Neurodiverse Intelligences: Mapping the Multidimensional Construct of Neurodiversity

Nora M. Isacoff*, Anne-Laure Le Cunff, Vishwanath Varma

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to conference typesAbstractpeer-review

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Abstract

For most of the twentieth century, autism was conceived of as a disorder resulting in social and language deficits. In the late 1990s, within the context of the autism self-advocacy movement, the sociologist Judy Singer proposed the concept of “neurodiversity” as a subset of biodiversity. That is, just as the world is filled with many different lifeforms that shape and sustain each other, humankind is made up of many people with very different brains, each contributing to the species’ overall flourishing. The neurodiversity paradigm thus recognizes the inherent value of everyone: those who are neurodivergent (e.g., autistic people, those with ADHD, Dyslexia, Tourette’s) and those who are neurotypical. Today, different researchers and clinicians view neurodiversity in different ways. Due to limited data and the emergent nature of neurodiversity research, a systematic approach has yet to be applied to investigating the multidimensional construct of neurodiversity. Previous attempts at mapping the field of neurodiversity research have relied on expert commentary and discussion of those various definitions (3;4). Contrary to such qualitative methods, science mapping employs a quantitative approach for the description of published research, allowing for a systematic, transparent, and reproducible process. This project aims to capture the landscape of neurodiversity scholarship in order to ascertain areas of agreement and disagreement across fields, identify competing assumptions, and chart a path forward for cross-disciplinary collaborations. The authors include a cognitive scientist/psycholinguist, an educational neuroscientist, and an animal behaviorist/evolutionary biologist. Our hope is to use our diverse toolsets to address basic questions about the diversity of intelligence as well as to shed some light on crucial questions about disability rights and reconcile ideological and pragmatic arguments. To this end, we applied bibliometric analysis to an extensive dataset of publications exported from Web of Science with the search term neurodiver*. Our search returned 681 papers from 432 unique sources. Early trends reveal differences among scholarship geared toward development, the workplace, and inclusivity (among others). Analyses also demonstrate clusters of differing language use. Finally, papers differ in their relationships to the medical and social models of disability and in how neurodiversity is operationalized. Currently, we are running further analyses and will soon be consulting with a Research Advisory Board consisting of neurodivergent collaborators before submitting our findings for publication.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 2022
EventDiverse Intelligence Summer Institute - University of St Andrews, St Andrews, United Kingdom
Duration: 25 Jul 202214 Aug 2022
https://disi.org/

Seminar

SeminarDiverse Intelligence Summer Institute
Abbreviated titleDISI
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CitySt Andrews
Period25/07/202214/08/2022
Internet address

Keywords

  • neurodiversity
  • neuroscience
  • psychology
  • biology

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