Talk:Autism

Osmosis video

Osmosis video

I have removed the video File:Autism spectrum disorder video.webm. The video is not sourced per WP:MEDRS or WP:V.

Per WP:V "any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation that directly supports the material." This video does not contain any sources, nor any means to tie sources to specific facts and claims made. Per WP:V, "The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material" and "Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source"

This video is not exempt from citations or sources per WP:LEAD because it is not a lead, and it does not summarise the article. You can tell this from the first minute or so of the video -- totally different base material.

This material must not be restored as-is. Editors who repeatedly restore material that fails WP:V may be blocked. -- Colin°^Talk — Preceding unsigned comment added by Colin (talk • contribs) time, day month year (UTC)

Age of diagnosis section

A part of me is thinking about adding an age of diagnosis section. Because age is viewed as a big part for diagnosing people with ASD.CycoMa (talk) 19:15, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree that age of diagnosis would be an appropriate section. Cliff (a/k/a "Uploadvirus") (talk) 19:46, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Merger proposal; Outdated terminology/taxonomy

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

There is consensus to merge the articles. The arguments of the supporting side have centred around current scientific consensus treating autism as synonymous with autism spectrum disorder, including the current editions of the most respected and widely-used diagnostic manuals. The single Wikipedian remaining in opposition argued that the sources provided for this viewpoint did not satisfy WP:MEDRS, but was not able effectively to demonstrate how the sources brought forward by the supporting side failed that standard. Felix QW (talk) 19:03, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

---

This entry is still written as if autism and Asperger's are two separate things, which is really not how modern psychology sees them. This really shouldn't be a separate entry from autism, per DSM-5, ICD 11 etc. because psychologists persistently found that the actual line drawn between 'classic autism' and 'Asperger's syndrome', being to do with speech delay, was not particularly meaningful. It is not a strong predictor of long-term outcomes.

Even before this, Asperger's was considered by a great many people to be a type of autism, which is not what you'd get from this article.

It's also distinctly weird that Lorna Wing is not mentioned, as the person who coined the term 'autism spectrum'.

I see that this was previously discussed in 2018, 2015, 2011 and 2008. It gets truer every time. If the content currently under autism needs to be anywhere, it should either be in a classic autism entry, or a history section of a single autism entry which is framed around autism as a 'spectrum condition', as others have suggested.

Whatever happens, I fear a lot of editing is required by people who are up to date with current terminology, preferably driven by people who are autistic themselves. Oolong (talk) 17:38, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

I agree, the articles are really outdated and probably confuse people.–Collinanderson (talk) 13:46, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

FYI, @Wretchskull is on the discord server, trying to advocate against this. I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 18:47, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Per this, and this section on SandyGeorgia's talk page I have issued a warning on Wretchskull's talk page for canvassing. Sideswipe9th (talk) 18:55, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for this. Full disclosure: I tweeted about this [1] in the hopes of getting more people who know the first thing about autism involved. Possibly that counts as canvassing? I've been an occasional Wikipedia user for at least 17-odd years, but never really engaged enough to come up against this kind of rule - apologies if my tweets would be considered inappropriate. Having originally posted this for discussion almost a year ago and received three supportive comments but nothing else, and then been met, when I tried to take it further, with strangely hostile responses from people who obviously don't know much about autism, I figured I could do with some backup from people who know their stuff! I don't know how many active Wikipedia editors follow me anyway. Oolong (talk) 13:41, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

@Sideswipe9th, it's strange to me that you think it's a problem to ask a single highly experienced editor – one who knows the history of this particular subject area on wiki through and through – for an opinion on the merge proposal. I was checking this page to make sure that she'd heard about this merge proposal, and if she hadn't, I was going to leave a note on her talk page about the merge proposal myself. I don't know how the community feels about the discord server (presumably we treat it like we handled discussions on IRC back in the day), but asking one relevant editor for help is not generally considered canvassing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:02, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: it was inappropriate per WP:INAPPNOTE. The message on SandyGeorgia's page was I felt to be biased. I don't have an issue with notifying experienced editors, it's just that any such notification needs to be neutrally worded. The message on Discord is somewhat more clear cut, and would generally be considered stealth canvassing per the text at INAPPNOTE under Stealth Canvassing. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:18, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

INAPPNOTE provides four criteria. At most, the message to SandyGeorgia was imperfect on just one of those criteria, and it is the failing least likely to matter in practice (because, as an experienced editor who has made 234,000 edits already, who worked with disputes at FAC for years, and who already knows the subject area, SandyGeorgia is not likely to be swayed by any amount of "spin" put on a question). I do not consider this to be a problem.

Problematic canvassing is not a binary thing. A variety of communications and styles are expected and accepted. Messages do not have to be perfect to be acceptable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:20, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

The criteria in INAPPNOTE explicitly use a logical or in the form criteria a OR b OR c OR d, not a logical and. Meeting any one of them is considered canvassing and sufficient for a warning. I was not the only editor who felt the notifications were inappropriate per above, the message to SandyGeorgia was one such, and the Discord notification was another. The warning was for both sets of messages together, and not for the message to SandyGeorgia in isolation.

It is true that messages do not need to be perfect to be acceptable, however they do need to be non-biased. One way is to use a template. Or dropping a message like Hey, you might be interested in this discussion is fine as it's neutrally worded. However saying Are these edits problematic? link 1, link 2 to an editor who had not contributed on the page at that point is not, it's colouring that content with the preconceptions/biases of the editor making the notice, regardless of the receiving editor's familiarity with the topic in general. An alternative would have been to phrase it like Hey, what do you think of these edits? link 1, link 2, which draws attention to a specific set of edits without casting preconceptions on them. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:51, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Communication happens on a spectrum. That page even provides you with a color-coded spectrum. Having any one problem is not always considered canvassing. It also doesn't make any sense to say that it doesn't have to be perfect, and then turn around and say that it does have to be perfect for one of the four criteria. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:05, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

To elaborate for anyone not familiar with contemporary discourse around autism:

1. Historically, the term 'autism' was sometimes (but not always) reserved for those with so-called 'classic' or 'Kanner' autism. This is what Wikipedia's autism entry is mostly (but not exclusively) about.
2. Hans Asperger himself used the term 'autism' to describe his subjects; the term 'autism' has never in fact been exclusively used for 'Kanner' autism.
3. John Wing translated Asperger's work for his wife Lorna Wing, who coined the term 'autistic spectrum' around the 1970s, intended to include autism as described by Kanner and autism as described by Asperger.
4. DSM-III (1980) included autism among other 'pervasive developmental disorders'.
5. The diagnostic manuals ICD-10 and DSM-IV, in use from 1994, included Asperger's syndrome as a separate but related diagnosis from 'classic' autism. More on the history of the classification of autism here: [2] Note this source states 'When we refer to the concept in general, we will use the term autism, and when we refer to particular, earlier diagnostic constructs, we will use more specifc terms like autism spectrum disorder, infantile autism, and autistic disorder.' I would suggest this would be a sensible approach for Wikipedia to take too.
6. The subsequent versions of these manuals, ICD-11 (2019) and DSM-5 (2013), removed Asperger's as a separate category, although at least in draft versions of the former it is mentioned as a synonym for one of the sub-categories of the autistic spectrum category.
7. Everyone who is diagnosed with an 'autistic spectrum disorder' is generally considered to 'be autistic', or to 'have autism'. It is uncommon in general use to say that someone 'has (an) ASD', although not unheard of. These terms are used interchangeably by most autistic people, families, charities and health authorities.

Some sources to demonstrate the use of 'autism' as a synonym for 'autistic spectrum (conditions/disorders)':

1. The NHS's 'What is autism?' page
2. The NAS
3. Autism Speaks (sorry)
4. Autism Society
5. Autism Science Foundation
6. Healthline
7. WebMD
8. NIH
9. Autistica
10. Psychiatry.org
11. Scottish Autism
12. Various papers: [3]
13. [4]
14. [5]
15. [6]

--Oolong (talk) 08:12, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Just a couple more tertiary sources to note: Fletcher-Watson, Sue; Happé, Francesca (2019). Autism: A New Introduction to Psychological Theory and Current Debate. Routledge. p. 30. ISBN 9781138106123. and 'Understaning Autism' on OpenLearn. Oolong (talk) 10:13, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree, I support merging the articles. Averixus (talk) 12:57, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Since this is the merger discussion, just reposting my comment from Talk:Autism#This should not be a separate page from Autism Spectrum. As such, I believe this discussion may be pertinent to @User:Wretchskull, as they participated in the previous discussion on the Autism talk page. In order for such a merger between the pages, there would have to be an overwhelming number of sources which showed that both terms are synonymous. The sources provided above by Oolong are not enough to make the case for a merger. A merger would be a big deal, since the Autism spectrum page is over 148,000 bytes and this page is over 137,000 bytes. I do not support a merger unless there is a consensus among users for such a merger and a majority of sources show that the terms "autism" and "autism spectrum" are synonymous. Unless those tenets can be met, which is doubtful considering the sizable nature of this page and the autism spectrum page, I cannot and do not support such a merger. I doubt that many users on here would support such a merger either. As such, I wholeheartedly agree with Wretchskull and say that Oolong is completely wrongheaded, even though well-intentioned. Historyday01 (talk) 17:06, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

@Oolong: @Historyday01: @Xurizuri: @Queenofconfusion: @Collinanderson: @Averixus: This is probably one of the most depressing threads I've ever seen. I'll keep this short because most of what I say falls on deaf ears. No, we will not succumb to your borderline wikianarchist behavior and advocacy editing. This isn't a matter of discussion; all autism articles will stay where they are whether you like it or not, and if you insist on vehemently keeping these merge tags just know that I'll be reverting them for disruptive editing, which is exactly what it is. It's saddening that a few editors, who I dare say have no background in psychiatry, are trying twist Wikipedia to their preference, favoring advocacy editing over high-quality medical sources that completely contradict the hill that Oolong is trying to die on. Long story short, every single source Oolong has provided is either a self-help book or non-WP:MEDRS reference or autism advocacy websites, and the one and only WP:MEDRS source stated that the reason they synonymized Autism with ASD was only for brevity and respect for advocacy groups, NOT because they are actually synonymous. I'm no expert in psychiatry, but I know that this is outrageous and completely contradictory to reliable medical sources. Reading your userpages tells a lot about the conflict of interest with these articles and why you want them merged. Truth > advocacy. I suggest you read this, which is from one of the biggest contributors to all Autism articles, getting them to featured status: [7]. Reverting merge requests for disruptive editing. Wretchskull (talk) 17:23, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Oh, I completely agree. This is definitely is a depressing thread for sure. I am not at all surprised that the sources Oolong has chosen are not high-quality medical sources, but are not really reliable sources. I would also say it is totally reasonable to revert merge requests for disruptive editing. Historyday01 (talk) 17:31, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

The fact that the term 'autism' is widely used as a synonym for 'autistic spectrum' is not even controversial. You guys are being incredibly weird about this. Why do you think multiple people have come along and suggested the same thing? MEDRS doesn't apply here; this is not biomedical information. The entire rationale for MEDRS is completely inapplicable! Regardless, I count four sources I've cited which I would suggest clearly fit its criteria.

