{"id":817,"date":"2026-11-01T06:54:26","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T06:54:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/2026\/11\/01\/the-term-is-becoming-unrecognisable-have-the-experts-who-believed-in-a-single-autism-spectrum-changed-their-minds-autism-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T06:54:26","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T06:54:26","slug":"the-term-is-becoming-unrecognisable-have-the-experts-who-believed-in-a-single-autism-spectrum-changed-their-minds-autism-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/2026\/11\/01\/the-term-is-becoming-unrecognisable-have-the-experts-who-believed-in-a-single-autism-spectrum-changed-their-minds-autism-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The term is becoming unrecognisable\u2019: have the experts who believed in a single autism spectrum changed their minds? | Autism | The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Autism, Wing said, ran \u201cfrom the most profoundly physically and mentally retarded person \u2026 to the most able, highly intelligent person with social impairment in its subtlest form\u201d. But what unified everyone on the spectrum was what she and Gould called the \u201cTriad of Impairments\u201d: problems with social skills, reciprocal (ie give-and-take) language and \u201csocial imagination\u201d, most obviously evident in children not understanding the concept of pretending while they play. Though subsequent diagnostic criteria have changed \u2013 it is now accepted, for instance, that autism usually involves sensory issues including heightened or lowered sensitivity to sound, light, texture, heat and cold \u2013 these ideas are still at the heart of what most people think autism is, along with a tendency to deep obsessions, or what the autism vernacular calls \u201cspecial interests\u201d.<br \/>\n\u2014 Read on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2026\/nov\/01\/the-term-is-becoming-unrecognisable-have-the-experts-who-believed-in-a-single-autism-spectrum-changed-their-minds\">www.theguardian.com\/society\/2026\/nov\/01\/the-term-is-becoming-unrecognisable-have-the-experts-who-believed-in-a-single-autism-spectrum-changed-their-minds<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Autism, Wing said, ran \u201cfrom the most profoundly physically and mentally retarded person \u2026 to the most able, highly intelligent person with social impairment in its subtlest form\u201d. But what unified everyone on the spectrum was what she and Gould called the \u201cTriad of Impairments\u201d: problems with social skills, reciprocal (ie give-and-take) language and \u201csocial [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[206,177],"class_list":["post-817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-autism","tag-mental-health"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}