This current issues piece will explore how autobiographies written by people with autism can help identify sensory processing differences that might be viewed as possible attributes in an enabling society, but for which ableist perceptions are often negative. In concrete terms, these constructions may be preventing people from entering employment…

The author begins his essay by stating that Richard Shusterman advises us that the 20th century scholarly community has not just ignored the value that can come to one's life as a function of paying close attention to the body and its immediate sensual qualities, it has trained us to eschew its character-enhancing sensual natures in favor of more…

In his last commentary on "Biochemistry Denatured," this author dealt with his perception that college students today have spent too little of their childhood years playing outside in nature and as a consequence have not learned basic things about the world from personal experience. This "nature-deficit disorder" removes many opportunities for…

Richard Shusterman's "Body Consciousness" aims at formulating a theory of somaesthetics and somatic experience. There has indeed been a growing interest in the role of the body in experience. Shusterman examines the arguments of six important writers who have been influential in this discussion. The emphasis on the body is natural for a…

We argue for the utility of a functional definition of stereotypy based on evidence of both sensory automatic and socially mediated reinforcement contingencies in the occurrence of stereotypy in children with autism. A predetermined sensory function of stereotypy is often invoked in the behavioral literature and the term "self-stimulatory…

In this article, we studied the paradigm of observation which has been restructured since the beginning of modern sciences. In order to interpret this observation paradigm, an expression, "observation without seeing" was formulated. It was noticed that our interpretation of the observation depends on our knowledge and experiences. Finally, it was…

At least since the early 1990s, educators in inclusive schooling as well as scholars in Disability Studies have critiqued prevailing notions of intellectual ability and have suggested the importance of interpretive communities for constructing student competence (Biklen, 1990; Goode, 1992, 1994; Kliewer, 1998; Kluth, 2003; Linneman, 2001). This…