You're determinedly sticking to a historical decision which may have made sense fifteen years ago, but for which you have provided no argument, while the citations you've provided give scant evidence to support to your position. Meanwhile I have pointed you to a recent textbook about autism, a university-run course on autism, a paper discussing the history of changes to definitions of autism through successive diagnostic manuals, and the web pages of all the biggest autism charities in the USA and the UK. I have explained the current state of play with respect to psychiatric definitions of the autism spectrum. Again: the term 'autism' has historically been used ambiguously, sometimes to refer to a specific sub-category of the autistic spectrum, but at least as commonly to refer to the spectrum as a whole; since the sub-category has now been abolished, the latter definition has naturally come more to the fore.

@Oolong: 1) Most of what you provided weren't even secondary WP:RS sources, let alone WP:MEDRS. 2) As soon as you said MEDRS doesn't apply here, I stopped reading. This is my final reply to you; I keep an eye on your contributions as you are unwilling to improve and violating WP:5P2, and I will start an Arb-Com discretionary sanction against you if you keep disrupting Wikipedia. Wretchskull (talk) 18:32, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

@Wretchskull: your consistently patronising tone and threatening words don't sit well with the fact that you have this whole thing completely wrong, in a way that is genuinely obvious to anyone acquainted with the study of autism. I don't know why you have such strong opinions about this, given your lack of familiarity with the subject, and I'm not sure what 'an Arb-Com discretionary sanction' is, but feel free to start one if you think it'll help in some way. I'm sure I could have responded to your strident wrongness more gently, but I am also entirely confident that I made the right call by proposing the merging of these articles.

To be clear, the alternative to merging that you seem to want is to insist that 'autism' should only be used refer to an obsolete diagnostic category, in spite of the fact that it has been used more broadly since the very first papers on autism (okay, Autismus) and this is now the only common or clinical usage of the word (and it really is very common, which is not something you should be looking for review papers to tell you). You have not even begun to make a case that this is a sensible position. Oolong (talk) 19:45, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Oolong MEDRS absolutely applies here. Autism, as a neurodevelopmental disorder, falls within the purview of medicine without the shadow of a doubt. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 18:47, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

A._C._Santacruz I'm not disputing that, but I quote: 'Sourcing for all other types of content – including non-medical information in medicine-articles – is covered by the general guideline on identifying reliable sources.' The categorisation of autism, the words used to talk about it, are not biomedical information. To the extent that it could be considered to be, the DSM-5 and ICD-11 are the last word on it, and I am simply arguing that Wikipedia's main entries on autism should reflect the way these diagnostic manuals categorise autism. --Oolong (talk) 19:06, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Oolong, I don't follow. You said above that the entire rationale for MEDRS is not applicable, but then agree this article falls under MEDRS purview? I'd appreciate an explanation of that. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 19:13, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

A._C._Santacruz oh, I'm sorry I wasn't clear. I'm not saying that nothing about autism would fall under MEDRS! Certainly if this was about the neurology of autism, for example, MEDRS would be completely relevant. As the page puts it: 'Primary sources should generally not be used for medical content, as such sources often include unreliable or preliminary information'. That absolutely is not the case for the categorisation of autism, formally or informally. The formal categorisation (in diagnostic manuals) is the result of long processes involving many psychiatrists and other stakeholders, who set down a clear set of criteria on paper. This is not something that could be disproven by fresh research; it's not health-critical either. The informal categorisation - the way people and organisations talk about autism in day to day life, which is just as relevant here, and about which MEDRS has nothing to say at all - naturally arises out of a far more complex set of interactions between psychologists, psychiatrists, autistic people, our families, professionals and other interested parties. Hope this helps! Oolong (talk) 19:52, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Again, none of this is even controversial outside of Wikipedia! I do hold controversial views on autism, but this is categorically not one of them. This is not advocacy. I've cited multiple organisations I have huge problems with, because they happen to agree with me on this. Because it's one of the few things pretty much everyone in the autism community agrees on. Along with the psychiatrists and others behind the major diagnostic manuals. Oolong (talk) 18:22, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

As I said before, in order for such a merger to be possible, there would have to be an overwhelming amount of sources to prove it, and per what A. C. Santacruz and Wretchskull say in this discussion, along with the number of sources cited in each article, I can't support a merger at this current time. I personally don't think you have fully proven your case. That's just my two cents on this. I doubt there is anything that the autism community completely agrees on, either, as a person who is autistic. --Historyday01 (talk) 19:05, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

I dunno. As problematic as this discussion has been, there are actual content issues here. In addition to both Autism and Autism spectrum needing some updating to be relevant with the current diagnostic handbooks, there are some concurrent inconsistencies in redirects and terminologies. For example, the footer template Template:Pervasive developmental disorders rightly has Autism spectrum as an umbrella diagnosis, with subpages linked for the major various subtypes. However the italic header text in Autism states This article is about the classic autistic disorder., yet the redirect for Classic autism instead links to Low-functioning autism. A cleanup is needed here, both to update articles to the current standards, ensure that terminology is both internally consistent as well as consistent with WP:MEDRS, and to ensure that redirects are pointing at the correct places. Sideswipe9th (talk) 19:15, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

I mean, I think there is some content issues here, I suppose. And the pages surely could be updated and cleaned up, and I fully support that. I'm just not on board with a merger and I haven't been convinced to support merger at the present time.Historyday01 (talk) 06:10, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

I appreciate your caution, but the sources for the synonymous use of the two terms really are overwhelming. They go back long before both the main diagnostic manuals abolished the separate category for 'classic autism' that the autism page currently claims to be about, but since that happened the only common use for the term 'autism' is as a synonym for the spectrum, both within academic literature and in general use (despite Wretchskull's repeated claims to the contrary, which are not backed up by their own sources). Oolong (talk) 09:37, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Looking at this discussion now, I can say I am tentatively giving this merger weak support, in that there appears to be enough reliable sources to show that autism and autism spectrum are the same. A simple search "difference between autism and autism spectrum" doesn't really pull up any reliable sources I can find. Anyway, I do think that revising these pages is important, as a person who was a big contributor to Autism and LGBT identities. After being burned in past discussions on this site, I tend to not involve myself that much in discussions like these, so that's why my comments have been relatively short and brief.Historyday01 (talk) 04:00, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for reviewing the evidence and your opinion, Historyday01. At this point @Wretchskull: is the only one who's spoken against a merger and not visibly recognised the case for it, I think. --Oolong (talk) 07:42, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

@Oolong: You continuously ignore what I'm saying in favor of your point of view, which is basically WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. I have provided plenty of sources and you seem to willfully ignore that deliberately. If you want to merge, you need to provide WP:MEDRS sources proving your point or you won't be allowed to merge even if you have a thousand supports. Consensus isn't about democracy and majority voting; if there is a single objection that isn't addressed, your merge request is invalidated. I have repeated this a hundred times: None of the sources you have provided are MEDRS, and, the only MEDRS source provided was actually against your point. What is so difficult to understand in that sentence? Judging from your comments, it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to take you seriously. Wretchskull (talk) 11:37, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

@Wretchskull: I have very carefully explained how and why you are wrong, both here and on Discord after you approached me privately there. You have made no real attempt to refute any of my arguments, simply asserting that sources overwhelmingly disagree with me (they overwhelmingly do not) and getting stuck on a technical point about citations - when the DSM-5 and supporting documents should already have been sufficient to make it clear that the current content of autism is inappropriate. It is absolutely not the case that none of my sources fit MEDRS criteria: they include both 'guidelines or position statements published by major health organizations' and an undergraduate or graduate level textbook.

You have repeatedly misrepresented both the applicability of my sources and the content of yours. You have attempted to intimidate me out of proceeding with this entirely legitimate merger. You have persistently accused me of bad behaviour that you yourself are engaged in. In almost any other circumstances, I would infer that you are just trolling, but I know we are expected to assume good faith here, and in spite of everything, I have a weird feeling that you are actually sincere.

However, if you are not able to admit that you got this wrong, or at least commit to stepping away from these pages, I think I had better take you up on your offer of an Arb-Com discretionary sanction. There is still a lot of work still to be done; we effectively have a consensus on what needs to be done, since your objections have been comprehensively addressed; and your looming presence is making progress far more difficult and stressful than it ought to be. Oolong (talk) 08:24, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

@Oolong: Yes I am genuine. Honestly, with everyone here, everything I do or say will be overwhelmingly against the majority and there is nothing I can do about it. Coming here was a mistake on my part. You know what, sorry for wasting your time—I should've realized that this is an impossible feat, especially alone, and perhaps I should've learned from SandyGeorgia's comment that trying to maintain something alone won't last long. This is my final comment here, so please do not bother replying as I will un-watchlist this page. It's best for me just submit; do as you wish. Farewell. Wretchskull (talk) 09:23, 8 March 2022 (UTC)

@Wretchskull: I'm really confused about your interpretation of MEDRS here. Oolong's original list of sources contained many that meet the MEDRS criteria - guidelines or position statements from national expert bodies (for example, the National Health Service (UK), National Institute of Health (USA), American Psychiatric Association, and so on). Can you please explain exactly why you consider those sources unsuitable? What criteria do they fail to meet? If you'd prefer an international expert body, the WHO also uses the terms interchangeably.

I'd also note that this merge proposal has been shared in WP:NEURO, WP:BIOL, and WP:MED, and you are still the only editor who has made any suggestion that the provided sources do not meed the MEDRS criteria. Perhaps you should raise this with some other editors knowledgeable in MEDRS issues, to see if they can help clarify things.

