Abstract
This chapter considers the theme of creativity in people with autism. It briefly investigates the relationship between autism and creativity, focusing on geniuses and autism. Following from this, an educational experience designed to enhance the socio-communicative skills of autistic people is presented and discussed. This experience demonstrates that a creative approach based on social stories, drama, and programmable toy robots is not only able to stimulate the communication skills of autistic people, but also their creativity. From the experience, it also emerged that the combined use of digital technologies, programmable toy robots, and creative practices based on social stories and drama could open new perspectives for therapeutic interventions in the autism scope.
TopAutism Spectrum Disorder
The term autism comes from the Greek word autos, meaning self. It was first used in the expression autistic thinking by the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler (1911) in relation to schizophrenia to describe the withdrawal of schizophrenic patients into their own fantasies (Kuhn & Cahn, 2004).
The first clinical definition of autism appeared in the first half of the 20th century. Grunya Efimovna Sukhareva (1891-1991), a Soviet child psychiatrist, published a detailed description of autistic symptoms in 1925. Her article, written in Russian, was translated into German a year later (Sukhareva, 1926). She initially used the term “schizoid (eccentric) psychopathy” but later replaced it with “autistic (pathological avoidant) psychopathy” to describe the clinical picture of autism. In 1943, Leo Kanner, an American-Austrian psychiatrist, published the first systematic description of early infantile autism (Harris, 2018). In 1944, Hans Asperger (1906-1980) published a definition of autistic psychopathy that was similar to Sukhareva’s definition (Asperger, 1991). During World War II, Asperger served as a medical officer in the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia. Astonishingly, some foundational ideas of autism emerged in a society that strove for the opposite of neurodiversity (Sheffer, 2018).
Asperger identified many of the characteristics of autistic people, notably:
Key Terms in this Chapter
Behavioral Disorders: An umbrella term encompassing many patterns of disorder such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Emotional Behavioral Disorder, and Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). These disorders can negatively affect a person’s ability to hold a job and maintain relationships. Although some autistic people may present behavioral disorders, ASD must be considered a developmental disorder that affects communication and behavior.
Social Skills: The skills people usually use to interact and communicate with others. These include both verbal and non-verbal communication, such as speech, gesture, facial expression, and body language.
Theory of Mind: In psychology, refers to the capacity to understand other people by inferring their mental states and developing social communication. The impairment of theory of mind may relate to ASD.
Central Coherence: A term describing the ability to see the big picture , looking for and drawing out overall meaning from a mass of, and often at the expense of, smaller details. In contrast, weak central coherence refers to the tendency in ASD to attend to and remember details rather than global form or meaning. The term central coherence was coined by Uta Frith in her influential 1989 book Autism: Explaining the Enigma .
Phenotype: An individual’s observable traits, such as height, eye color, and blood type. The genetic contribution to the phenotype is called the genotype. Conversely, behavioral phenotypes are behaviors such as anxiety, and social interaction style, as well as aberrant behaviors, such as self-injury, screaming, and aggression.
High Functioning Autism: An unofficial classification not used as a medical term or diagnosis describing a person with a relatively mild degree of autism. A person with high functioning autism exhibits no intellectual disability, but may exhibit deficits in communication, emotion recognition and expression, and social interaction.
Neurotypical: A neologism that refers to someone who has the brain functions, behaviors, and processing considered standard or typical. It is used in the autistic community as a label for non-autistic people.
Polygenic Inheritance: A character or phenotypic trait that is regulated by more than one gene. In biology, it refers to the quantitative inheritance wherein two or more independent genes additively affect a single phenotypic trait.
Low Functioning Autism: A person with autism who shows the most severe symptoms of ASD, such as severe behavioral issues and cognitive troubles.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD): A common, chronic, and long-lasting disorder in which a person has uncontrollable, reoccurring thoughts ( obsessions ) and/or behaviors ( compulsions ) that he or she feels the urge to repeat over and over ( https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd ). Autism and OCD do overlap in some ways.
Amygdala: A region of the brain primarily associated with emotional processes. It is part of the limbic system, a neural network that mediates many aspects of emotion and memory.
Savant: A term defined with two meanings, being 1. a person with detailed knowledge in some specialized field (as science or literature); 2. a person affected with behavioral disorders who exhibits exceptional skill or brilliance in some limited field (such as mathematics or music).