality, and altruism to self-interest, deception, and prejudice—Wired for Culture offers surprising new insights into what it means to be human.

Enabling Positive Change
Enabling Positive Change

Author: Paolo Inghilleri

Publisher: de Gruyter Open

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 9783110410235

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The book describes promotion and fostering of positive psychological change in everyday life, focusing on the concept of Flow of Consciousness - an experience of subjective psychological wellbeing that nourishes and complexifies the Self. The authors propose a wide overview of positive psychological experience, considering individual characteristics, the influence of context, culture, social relationships, and new technologies environments.

After Phrenology
After Phrenology

Author: Michael L. Anderson

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2014-12-12

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 0262028107

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A proposal for a fully post-phrenological neuroscience that details the evolutionary roots of functional diversity in brain regions and networks. The computer analogy of the mind has been as widely adopted in contemporary cognitive neuroscience as was the analogy of the brain as a collection of organs in phrenology. Just as the phrenologist would insist that each organ must have its particular function, so contemporary cognitive neuroscience is committed to the notion that each brain region must have its fundamental computation. In After Phrenology, Michael Anderson argues that to achieve a fully post-phrenological science of the brain, we need to reassess this commitment and devise an alternate, neuroscientifically grounded taxonomy of mental function. Anderson contends that the cognitive roles played by each region of the brain are highly various, reflecting different neural partnerships established under different circumstances. He proposes quantifying the functional properties of neural assemblies in terms of their dispositional tendencies rather than their computational or information-processing operations. Exploring larger-scale issues, and drawing on evidence from embodied cognition, Anderson develops a picture of thinking rooted in the exploitation and extension of our early-evolving capacity for iterated interaction with the world. He argues that the multidimensional approach to the brain he describes offers a much better fit for these findings, and a more promising road toward a unified science of minded organisms.

Gioco e interazione sociale nell'autismo
Gioco e interazione sociale nell'autismo

Author: Cesarina Xaiz

Publisher: Edizioni Erickson

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 10

ISBN-13: 8879463764

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Questo lavoro è una raccolta di attività pratiche per insegnare a giocare e a rapportarsi con un bambino con difficoltà nella interazione sociale, nella comunicazione e nella capacità di estendere e variare interessi e attività. Queste attività sono particolarmente necessarie per un bambino con disturbo generalizzato dello sviluppo, autismo, oppure con altri disturbi come il ritardo mentale o le disabilità motorie e sensoriali che comportano limitazioni e difficoltà anche nella socialità e nella comunicazione. Nel tentativo di comprendere queste difficoltà, le ricerche hanno dapprima considerato come primario il deficit sociale, poi quello del linguaggio, quindi è emerso il ruolo dei deficit cognitivi. La scoperta dell'importanza dei componenti base dell'intersoggettività come l'imitazione, l'attenzione cognitiva, lo scambio di turni nello sviluppo della capacità di interazioni sociali reciproche ha richiamato di nuovo l'attenzione sul ruolo della difficoltà sociale. Questo lavoro, centrato sulle difficoltà interpersonali nell'autismo e nei disturbi simili, si basa sulla convinzione che le tre aree di deficit si compenetrano l'una nell'altra in modo circolare. Scopo del lavoro è suggerire idee, specialmente appropriate per i bambini in età tra i due e i dieci anni, per favorire lo sviluppo di abilità nell'area delle relazioni all'interno di una cornice serena di alleanza con il bambino in difficoltà. Il libro nasce da molti anni di diretta esperienza di trattamento ed educazione di bambini in collaborazione con i loro genitori. Riuscire a entrare in contatto con il proprio bambino è la più sentita necessità quando comunicare è difficile, se non impossibile; questo soprattutto quando la vita con il bambino comporta problemi di comportamento, fatica fisica, attività sociali seriamente limitate. Insegnanti, genitori e terapisti potranno trovare nel libro idee per realizzare giochi.