Me and Oolong both directly responded to the sources you provided, explaining that only one of them contained evidence of "autism" and "autism spectrum" being used explicitly to refer to different things. The other sources only refer to "autism spectrum" or "autism spectrum disorder" as being a constellation or group of conditions, which is unrelated to the matter at hand. One single review article which treats them as separate, relative to the many national and international bodies which treat them as synonyms, does not seem sufficient to oppose the merge at this point. Your objection has been directly addressed, by providing suitable sources and by explaining why most of the sources you provided are not relevant to the discussion.

Averixus (talk) 12:39, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

While I don't want to speak on behalf of Wretchskull, I would point out that while the NHS is obviously a medical institution, its website (NHS.uk) is aimed at non-medical members of the public. A more appropriate source for current UK guidance, that is explicitly WP:MEDRS per WP:MEDSCI would be the guidance, standards, and pathways published by NICE. It will take me some time to read through it all in detail, as it has been updated since I last read it (most recent update was circa June 2021), however at first glance the following quotation stands out to me as relevant to this discussion In this guideline 'autism' refers to 'autism spectrum disorders' encompassing autism, Asperger's syndrome and atypical autism (or pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified).. Sideswipe9th (talk) 16:29, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

@Wretchskull:, I'm not sure why you pinged me here, could you explain? It's not important in any way to the broader discussion, I'm just quite confused. The others you pinged make sense, they've participated in or proposed a merge of those articles here. But I've never proposed such a merge, because I care a lot more about the non-central articles which promote blatant pseudoscience or are complete duplications of scope, and about the usage of terms within articles. --Xurizuri (talk) 04:25, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

@Wretchskull I am confused by this discussion here. This merge request does not appear to be vandalism as far as i can tell. Autism and ASD are in most aspects, the same thing. Aspergers Syndrome is a type of autism, and most people have merged them together already. I am trying to identify and reason why the articles here should not be merged. I believe that what needs to be done is to merge ASD and Autism, WIth a seperate article on Aspergers Syndrome, Classical Autism, and Kannar Autism, Which would allow for a simple "Autism" article to explain the general condiiton of autism and what autism is, The merge appears to be a good idea here, you seem to be considering the merge request to be a disruptive edit, when in reality, its a very constructive edit. I cannot identify any issues with merging the articles here. We do not need the same article twice on wikipedia. Pleace, tell me skull, what is the issue here? PerryPerryD 16:12, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

@Wretchskull: could you share your list of up-to-date and reliable medical sources which state the two terms are distinct? Averixus (talk) 17:40, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

There is no point in me doing that, as this is easily searchable by anyone, but I'll do it anyway. Here is a 2018 review clearly stating that it is a group of disorders including AS, Autism, and PDD-NO; 2018 review stating that it is a constellation of early-appearing socio-communicational deficits; 2020 review stating that ASD is a genetically heterogenous group of neurobehavioral disorders; Two (this and this) 2022 reviews with the new ICD-11 criteria stating that ASD is a set (heterogenous) group of neurodevelopmental disorders. Reviews that do not directly focus on ASD itself but rather on socioenvironmental effects on ASD simply use the phrase "ASD is a neurodevelopmental disorder", such as this 2022 review, which is in line with what this article states - that the "autism spectrum" is a broad range of neurodevelopmental disorders colloquially referred to as "autism spectrum disorder", i.e. a person may have the symptoms of Asperger syndrome due to the specific spectrum of symptoms the person has, with the diagnosis of ASD. These sources also go in-depth about the specific definition of Autism spectrum and ASD. I won't bother further arguing with anyone; any person who is willing to merge is subjectively, objectively, and factually wrong. I won't bother arguing with anyone, but I will keep an eye on these articles and make sure no tomfoolery happens. Wretchskull (talk) 18:15, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Only one of those references even vaguely backs up your objection to this proposal. If you think the others are relevant, I fear you must have fundamentally misunderstood what is being argued here. You are engaged in disruptive editing, and actively standing in the way of Wikipedia:MEDRS's requirement that information must accurately reflect current knowledge. I'm puzzled by your actions.Oolong (talk) 18:36, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Sources which describe the autistic spectrum as heterogenous, a constellation, or a range of disorders aren't evidence that "autism" is a single defined member of that set. Of your sources, only one explicitly describes "autism" as a specific member of the set of "autistic spectrum disorders". That 2020 review literally says in the first paragraph of the introduction, "autism is now recognized as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)". The others simply refer to ASD as a whole, which has no relevance to this discussion. Averixus (talk) 18:41, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

"this is easily researchable by anyone" correct me if im wrong Skulls, but I am fairly certian that NO ORIGINAL RESEARCH is kind of a major rule here, along with being nice. I am honestly concerned about your attitude with this entire situation. PerryPerryD 16:16, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

@Wretchskull: I have restored the merge proposal. The proposal itself is perfectly valid and not vandalism. Now the proposal has been made, opposition and discussion of it should take place here until consensus is reached, not by undoing the proposal. Let's not embarrass ourselves with edit warring. Averixus (talk) 18:07, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

I've responded, and no, do not edit war. When someone is reverted, they have to bring it to the talk page per WP:BRD, and yes, this is disruptive editing. Wretchskull (talk) 18:17, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

WP:BRD says that BRD is an optional process. It's in the very first sentence. BRD also says that the person who starts the discussion is the person best following BRD. You might be interested in reading Wikipedia:What editors mean when they say you have to follow BRD. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:22, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm in favour of them being merged, and based on my understanding most scientists and doctors call it all Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) so that'd be my vote for the page name, but I am not actually that fussy on the name so if it just ends up being something else that's fine with me. --Cassolotl (talk) pronouns: they/them 19:33, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

I've brought this list of sources to the Reliable sources noticeboard, to ask for input about whether they meet the WP:MEDRS requirements for the purposes of this merge. Averixus (talk) 13:39, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

I have a sincere question for those opposed to the merge (@Wretchskull, Historyday01 and anyone else): what is the difference between autism and autism spectrum? If autism is considered a member of the set of autism spectrum disorders, what are the defining criteria which distinuish it from other ASDs? In particular, what criteria distinguish it from classic autism, which also has its own page?

I'm asking honestly because I don't understand the intended purpose of the two separate pages. Note that I'm not asking what differences exist between the articles as they currently are (I think we're all agreed many pages in this area need improvement regardless), but specifically what the difference should be if these pages are maintained as separate and made as accurate as possible. Averixus (talk) 09:57, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

@Averixus, back in the day, "Autism" was kind of like "severe autism". It was often called classical autism if you needed to be clear about exactly which thing you were talking about. I understand that this is what this article has been about in the past. Until about three years ago, Classical autism redirected here. (It was re-pointed to Low-functioning autism about three years ago, which AIUI is not entirely correct, but also not entirely wrong, either.)

The "Autism spectrum" put "classical" at one end and "Asperger's" at the other, and everyone else in between. It was a way of creating a group, while still letting people say that that they/their kid doesn't actually have "autism".

The problem here is that the real-world folks rearranged their labels a few years back, which confuses everything. We could probably justify articles on:

• "classical" autism (because historical diagnoses are still notable entities)
• "old" idea of Asperger's syndrome (which the DSM says doesn't exist any more)
• "old" autism spectrum (which is separate from both classical autism and current autism)
• "current" concept of autism/autism spectrum (because, as of a few years ago, these were basically given the same definitions)

But: How many to have, and what to name them? The thing that was called "autism" in 1990 and the thing that is called "autism" in 2020 are different things, but they were given the same names. So do you try to write about the old and the new in the same article (difficult and confusing)? Or do you put them on different pages (hopefully with a name that keeps people from putting "new definition" information in the "historic diagnosis" article)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:41, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: Thanks for that explanation. It seems like we're agreed on what the problems are, but have different ideas on how to solve them.

I agree that keeping articles about the historic diagnoses of "classic autism" and Asperger syndrome is the right choice. Could you give any more detail about how the "old" autism spectrum differs from current perspectives? As I understand it, the "old" autism spectrum basically meant "LFA and HFA and everything 'in between' them". Now that those sub-diagnoses don't exist anymore, the overall category of the autism spectrum is still the same - it still includes all the same people and all the same variation in traits. Averixus (talk) 08:18, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

The "old" spectrum was explicitly a combination of separate entities. (It wasn't LFA+HFA; it was Kanner+Asperger. LFA and HFA were things the school or social worker told parents to give them some idea of whether their child was likely to live independently, rather than medical entities.) The "new" concept should include the approximately same people, but saying that everyone has the same thing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:02, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: Do you have any sources for the "old" spectrum being defined explicitly as Kanner autism and Asperger syndrome? Even historically I believe it's been used in varying and ambiguous ways. There's certainly justification for a page section (or perhaps standalone page) on the history of diagnostic categories and classification overall, but I don't think it's justification for an explicit separation between today's "autism spectrum disorder" and the history concept of the "autism spectrum". The spectrum concept has gradually progressed and evolved to its present usage, and I don't think there's a clear or distinct split that needs to be laid out in separate articles today. Averixus (talk) 09:27, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Just to respond to this briefly - I think @WhatamIdoing is referring to ASD as defined in DSM-IV & ICD-10 vs. its characterisation in the newer editions: it's no longer listed as separate things, just one thing with different levels or specific characteristics.

As you say though, the idea of the autistic spectrum, as distinct from the diagnostic categorisation, has historically been used in many subtly different ways. I don't get the sense from what I've read of Wing that she thought it was really a collection of clearly separate things. Oolong (talk) 18:40, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

I sought input from Professor Sue Fletcher-Watson, Chair of Developmental Psychology at the University of Edinburgh, who was happy to look up some references to back up the observation that 'autism' is clearly used widely as a synonym for 'autism spectrum', both within and outside of academia, while it is not actively in use any more as a diagnosis synonymous with 'classic autism'. Given these facts, and the work it will take to complete the merger (especially as part of a major overhaul of all the entries on autism here) I'd suggest it would obviously be sensible to note at the start of this article that the autism spectrum is commonly referred to as autism. I honestly thought this would be uncontroversial!

Her suggestions follow below in list form.

