Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Autist as ranga - an exciting new theory that makes a lot of sense to me

Conceptualizing the Autism Spectrum in Terms of Natural Selection and Behavioral Ecology: The Solitary Forager Hypothesis.
Jared Edward Reser
Evolutionary Psychology.
www.epjournal.net – 2011. 9(2): 207-238
http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP092072382.pdf

While Reser does not appear to have a terrifically positive view of autism, and has accepted some quite suspect truisms about autism uncritically, this theory has still got me excited. Reser is not the first person to propose that autism could be an evolutionary adaptation and a genetic variation of humanity of the same type of variation that gives rise to mammalian solitary animals that are closely related to social species. Reser is also not the first person to compare autistics with orangutans. I did both of these things way back in 2008 in my comments at this posting in my blog:

http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2008/05/my-objection-to-mirror-neuron-nonsense.html

and before that in 2007 I half-jokingly compared autistics with a solitary species and a mammalian Australian animal, the most delightful Tasmanian Devil, in this post:
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2007/09/idea-for-new-book-you-know-everyone.html

Let it be known, I thought of it first.

P.S.
No, Lili is not a fanta-pants, but red hair does run in my family.

No comments: