Autism portrayed in the movies: pleasing some of the people some of the time...

Things have come a long way since the first real mainstream appearance of autism on the silver screen (Rain Man). Nowadays, not a week seems to go by when autism doesn't feature in one form or another on a television show or new film/movie; even appearing in Sesame Street. I see this as a good thing when it comes to bringing autism further into the public psyche and hopefully preventing headlines such as 'Mother sent 'hurtful' letter about 'screechy' son with autism' from making many more appearances.

The downside however, is that with every representation of autism, there are typically comments galore about how autism is not being accurately portrayed or represented. A case in point is a new series called Atypical which has, according to one commentator, invited the same-old-same-old from some quarters (see here). Indeed, the old tenet: 'you can please some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time' seems to be tailor-made when it comes to views and opinions on the representation of autism on the screen.

It's timely that a new paper looking at the representation of autism in film and TV has also been published by Anders Nordahl-Hansen and colleagues [1]. Starting on the basis that: "Inaccurate portrayals [of autism] are a concern as they may lead to increased stereotypes toward the condition" authors concluded that many characters portraying autism seemed to "align unrealistically well with DSM-5 diagnostic criteria." They mention that those 'savant skills' (a.k.a 'a superpower') that every person with autism is supposed to have(!) were VERY well represented in the media content they surveyed. The authors go on to talk about the educational value of such portrayals and "the notion of authenticity in representing the autistic experience."

As I mentioned a few sentences back, I see autism appearing in more TV and films as a good thing. It makes an often invisible condition a lot more visible and helps to spread the idea that children/adults who were traditionally 'hidden away' deserve the same rights as anyone else. Insofar as the notion of 'authenticity' there have been quite a few, quite authentic portrayals of autism on TV shows. 'The A Word' was one of them (see here) (although I don't doubt some might disagree). Of course, there are always going to be creative processes acting on the fictional portrayal of autism; this goes for just about anything to do with creative media - soap operas do this all the time in the constant chase for viewer ratings. Indeed, one should never forget that TV shows and movies are in a constant state of chasing viewer ratings and not always necessarily produced with authenticity in mind.

In the context of autism also being an extremely heterogeneous condition (y'know, those 'autisms' that I keep going on about), I find it nigh on impossible that any single representation of autism is going to please all of the people all of the time. 'Authentic' is always going to be a matter of perspective...

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[1] Nordahl-Hansen A. et al. Mental health on screen: A DSM-5 dissection of portrayals of autism spectrum disorders in film and TV. Psychiatry Res. 2017. Aug 22.

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Are savant skills more likely in males with autism?

The impact of the 1988 film 'Rainman' on autism awareness has been pretty significant I would say. The Oscar winning film portrayed one 'type' of autism fairly well I think; certainly, the film received quite a bit of acclaim back in the day. One could even perhaps say that the film was influential in bringing autism awareness to a mainstream audience during the late 1980's (although there have been other notable events also).
I do however stress the one 'type' of autism presented in the film, because, as many people down the years have said, the sort of savant skills that were depicted in the film, are perhaps not entirely representative of everyone with autism.
I mention all this because of a new paper from the world famous Karolinska Institute in Sweden has been published titled: Sex differences in cognitive domains and their clinical correlates in higher-functioning autism spectrum disorders. I only have the abstract of the paper at the moment but I was interested in what they did and what they found.
Basically, the authors looked at attention-to-detail and selected executive functions between males and females with and without autism. They found some sex differences: predominantly that males were perhaps better on measures relating to attention-to-detail as measured by the block design test. The authors interpreted this as being potential evidence for a sex difference in savant skills skewed towards males.
Their results are not alone in suggesting the possibility of a stronger tendency towards savant skills in males over females. A few years back Prof. Sir Michael Rutter suggested the same thing and it was mentioned in this overview article.
It did get me thinking about the possible reasons for such gender disparity in the presentation of savant skills. Is it due to the presentation of symptoms differing between the genders? Are males inherently more likely to be savants or are there other environmental factors contributory? In Yoda speak: "answers I do not have to these questions".
My train of thought then led to the question of defining savant skills and whether our perception of what is, or is not, a savant skill might also be contributory to such a sex disparity. I note on the Wikipedia entry for savant syndrome quite a few people are listed - males and females - although again, noticeably skewed towards more males than females.
The person I most remember from my early recollections of autism was Stephen Wiltshire, and his fantastic drawings of various landmarks which aired on Blue Peter here in the UK.
Notable also on this list is Temple Grandin and her influential work on animal husbandry (timely also that her biopic is on TV here in the UK tomorrow and, no doubt, will stimulate more interest in autism).