1. This Autism Speaks DSM FAQ page is a good summary showing that "autism" is not a category in the current DSM and wasn't part of the last one either https://www.autismspeaks.org/dsm-5-and-autism-frequently-asked-questions
2. And the DSM 5 criteria themselves (reproduced on this page) also never use the word "autism" as a separate diagnosis or sub-group, including when referring to past diagnostic categories: https://www.autismspeaks.org/autism-diagnosis-criteria-dsm-5
3. This overview of autism diagnostic criteria and sub-grouping clearly uses autism as a synonym for ASD, including in the abstract: Ousley, O., & Cermak, T. (2014). Autism spectrum disorder: defining dimensions and subgroups. Current developmental disorders reports, 1(1), 20-28.
4. This is another paper concerned with potential sub-groups, using "autism" to refer to the whole spectrum: Stevens, M. C., Fein, D. A., Dunn, M., Allen, D., Waterhouse, L. H., Feinstein, C., & Rapin, I. (2000). Subgroups of children with autism by cluster analysis: A longitudinal examination. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 39(3), 346-352.
5. And another one - of note both of these now more than 20 years old. ie: can't claim this is a recent development: Kjelgaard, M. M., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (2001). An investigation of language impairment in autism: Implications for genetic subgroups. Language and cognitive processes, 16(2-3), 287-308.
6. And here's a brand new study in a prestigious journal which again uses autism as a term to describe the whole spectrum: Russell, G., Stapley, S., Newlove‐Delgado, T., Salmon, A., White, R., Warren, F., ... & Ford, T. (2021). Time trends in autism diagnosis over 20 years: a UK population‐based cohort study. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

List ends. --Oolong (talk) 18:20, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Oolong, I think you (and Professor Sue Fletcher-Watson) are correct as to what majority usage is. I think it would help if we acknowledged not everyone agrees with the majority usage. There are a number of people who disagreed (and still disagree) with the merger of autism/Aspergers/PDD-NOS/etc into ASD in the DSM-5. These include both individuals with those diagnoses (many people who identified with the Aspergers diagnosis do not identify with the word "autism", and have resisted the DSM-5 on those grounds); and also a minority of academic/professional authors, who think the DSM-5's moves in this area were (at least somewhat of) a mistake.

Particularly outspoken on the later point is DSM-IV task force chair Allen Frances, who has publicly declared that DSM-5 ASD was a big mistake (his opinion of the DSM-5 in general, but he's called out ASD as a particular one), and he also thinks that in hindsight even his own decision to allow Aspergers into the DSM-IV was regrettable (for example, Allen Frances [@AllenFrancesMD] (Jul 6, 2019). "I very much regret adding #Aspergers to DSM-IV because it was wildly over-used & stigmatized millions of people. The DSM-5 #Autism spectrum is even worse for the same reasons. But the genie is now out of the bottle & I doubt we will ever go back to more conservative diagnosis" (Tweet) – via Twitter.). Another example is Laurent Mottron, who thinks our notions of "autism" have become so broad (in part, but not entirely, due to the DSM-5 concept of ASD), that they have become scientifically useless, and the only way to save autism research is to return to a narrower concept of "autism" than ASD represents, at least in research settings (see for example Mottron, Laurent (October 2021). "A radical change in our autism research strategy is needed: Back to prototypes". Autism Research. 14 (10): 2213–2220. doi:10.1002/aur.2494. ISSN 1939-3792.). Lynn Waterhouse (we don't have an article on her, we should; director emeritus of the Child Behavior Study at The College of New Jersey; she was co-author, along with Lorna Wing, of the first draft of the DSM-III-R's section on PDDs) agrees with Mottron that the concept of "ASD" has become so broad as to be scientifically useless, but disagrees with him that the solution is to return to an older narrower concept of "autism" – in her view, the original narrower concept of "autism" was equally flawed, autism/ASD is a failed scientific theory, but researchers continue to cling to it in spite of that failure, which she views as the primary reason why autism research has produced so little in concrete results despite having so much money invested in it; she argues we ought to throw the concept of autism/ASD out and replace it with something new–her book (Waterhouse, Lynn H. (2013). Rethinking Autism : Variation and Complexity (1st ed.). London: Academic Press. ISBN 978-0-12-391413-2. OCLC 809249108.) ends with the proposal to replace it with "phenotypes of neurodevelopmental social impairment".

Anyway, I think Wikipedia needs to represent majority usage, not the views of some individuals with the diagnosis (such as Aspergers folk who disagree with the label of "autism"), or the minority of researchers who disagree with the DSM-5 – but still, I think it would be great if in any merger we could include some discussion of how this terminology is contested, and at least mention the existence of minority views who question or disagree with the majority position. The bulk of any article should reflect the majority viewpoint, but we should include some section acknowledging that minority, and mentioning the major figures and viewpoints involved–especially when we are not talking about the views of fringe quacks, but of respected researchers whose views are taken (at least somewhat) seriously by the majority of the field, even as the majority continues to disagree with them. (I've wanted to put some mention of these minority views in the article before, but other editors don't seem to want them to be mentioned.) Mr248 (talk) 01:50, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Mr248! Interesting points. I agree, we ought to reflect something of the controversies around naming. Of course, this is going to be largely impossible if editors involved are convinced that everything about this is somehow biomedical information requiring MEDRS sourcing. Perhaps I've misunderstood their previous objections and that is not their position, though, in which case a reasonable level of reliability in sources for this will be considered acceptable.

I would say that I don't think this is something this article should spend a great deal of time on, but it should be mentioned. --Oolong (talk) 08:26, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Oolong I think this is a big problem with MEDRS – on most topics, articles reflect the range of professional/academic opinion – they will give prominence to the majority perspective, but will still at least mention the existence of those minority perspectives. (And again, I'm speaking of respectable minority views within the academic/professional field, not fringe quack positions.) However, with MEDRS (or at least the way it is often interpreted in practice), it is argued that we aren't allowed to mention minority or debated viewpoints at all, only the field's current consensus conclusions. That's applying very different standard to medical and medical-adjacent articles than Wikipedia applies to everything else, which I say is problematic. It becomes extra problematic when we get to topics like this, where the boundary between the medical and non-medical is blurry, and we are talking about conditions which receive heaps of scholarly/professional attention from outside the fields of pure biomedicine. Mr248 (talk) 22:04, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Mr248 right. There's obviously a biomedical dimension to autism, but most of the things known about it, and most of the things anyone looking it up in an encyclopaedia ought to learn, are not biomedical. Even with the things that can reasonably be considered biological and/or medical, autism research is full of contradictory findings and tiny sample sizes. There really isn't a huge amount that we can say with certainty about the biology of autism; as far as I can see, this article as it stands contains several time more biological information than could be justified by strict application of MEDRS.

I'd like to see the biological science summarised rather briefly here, with a separate biology of autism page making clear just how tentative most of the findings referred to are, or else clocking in much shorter than the sections on it here and under autism. We should have far much more space given over to psychology, social sciences, education research, metascience and what autistic people say about their experiences in the main article. There is no scientific justification for the current slant. --Oolong (talk) 11:07, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

There's a Mechanism of autism page that may be appropriate for biological information. It was created three years ago because the section on the biology (Pathophysiology?) of autism in the Autism article was getting unwieldy. CatPath ^{meow at me} 02:39, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

So there is! Thanks @CatPath:. I'd missed that, perhaps because it wasn't linked and I wouldn't have clocked 'Mechanisms' as a biological term on on a quick scan. I submit that 'Biology of autism' would be a much clearer name, at least if it's not going into psychological mechanisms as well, but it's great that there is a page already. We can work with that. Oolong (talk) 07:50, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

(note: having looked at the page, it does go into psychological mechanisms; I'm still not at all sure 'mechanism of autism' is the best title, but it is at least coherent...) Oolong (talk) 18:42, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Autism should redirect to autism spectrum disorder as {{R from short name}}, which is its dominant usage today. I think we should write a history of austism article about how that and related terms (like Asperger syndrome and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified) have been used at various points and how usage has changed. (A quick Internet search suggests that there is plenty of material on the topic, including some scholarly literature.) Once we thoroughly understand the distinction between ASD, classical autism, the old austism spectrum, and all these other things (because it is clear from this discussion that we're a bit confused ourselves), we will be better prepared to write articles on these historic diagnoses. In some cases, we might find that a few paragraphs in the history article are sufficient coverage of the topic and that we don't need separate articles for them, which will help with maintaining the whole area. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 17:20, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

A whole article about the history of autism may be overkill here, we could simply add it to the autism article in its own section, as many articles do. PerryPerryD 15:59, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

There's an issue here that the autistic spectrum is just too big a subject to deal with any of the many aspects of it in real depth in the main article. Right now this article is 18,563 words long - novella-length - and yet it skims over or completely omits several areas of vital importance to autistic people, their families, and professionals working with them (meltdowns, mental health, barriers to education and employment, etc. etc.). This is despite a large number of related articles dealing with various aspects in even greater depth - see this taxonomy of autism-related articles - and the autism article (17,067 words) covering quite a bit of the same ground.

So my feeling is that we really ought to be aiming to trim this article down considerably, and make much more effective use of shorter, more specific articles. It's not realistic or desirable to cover everything in one place. Oolong (talk) 18:16, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Plan of action

For clarity, I think this should be discussed in a fresh subsection. I agree with what Averixus said in this comment. If we're going to do a widescale cleanup and update of all autism related articles, then we need to start with a list of what articles already exist and a brief description of what they contain. From that, we can then compare it against the DSM5, ICD11, and other recent reliable sources to figure out which articles we need to update, which we need to merge, and which we need to remove (if any). I'd suggest for structure reasons we keep close to the diagnostic criteria, as those will have been both impacted by and impact upon current primary research and secondary review papers in this topic area.

As for where to do this, I'd suggest this talk page for the overview and prep-work, and then user sandboxes for any article revamps where significant sections of content need changing. We may want to adopt principles from Wikipedia:Featured article review when working on updating article content. Sideswipe9th (talk) 16:35, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

That sounds great. Definitely agree that the DSM and ICD are good places to start with categorising things. I think it might be better to do the overall taxonomy rearranging over at WP Autism - some of it doesn't necessarily relate directly to this article, but is part of a larger job involving all autism-related articles. That project page seems pretty quiet so maybe it would be good to revive it. Averixus (talk) 18:33, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

This is a sensible plan, assuming people collectively have the time and energy! Thanks for laying it down. I guess I want to sound a note of caution about holding off on making piecemeal changes until everything is thoroughly planned out and underway: it's a big project, because there are many small problems as well as a few big ones, and there's been huge inertia in these pages up to this point (it's more than a year since Autism had a 'This article needs to be updated' tag put up, for example, and that was only even put in place eight years after DSM-5 came out). Maybe this is not reason to be pessimistic, I just worry about the perfect being the enemy of the good, and the amount of misleading information people will be exposed to in the meantime. Oolong (talk) 19:22, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Yeah that's definitely a fair point. I don't think we need all that much discussion to work out the basics of what needs doing, and the finer details can be addressed as they come up. My instinct is that the first job should be working hard on just improving this page, as if there is no separate autism page. Once this article is exhaustive and good quality enough that the standalone autism article is reduntant, then merging it in will hopefully be easy? And from there, the other troublesome or outdated diagnostic categories can be improved bit by bit with reference back to a good central autism spectrum article. Averixus (talk) 19:41, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Strong agree. Oolong (talk) 19:48, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

I definitely wasn't suggesting we need to plan out every article. Just that we need to identify what articles we already have, and what information they currently convey. There's at least one case of multiple articles claiming to cover the same information (per what I said here), and I wouldn't be surprised if there are others. That way we can avoid circumstances where we may already have a more up to date version of a page without being immediately aware of it, due to orphaned links or incorrect redirects.

Using the WikiProject for the central organisation would make sense, how active is it though and will they mind it being used this way? Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:23, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

The project is not very active, and this kind of work is definitely relevant for the project's scope so it should be fine to include there. I've started a discussion with a list of all the articles I think could do with checking. Averixus (talk) 22:29, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Note: I have invited input from a Facebook group of 'Autistic Researchers Researching Autism', in the hopes of getting more people involved who are knowledgeable about autism, particularly from a scientific perspective.

I hope this is sufficiently neutral?

"I don't know how many of you have looked at Wikipedia's autism coverage lately, but I think it's fair to say there are some issues with it. Myself and a few other volunteers are working on fixing it up, and I thought it could use some input from people familiar with the current state of autism research.

I don't know how many of you are currently active on the site, or would have time to be, of course, but in principle anybody can edit it; in practice, a topic like autism is highly contentious, and the ability to cite authoritative sources makes a big difference.

There is some discussion of proposed changes here:

[8]"Oolong(talk) 14:35, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Counterpoint: a conceivable alternative

There is one plausible rationale for keeping Autism and Autism spectrum, or even renaming the latter Autism Spectrum Disorder: there's a question here about the extent to which we are writing here about a diagnosis, and the extent to which we're writing about a broader concept, for which many non-medical ideas are relevant, even some non-science-based ones (as well as some findings from social science). For example, Wikipedia rightly has entries on things like Autism and LGBT identities, Societal and cultural aspects of autism and Autism spectrum disorders in the media, some of which are touched on here. It would be inappropriate to demand biomedical-standard evidence for any of these, and to be honest if we rigorously applied MEDRS to everything, I'm not convinced we'd have very much to say about autism at all beyond 'here are the diagnostic criteria'. There's a lot of scientific autism research, but a lot of it is really poor quality, a lot of it is contradictory, and a lot of it is biologically interesting without giving any particular insight into autism.

So we could keep an entry on the diagnostic category, Autism Spectrum Disorder - clean, biomedical, maintainable, highly citable - and an entry on Autism, the neurocognitive difference that forms part of many people's identities (a large majority of whom also have a formal diagnosis, as far as I can tell), which has cultures and communities associated with it, and which many autistic people are uncomfortable about having defined purely from the outside. I think I've said elsewhere that the two are exact synonyms, but that's not entirely true. They're two overlapping ways of talking about more-or-less the same category of difference.

By analogy, there is an entry on gender dysphoria and an entry on transgender; an entry on hearing loss and an entry on Deafness. So this kind of division is not without precedent.

I don't know if this is a good idea, and I'm guessing it is likely to be controversial, but I thought it might be worth putting out there. It's conceivable that this kind of cleavage might help keep autistic people and biomedicine-focused people off each other's toes a bit, whatever else it might have going for it. Maybe?

Any thoughts? Oolong (talk) 20:23, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Interesting thought. I do understand the potential rationale for this, but I still think the merge is a better option. I think trying to separate out the biomedical from the broader concept is likely to result in two poorer quality articles instead of one good one.

In principle having a page that's only about the diagnostic definition of autism spectrum disorder might be okay - like with the examples you gave. But in practise I think it would be almost impossible to actually maintain the strict focus of such a page. Particularly due to the contentious nature of autism-related subjects in general, and also just bceause of the lack of clarity in the exact terms used. There's no doubt that "gender dysphoria" specifically refers to the diagnosable distress and "transgender" refers to the identity concept, for example. Whereas the terms "autism", "autism spectrum", and "autism spectrum disorder" are used interchangeably and ambiguously enough that it's very likely future editors would fail to maintain the distinction between diagnosis and broader concept under pages with those names.

Aside from future well-intentioned edits that simply muddy things, there's the risk of it becoming a more harmful point of view split. I can see one article becoming unduly weighted towards medical perspectives and the other unduly weighted towards advocacy and identity. Although it's tempting to try and keep the biomedicalists and the autistic advocates separate from each other to avoid conflict, the only way to make a really good, neutral and informative article is to bring them together!

So through gradual muddying confusion and/or point of view forking, I think we'd risk ending up back where we are now. With two articles about essentially the same thing, but written with different points of view and no clarity about the relationship between them.

If we did decide to have a separate page for the diagnosis (for example, if the diagnostic information was too much to fit in just a section of the general page), I think it should be named something like "diagnosis of autism". In fact there's already a page for Diagnosis of Asperger syndrome, so that could be renamed and tweaked if it's useful.

Averixus (talk) 21:54, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Much of this article was originally about classical or Kanner-type autism. What do you think about finding that "outdated" information and splitting it to Classical autism? It'd need a few (simple?) updates to say "Until about 2014, classical autism was just called autism. Unlike the modern definition, this historical diagnosis...". The rest of the article would need to be set in the past tense but pretty much could be reverted to the FA version other than that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:47, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: much of the autism article was originally about Kanner autism. Is that what you meant? Or do you think much of this one was as well?

It's not really true that Kanner autism was 'just called autism' until 2014, for the record; DSM-IV listed Autistic Disorder, Rett's Disorder, Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, Asperger Syndrome and PDD-NOS. Not 'autism' by that name. Meanwhile there was always considerable debate about whether Asperger's was a form of autism; it was often used interchangeably with 'high-functioning autism', although some sources, including Wikipedia, tried to distinguish the two, and as noted above, Hans Asperger used the term 'Autismus' to refer to his subjects. So for a long time before DSM-5, people had to be careful to specify whether they meant 'classic autism' or the wider autistic spectrum if they wanted to avoid confusion, because 'autism' could mean either.

Anyway, yes, all of that historical information belongs under Classic autism or Kanner autism, or in the History section of autism spectrum (or autism if we agree that's a better title) - that's essentially what the merger proposal is about. --Oolong (talk) 11:45, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Both "Classic autism" and "Kanner autism" articles do not directly exist, with classic autism simply redirecting to LFA PerryPerryD 15:45, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

These three terms are close enough to synonymous that we should be dealing with them all in one article. Oolong (talk) 18:18, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

@Averixus: thanks for that. You're probably right, I think - interesting point about 'POV forking'. I think we might need to reach some kind of détente for this to work, though; based on a few comments I've seen, a few people may be of the opinion that since Autism Spectrum Disorder is considered a medical diagnosis, practically everything about autism must be viewed through a scientific and/or medical lens. This is profoundly wrong and harmful; autistic people have been writing about their own experiences for decades, while scientists and clinicians have often got it badly wrong. A lot of autism research is based on poor quality evidence, interpreted with little insight, and/or on topics of little relevance to autistic people, their families, or professionals working with them. Meanwhile, significant numbers of autistic people are scientists and clinicians, or researchers in social sciences and philosophy, but they are not the only ones whose thoughts should count - which is something the best autism researchers take very seriously[9][10][11][12][13].

I hope that I'm worrying unnecessarily here, and this is something that most potential editors of and contributors to this page understand. I wonder.--Oolong (talk) 10:43, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Doing research here, Niether one of the articles here go into direct specifics of a specific autism diagnosis, So I would agree with a merging, we could set this page to a redirect too, that way people researching ASD can be directed to the autism article. PerryPerryD 15:30, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

What i think needs to be done here, is to have 1 article be directly about Autism as a whole, as in the spectrum of autism disorders and what autism is, and we do need an article on types of autism, such as Kanner and Classical. I believe that we can merge the ASD and autism articles here to allow for 1 article that is the fundamentals of autism, and 2 articles about specific autism types, we can link them in the Read Also section. PerryPerryD 15:51, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Or even just 1 article about specific autism types. Either way, I believe that a merge of ASD and Autism is an excellent idea to allow for organization and to avoid repetition of 2 articles. I support the merge. PerryPerryD 16:01, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Merge with Autism Page

This page should be merged with Autism as the page for autism essentially says the same thing and the autism spectrum disorders in the DSM IV have been merged into one disorder in the DSM V. I'm willing to help with this if we do decide to merge the pages but I don't know how to merge pages. Queenofconfusion (talk) 20:58, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

I agree that the articles have issues, but think the suggestions and ideas Oolong mentioned previously are better options.-Collinanderson (talk) 09:43, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

@Queenofconfusion and Collinanderson: I have added formal merge proposal tags to both pages now, and expanded on the discussion above. I have assembled citations showing that this is how all the major autism organisations use these terms, as well as various health bodies and many researchers; an academic psychologist working in the field has volunteered to put together an authoritative list because there seems to be a lot of resistance here from people who are not up to date with autism science or discourse, and to be fair the merger will be a lot of work. Oolong (talk) 08:37, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

I do agree that the pages are extremely similar. however. Autism as a generalization and ASD are not necesarrily the same article. One of them should be used to describe autism as a mental condition and its fundamentals, while the other would go into more detail about the specifics of ASD. PerryPerryD 19:57, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi @PerryPerryD:, are you suggesting something along the lines of my proposal here, or do you have something else in mind? Oolong (talk) 14:06, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

I did more research and thinking into the articles here, And I believe that a merge may be the best approach, along with a redirect to allow people searching for ASD to find the autism article. It would allow for a cleaner article, as no information is exclusive to the ASD article as far as i can tell. Do any of you have objections against this? I do not see a need to have 2 articles that talk about the exact same thing. PerryPerryD 15:38, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

I think we should either perform a merge, or reconstruct this article to base around the medical diagnosis. either way, i believe major changes need to be made here. PerryPerryD 15:39, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

@Oolong@Collinanderson@Queenofconfusion What decision should we make here? What shall we do to this article? PerryPerryD 17:51, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

We have a consensus for merging the 'autism' and 'autism spectrum' articles, now that Wretchskull has finally backed off - although I am now wondering if I should have proposed merging the former with low-functioning autism (which needs renaming) instead. Or as well.

If we wanted a 'Deafness vs hearing loss' style split somewhere down the line, we can deal with that when we come to it; there's no part of the autism article as it stands that would be useful for that anyway.

See #Plan of action and elsewhere on this talk page to track what needs to happen next: basically, we get this article ship shape, incorporating anything from the other one that actually needs to be saved, and then proceed with the merger formally. Oolong (talk) 18:26, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

: I must first say of course discussion on this happens months later when I don't have the time to read all of it, I'm sorry but I'm very busy and don't have time to edit Wikipedia right now.

I honestly don't know if merging is the best idea and since I haven't had time to read any objections to the merger I can't say I support it.

I originally thought that the main problems with these articles being confusing could be solved by changing the names slightly and clarifying how they are different from each other. Since there are differences between the two I understand why separate articles make sense I just think they are confusing right now. Again I'm speaking as someone who has no idea what has already been discussed or how mergers are done. Anyway this will be my last comment on the idea until I have time to actually contribute, I hope what thoughts I do have are helpful to this discussion. Collinanderson (talk) 18:48, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi Collin, it's a much bigger job than just changing the names, unfortunately. The existing Autism entry says it's about 'classic autism', but a lot of it isn't. We could rename that article rather than merging with this one, but it would still need substantial work to bring it up to date and remove extraneous information. Oolong (talk) 08:28, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

As I've pointed out previously, this is further complicated by the Classic autism redirect pointing to Low-functioning autism. As such, per the redirect and the hatnote at Autism we currently have two articles purporting to be the page about "classic autism". Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:54, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for that. Realistically we're looking at a three-way merger here - I'm not sure what the protocol is for that. Oolong (talk) 21:39, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Autistic adults not mentioned

They exist. I am one of them. The fact that there is no image of an autistic adult reinforces stereotypes. Please find an appropriate image. — Preceding unsigned comment added by WeTheSummerKid (talk • contribs) 05:24, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

As another autistic adult, I agree. Autism doesn't just go away when you come of age, autistic children become autistic adults. You don't see children with dwarfism magically get taller when they come of age or children with Down Syndrome miraculously develop typical facial features when they come of age, when you're born with a certain condition, you're that way for life. We need to show that and break down these harmful stereotypes and misconceptions. DSavage03 (talk) 22:53, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Request for comment

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Do other autism-related articles (Asperger syndrome, PDD-NOS, autism, possibly others) need to be merged into this one? I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 18:57, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Oppose merge: Thank you for the RfC. Per all of my replies to the depressing request and discussion above, no they shouldn't and it would be disruptive editing against WP:MEDRS if anyone would. I also recommend reading this comment by SandyGeorgia: [14] Wretchskull (talk) 18:58, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia's very neutrally-worded comment (along with subsequent ones on the talk page) basically just say that they're disappointed that the autism articles have reduced in quality over time, despite their significant contributions to it, and that they are choosing not to indicate a preference in this issue. Could you elaborate on how that demonstrates that this merge shouldn't happen or that this is disruptive? (note for other editors, avoid pinging SandyGeorgia per the comment, which indicates that they don't want to be dragged into this). --Xurizuri (talk) 03:50, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

I also oppose a merge, and agree wholeheartedly with Wretchskull on this topic as I don't think the burden of proof has been to combine those articles together at the present time. --Historyday01 (talk) 18:59, 26 February 2022 (UTC) I support fixing up the autism-related articles, but only merging autism with this article, but not the others, as Averixus stated.Historyday01 (talk) 04:06, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

• Note: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30043350/ may be of interest. — Berrely • ^Talk∕_Contribs 19:09, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

I support merging autism, but not Asperger syndrome or PDD-NOS. Autism is now used as a general umbrella term to refer to the autistic spectrum (as show by the many sources Oolong gave above, and also some of the sources Wretchskull provided). Asperger syndrome and PDD-NOS are historic diagnoses so should still have their own articles describing them as such. Similarly, the historic diagnosis of classic autism or low-functioning autism will still have its own article.

The articles that need merging are autism and autism spectrum, because the two terms are used synonymously and much of the content of the two pages overlaps. Maintaining them as separate gives a confusing and inaccurate impression that they are distinct diagnostic categories or are treated separately by scientists, which is not the case (again, as shown by the many sources above). Averixus (talk) 19:10, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Per my contribution above, there are issues across multiple articles in this topic area. I'm not convinced yet on which articles should be merged, but I am convinced that a wider cleanup is needed across multiple autism related article pages. Sideswipe9th (talk) 19:17, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

I completely agree with this, a larger cleanup is needed. Averixus (talk) 19:21, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Well said. I think the one other article we need to bring into the mix is the one currently titled low-functioning autism; parts of autism should probably be merged into this, rather than autism spectrum, and it should probably have the title changed (I'd suggest classic autism or Kanner autism). If the other pages were to be merged anywhere, it would make more sense for it to be into History of autism rather than the main autism spectrum page. Either way, as you say, there's a heck of a lot of cleaning up to do, even if a lot of it is just putting things into the past tense. I proposed merging those two articles as an obvious first step towards bringing Wikipedia's autism content up to date, and the furious response I received makes me less optimistic that the wider project is feasible. Still, who knows? --Oolong (talk) 14:02, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm gonna just let my stream of consciousness write this comment. The status of Asperger's is a very polarizing one; while it has definitely been removed as a diagnosis, some-- no, many-- academics still cite it as a separate type of autism. We can go with either merging it to a subsection here saying how Asperger's blablabla but the validity of it remains debated... or keep the whole article but heavily highlight the recent changes and controversy, perhaps dedicate an entire lead paragraph to this. There's a whole cloud of thoughts within my head but I think I'm making my point here. My point is, there's no advantages or disadvantages regardless of what we decide, and considering it will be a waste of time and decade in editing effort, and that it is much easier to just improve the Asperger article, I think I shall oppose merge, with disclaimer that I'm barely a med rookie. PDDNOS, I believe, has no same amount of controversy as Asp., so I don't think it needs to be merged too. I do agree with Sideswipe, autism is a pretty useless article and relevant info can be merged to the spectrum. GeraldWL 19:22, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Even if it weren't used by scholars, Asperger's is still an important part of some adults' identity and self-conception. We should probably keep a separate article on it, and just be clear that it was removed from the DSM. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:54, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

I strongly support merging the articles, noting that certain articles should remain in a reduced form. In particular, classic autism (which I'm using to refer to autism as it was recognised pre-ASD) and Asperger do still deserve a separate article, but mostly in a historical and social context and to demonstrate evidence that they may or may not be a distinct disorder/identity. They should not be treated as a disorder/identity in their own right, because they aren't officially recognised as such. --Xurizuri (talk) 03:37, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

subpoint on further reflection - I'm unsure what direction to start from. We could start with the biggest, central articles first, which will give us a strong base to start ordering the small articles from, and which immediately fixes the most glaring naming issue. Or we could address the spin-offs from the spin-offs first, which will give us a better idea of what content we have overall and how to structure the articles in relation to each other, and means that we more quickly address the pseudoscience and fringe views that pervade some of the autism-related articles (e.g. Epidemiology of autism#Causing factors, which I really should get around to fixing). --Xurizuri (talk) 04:00, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

@Xurizuri: I wonder if the easiest way to start might be to make an outline/plan of the entire collection of autism-related articles, each with very brief summaries about the content they should contain. There's so much overlap and confusion in this whole group of pages that it's hard to start with any one task without considering all the other changes that ideally need to be made. Averixus (talk) 09:06, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

For practical purposes, whatever is decided, a series of "sandbox" articles might help. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:55, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Since the formal RfC has been removed (because they shouldn't be used to discuss merge proposals), I suggest we move this discussion back to the merge proposal to keep things organised. Averixus (talk) 09:17, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposals for (fairly extensive) edits

As per Averixus's suggestion here, I thought it would be useful to start a list of things that need changing on the Autism spectrum page. I've had simple changes reverted that I believe should have been uncontroversial, so I thought it would be safest to share all proposed changes here for feedback, before proceeding. There is a lot wrong with the article as it stands, as a number of people have flagged up, so this is going to take a while; I've got as far as the start of the Diagnosis section in my sandbox, but I don't want to totally overwhelm this talk page so for now, I've stopped here at the end of the introductory section, when we finally get to the Table of Contents. The fact this is eight paragraphs down is indicative of some of the problems with the page. I've put each paragraph under its own header to facilitate discussion.

So far I'm only looking at what's wrong with what is on this page; I haven't made a start on enumerating what's missing. --Oolong (talk) 12:29, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Good suggestions so far! Some thoughts...

For the "not to be confused with". This might just be something we have to accept and ignore for now, until the actual merge is finalised - because until then we are in a weird confusing situation with the two pages. I assume that actually removing the hatnote will be opposed while the other page still exists. But in the meantime I'll try changing the wording to something more neutral, like "see also".

I agree that overall the lead is too long. The excessive details about causes, diagnosis, and prevalence don't belong in the introduction. Your other ideas about phrasing and organising this section are also good. I imagine that finding sources to cite any changes will be the main obstacle to getting changes accepted. I'll try to find some good up-to-date sources soon that we can start using to make changes - but if you already have some good sources then I say just be bold and start some edits. Averixus (talk) 15:55, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Averixus! I have to say, 'See also autism' still doesn't make sense - if that page is about a subset of what this page is about (or about an obsolete historical category) it's mentioned later on in the article anyway. I can't see a plausible rationale for keeping the hatnote at all, but maybe I'm missing something?

What I'll probably do is re-draft the lead and post it here (or in my sandbox?) for discussion, unless someone else gets to it first. Oolong (talk) 08:19, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Oh I definitely agree, it doesn't make sense to have a hatnote there at all. But while the merge is still under discussion and not finalised, it seems strange not to acknowledge the existence of a second very similar and overlapping article. And I suspect that editors opposed to the merge will revert actual removal of the hatnote at this point. But maybe we should just try getting rid of it anyway and see if anyone objects? I guess the merge notice at the top of the page effectively functions as a hatnote for now, by letting people know the similar page exists and is under question.

Maybe the draft could go in a subpage of WP:Autism (I'm not entirely sure how to make subpages but I know they exist...). Averixus (talk) 09:40, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Notes on existing lead

"Autistic" redirects here. Not to be confused with Autism.

It doesn't make sense to suggest that people might confuse this with autism. Either 'autism' refers to the exact same thing, or (historically, and very rarely in contemporary use) it refers to a sub-category of ASD.

The autism spectrum is an umbrella term...

This first paragraph should start by explaining what the term means in broad strokes, before introducing the other names it is known by (including 'autism') and explaining what is meant by a 'spectrum' (the existing explanation is unclear, and reads like it may have made a bit more sense before some earlier text was rewritten). As an opening paragraph, this is considerably longer than it should be. There should be a brief account of the previously separate diagnoses that were collapsed into this in DSM-5 and ICD-11, and how the new manuals divide the ASD category, but I think this warrants its own paragraph.

Symptoms can be detected before the age of two...

There was a requirement of 'onset prior to age 3 years' for a diagnosis of 'autistic disorder' in DSM-IV, but not for Autism Spectrum Disorders more broadly, and the requirement seems to be entirely absent from DSM-5. The uncited claim that 'experienced practitioners can give a reliable diagnosis' is obviously wrong in many cases.

The causes of autism spectrum conditions remain uncertain...

They really, really do, and I don't think it's helpful to have a substantial paragraph on this before we get to the Contents table. This should be fully dealt with in the separate section below; a single sentence in the introductory sentence would be sufficient.

Diagnosis is based on observation of behavior and development...

Is this the right place for this? It's quite detailed when it comes to childhood diagnoses, and I'm fairly sure many of those details will vary from country to country, which is not made clear here.

Autistic spectrum disorder is considered a lifelong condition...

This paragraph relatively solid, although again I'm not sure this level of detail belongs in the opening section. If we're talking about cures, it's probably worth mentioning that as far as the best evidence we have goes, most autistic people don't want one; or, given that this question hasn't been researched as much as it should be, at least that many autistic people have said they wouldn't want to be cured. I don't think the sentence on research that has 'pointed to the reversibility of phenotypes' belongs here; this is a very strong claim, and would require strong evidence.

The reported prevalence of ASD worldwide is variable...

This should be dealt with in a section on prevalence, and expand considerably on the fact that 'Apparent increases in the prevalence of ASD have been attributed to changes in reporting practices': there is an important and dangerous misconception that actual prevalence has skyrocketed, and it deserves to be addressed seriously.

Advocacy groups have emerged, some as part of the autism rights movement...

A bit odd to mention the autism rights movement (autistic rights movement) but not the huge charities set up by parents, given that the rest of the paragraph is talking at least as much about the big charities. A casual reader might get the very wrong idea that parts of the autistic rights movement promote drug treatment, biogenetic research, behavioural therapy, and 'beliefs about envirotoxins', when these are all things that have been largely opposed (or at least selectively resisted) by autistic-led organisations. I'm amused by how obviously this sentence was written by someone with an axe to grind: "Critics, including those on the spectrum, have bemoaned the entrenchment of some groups' opinions". Also, that Washington Post article is really misleading. Someone ought to take a careful look at the other links too, at some point.

Proposed replacement lead

I propose the following as a new lead section, replacing everything before the table of contents. There might be stuff in the paragraphs this would mean removing that should be relocated elsewhere, and we might want some references out of it, but I don't think any of that needs to come before the ToC: as per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section, this bit should be concise. Does anyone disagree?

If anything else ought to go in here, I would suggest it should be something about autistic community and the neurodiversity movement: something to give people a sense for the fact that autism is not just a medical label. --Oolong (talk) 14:54, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

This is a great start, already a big improvement on the current lead. I have a few ideas for changes but not sure what the protocol is - should I edit this draft directly, or add a new section for my proposed version? Averixus (talk) 17:18, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

I agree that it's an improvement but I have one concern. Per WP:LEADFOLLOWSBODY is this not going about the content backwards? That is writing a lead and changing the body later to match it. Surely we should be fixing the body first, and then once it's clear what content is there we can more accurately rewrite the lead to match the new body text. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:09, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you both! Averixus feel free to make edits directly, but if they're substantial or you think they might be controversial, it might be best to paste them separately? Also, see below...

Sideswipe9th thanks for bringing my attention to that - I've read some of the guidelines on lead sections, but I'd missed that particular bit of advice. My thinking was that the lead as it stands is kind of a disaster, and the most important part of the article, but I can see the reasoning for fixing that up last. This will take some thought.

There's perhaps a bit of a tension here between 'summarize the most important points, including any prominent controversies' and 'a lead section should contain no more than four well-composed paragraphs' and 'making the lead section accessible to as broad an audience as possible'! Depending on what we consider 'the most important points', it is likely to require intensive condensing to pull this off, given what a huge topic this is; I've only tried to summarise the absolutely central points so far, which is how I kept it down to three paragraphs. As with most of the rest of the article, the current lead tries to cover way too much, in too much depth, while missing out a huge amount of important stuff. Either way, I guess we'll probably need a fourth paragraph if we hope to summarise the article even in the broadest possible strokes.

As previously mentioned, I've made a start on assessing/critiquing the rest of the article in my sandbox, but alongside this I'm wondering if we should be pulling together a rough sketch of what it should include. I think there are some major omissions, as well as substantial structural problems. A lot of the detail should, I think, not be covered here, but only in separate articles prominently linked from here, several of which already exist; the alternative is an unmaintainable behemoth that very few people will read anyway, where key aspects of the experience of autism are either crowded out by technical detail or left out entirely. --Oolong (talk) 14:03, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

@Sideswipe9th and @Averixus, I went ahead and pasted in my replacement lead. I'm reasonably confident it's a substantial improvement; the previous one was bad: nowhere near meeting Wikipedia guidelines for what a lead should look like, 2-3 times too long and badly outdated. I don't know if this was rash, but we're months away from making the rest of the entry adequate, so I don't think it made sense to leave the previous mess in place until everything else was fixed.

I reverted a couple of attempts yesterday (by someone with no account) to do a search-and-replace to remove all mention of 'disorder'; their approach was obviously wrong, but they did kind of have a point. The previous lead was offensive both in terms of some of the language used, and the poor quality of its construction. I think the new version gives us a decent starting point.

Any thoughts? Oolong (talk) 13:22, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

In case we need to refer back to what was removed for this, here's a permanent link to the previous version: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Autism_spectrum&oldid=1082680730 Oolong (talk) 13:31, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

I've been too busy to really keep track or contribute for a while, but I agree the new head is definitely an improvement over the old one. And we can keep chipping away making it - and the rest of the article - lots better. Averixus (talk) 12:17, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Proposed outline

After discussion over the draft and ideas for the lead section (@Oolong and Sideswipe9th), I thought I'd start a section specifically for outlining the article as a whole. Please feel free to edit this outline directly - hopefully we can refine the rough structure here and then it will be easier to start fixing up the article itself.

I think we should aim for roughly one bullet point per intended paragraph, to summarise the content. I'm going to start by just putting in section headings, based on the sections that are already in autism and autism spectrum. When I can I'll come back to them and start summarising the combined content for each topic - but anyone can feel free to do that first. Please go ahead and add, remove, combine, or rearrange sections too. Averixus (talk) 16:09, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

@Oolong: I was thinking of adding autistic sexuality and gender expression to this list, as it is a rather substantial difference when compared to the neurotypical population, however I couldn't figure out which section to put it under. It might fit better under Characteristics than associated conditions, though that might also open a can of worms from folk who disagree that either sexuality or gender identity are characteristics. The other section it might fit in is Society and culture Sideswipe9th (talk) 19:11, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Maybe the associated things (including gender and sexuality) could be in a subsection under Characteristics, titled something like Commonly co-occurring? And it could start with an explanation that these are all things not included in the diagnostic criteria but that are disproportionately common in autistic people. It can also link to Conditions comorbid to autism spectrum disorders which contains a lot more detail. Averixus (talk) 19:41, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Yeah that seems like a decent idea. We just need to be careful to make clear the difference between medical co-morbidities, and non-medical traits that are disproportionately expressed by autistic people. Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:02, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Meta-suggestion, to keep SineBot from overboard with signing non-comment additions below, see User:SineBot#Single_edit. That said, if we were to do this work in someone's sandbox, or as a Wikiproject subpage we could use User:SineBot#Entire_talk_page instead. Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:00, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

@Averixus: I've been putting some comments below inline next to the suggested paragraph sections. If you want to move them elsewhere, like up here, to keep the sections below clear for more overview than commentary feel free to move em. Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:12, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

@Oolong and Averixus: while the outline below is helpful to give an oversight of what the new article will contain, is anyone working on the actual text of this in a sandbox or subpage somewhere yet? It might make collaboration easier for drafting the specifics of the new version if that could be linked here. Sideswipe9th (talk) 16:57, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

I've only started on the text of the lead in my sandbox so far. Speaking of which, I've significantly rewritten that from the draft I shared here, to make it a more plausible summary of what's likely to be in the final entry. I take the argument about not trying to write the lead before the rest of it's ready, but in four paragraphs I think it's unrealistic to summarise the entire contents of an article of this breadth anyway, right? In these circumstances, and with the existing lead having so much wrong with it, I wonder if it would be worth editing the actual article lead. Any thoughts?

I also wanted to suggest that it might be worth having a short section about terminology after the lead, or a slightly longer section that also brings in the history, since those are inextricably linked. I'm thinking it could perhaps dispel a couple of key misconceptions, and help the reader to make sense of the rest of the article. Oolong (talk) 08:32, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

I see that now. Here's the link for anyone else interested. The text in the sandbox seems overly long for the lead, MOS:LEADLENGTH suggests we should keep the lead of an article of this size to around three or four paragraphs. While it is guidance, and we have some flexibility with that, I don't think we should stray too much beyond that, and certainly not to fourteen paragraphs. The current lead of this article is already very long at seven long paragraphs. We may also want to have a discussion on Summary style versus News style leads. I'd also point out that the suggested content below only has four points for the lead, which could easily be analogous to four paragraphs.

Unfortunately I don't think we can update the lead until after we've updated the body. While the lead is unquestionably important, as for some readers it is all they will read in an article, it still has to be supported by the body text. Though I take the point about the lead being out of date with respect to current research and clinical guidance, we cannot assert content matter in the lead that is unsupported by the body. Accordingly I think we should focus on updating the body first, as that will take up the bulk of the editing work ahead, and then once we have the body content updated we can look at re-writing the lead.

A terminology section after the lead could make sense, although that is again something we might want to tackle towards the end of the drafting. That way we can make it more consistent with terms in the various sections that need an explainer, rather than trying to guess at the outset what terms we will need to explain. "History of autism", or "history of autism spectrum" is very likely to be a sufficiently wide and notable enough topic to be its own stand-alone article, if isn't already. It is also a section already mentioned in the proposed structure below. If it is already a stand-alone article, then we should have a stub summary paragraph or two and a Template:See also note pointing to the main article. Sideswipe9th (talk) 18:29, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Oh, sorry, I forgot that I hadn't clearly marked where I was intending the lead to end. It is the first four paragraphs (marked now). Oolong (talk) 07:52, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

My biggest priorities here are concision and clarity - both sorely lacking from the existing lead! I'm certainly not proposing we replace the current seven-giant-paragraph monstrosity with fourteen paragraphs.

And I'm almost sure nothing in the lead is unsupported by the body as it stands, or in danger of not being supported when the rest is rewritten. The weighting is a bit different, but I don't think that's necessarily a problem, is it?

@Xurizuri I noticed you've been going ahead with some changes to the article - have you been following this discussion? Oolong (talk) 11:11, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Overall, I think we need to take a structured and methodical approach to this. While right now our focus is rightly on updating the article content so that it is in step with current research, clinical guidance, and diagnostic criteria, as a "stretch goal" I would suggest that we should be striving towards a nomination for this set of articles at the Good article or maybe even Featured article content level. Sideswipe9th (talk) 18:36, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Just wanted to let you all (@Oolong, Xurizuri, and Averixus: that the text from the DSM-5-TR is available in WP:LIBRARY. There's some good text present, beyond the diagnostic codes, under the following headings that we may wish to check for updating our own content:

• Associated Features
• Prevalence
• Development and Course
• Risk and Prognostic Factors
  • Environmental
  • Genetic and physiological
• Culture-Related Diagnostic Issues
• Sex- and Gender-Related Diagnostic Issues
• Association With Suicidal Thoughts or Behavior
• Functional Consequences of Autism Spectrum Disorder

I've not got the time right now to do a comparison and start updating text, but wanted to let you all know. Sideswipe9th (talk) 18:30, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

(Lead)

• Define as a range of neurodevelopmental differences - developmental (lifelong), spectrum (variation). Briefly summarise traits/symptoms.
• Describe current diagnostic categories, summarise significant historic diagnoses and changes.
• Summarise (lack of) solid conclusions about causes, mechanism, treatments.
• Summarise social/cultural aspects, neurodiversity movement etc.

Characteristics

• More thorough explanation of the spectrum concept, variation between and within individuals.
• Early childhood signs.
• Communication differences in body language, eye contact, facial expressions, etc.
• Differences in language use, pragmatic communication, echolalia, nonspeaking, etc.
• Social differences in forming relationships, loneliness, double empathy problem.
• Preference for sameness, rigidity, intense interests, monotropism.
• Sensory differences, sensitivity, stimming behaviour.

  Note: Stimming exists as its own article, with a subsection titled Stimming and autism. That said that subsection seems rather short, given how prevalent stimming is amongst the autistic population. While we're getting into scope-creep territory, we may also need to look at related articles and how we link to them in order to ensure the links provide the context we can't put in this article due to length and direct relevance. Sideswipe9th (talk) 19:25, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Associated conditions

(should this be a subsection or a section of its own?)

• (Link to Conditions comorbid to autism spectrum disorders)
• Intellectual disability, learning disorders, ADHD, other neurodevelopmental things.
• Transgender and non-heterosexual identities (I know these aren't "conditions" - suggestions for a better section title welcome) (maybe just "differences"? "Co-occurring differences"?)
• Depression, anxiety, trauma, other mental health things.
• Hypermobility/EDS, epilepsy, allergies, other physical things.

Comments:

• I would prefer to have a separate subsection for "LGBT identities", and leave this subsection as "associated conditions". --Xurizuri (talk) 13:10, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Classification and diagnosis

• (Link to, and probably rename, Diagnosis of Asperger syndrome)
• ICD diagnostic classification.
• DSM diagnostic classification.
• Mention that there's history of lots of different categories and changes to the classification (don't elaborate in this section).

Causes

• (Link to, and possibly combine, Causes of autism, Heritability of autism, and Epigenetics of autism)
• Genetics.
• Pre- and peri-natal factors.
• Disproved vaccine conspiracy (link to, and possibly combine Vaccines and autism, and MMR vaccine and autism).

Mechanism and pathophysiology

I think that this should do very little more than direct people to the Mechanism of autism page, to be honest. As far as research in the natural sciences goes, it's all highly inconclusive and subject to change. We can say a bit about neuroscience, but it's really hard to draw firm conclusions at this point. I'm not sure this is something a general reader necessarily needs to know about at all. As for psychological mechanisms, most of the theories have huge problems, but probably ought to get at least a couple of hundred words between them all the same! Even if it's largely about explaining the problems with them, they can still act as handles to get to grips with some genuinely important ideas. --Oolong (talk) 19:12, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. This is a rather large subtopic, as evidenced by its stand-alone article. Having a paragraph summary of the keypoints, with a Template:See also hatnote makes sense here. Sideswipe9th (talk) 19:22, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Yeah I think a lot of these sections will end up being short summaries that link to standalone articles, per Wikipedia:Summary style. Averixus (talk) 20:07, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

• (Link to Mechanism of autism)
• Summarise neurological and biological theories.
• Summarise psychological theories.

Management

• (Link to, and improve, Autism therapies)
• There is no cure, explain possible goals of treatments.
• ABA and other behaviourism for children.

  Comment: ABA is going to be a controversial section. It might even deserve its own spinoff article, covering both historic and current practices, as well as why it is so controversial. Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:09, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

• Medications.
• Unsupported alternative therapies.

Question: is 'management' the right framing for this at all? It's not actually a medical condition to be managed, at least not in the normal sense; autistic people need support, but do they need to be managed? If not the people, then what exactly is being managed? Autistic traits?

It has its own problems, but perhaps 'interventions' is a better word here? --Oolong (talk) 19:16, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

"Interventions" is used in clinical psychology (maybe also elsewhere, but that's the one I know), so its still medical unfortunately. Perhaps "Supports"? Either on its own, or in addition to one of the others, e.g. "Supports and interventions" or "Management and supports". --Xurizuri (talk) 11:32, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Epidemiology and occurrence

• (Link to Epidemiology of autism)
• % of the population, and how it has changed as diagnosis changed.
  • how many people have been diagnosed vs differences in how many people actually have autism - and how that relates to e.g. Australia having more diagnoses than Indonesia.
• If it isn't mentioned under the characteristics section, then frequency of the "severity" levels, and potentially for subclinical autism (I can't think of a non-medical term for subclinical right now, if someone else can then please replace it)
• Sex and age differences.

Comments:

I've added 2 points. I do also wonder if we should use a term other than "epidemiology" because of the pathologising. Perhaps we commit to occurrence? Maybe demography or frequency, if statistical terms are better? I'm leaning towards demography, although it does have some implication that it will discuss, e.g., the percentage of autistic people who live in one-story buildings (as a flippant example). As a final note, the epidemiology article also discusses genetics/causes and comorbidities, in line with the scope of epidemiology itself, which may be an issue because of how summary style works - although I suppose that's a problem for later. --Xurizuri (talk) 12:02, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

History

• (Link to, rename, and improve, History of Asperger syndrome)
• Summarise early history - Asperger, Kanner, origin of the term autism.

  Query: For early history, do we want to include information pre-DSM-III when children who would later meet the diagnosistic criteria for autism were instead diagnosed with childhood onset schizophrenia? See introduction by Cite 16. Or will we only consider history from the point where it became a formalised diagnosis in DSM-III? Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:06, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

• Summarise recent history - move away from separate diagnostic categories, spectrum concept.

Society and culture

• (Link to Societal and cultural aspects of autism)

Positive aspects

I feel like there really ought to be something about positive aspects, probably in its own section. Strengths, joys, that kind of thing. Any thoughts? Oolong (talk) 15:29, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Yes. Though reliable sourcing for it may be difficult, a lot of the autistic positivity stuff I see comes primarily from autistic advocates (that is advocates who are autistic) on social media, and not from researchers. Though this observation could be self selection bias on my part. Sideswipe9th (talk) 16:42, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Right, but there has been a decent amount of research on the advantages of positive autistic identity, as well as quite a few studies which found things that would be interpreted positively in almost any other context (increased honesty and resistance to cognitive biases, for example) and occasionally ones that find positive things and describe them as such (e.g. a couple of things out of Mottron's lab).

Certainly a few newspaper articles, too, if we're allowing that autistic experiences are not always inherently biomedical. Oolong (talk) 16:53, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Yeah that sounds good. We'll just have to be careful when interpreting the biomedical information not to insert WP:SYNTH or WP:OR interpretations. It's a fine line to walk, but this is definitely important content we should add if possible. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:00, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

I think that it could reasonably be woven into the characteristics and society sections, and it's probably better to, following the same basic logic from the WP:CRITICISM#Approaches to presenting criticism essay section. Either way, another thing to keep in mind is that we should be using secondary sources (i.e., no experiments) because of how controversial everything about autism is, and in the case of experiments, how unreliable primary research is. --Xurizuri (talk) 12:15, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Merge Discussion and Complications

I am creating this section to discuss potential issues, complications, and what should be done for the merging process. To start, The regressive autism section has a parent link in the Autism page. PerryPerryD 22:23, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

It seems to me that editors' dilemmas in trying to organize this topic is stymied by the fact that the whole autism/ASD thing assumes there is some kind of solid diagnostic foundation, when there isn't now and never really has been. I think maybe a way through all this is, after a very brief and cellphone-friendly lead rather than a huge run of assertions, to structure the main text of the page initially historically/chronologically. The most distinctive thing is how the professional categories have kept changing since Bleuler coined the word and Kanner described it ostensively, and the increasing tension between those foundations and how the word is used outside professional contexts. The difficulty in reference shopping in this area is that there are solid references supporting an array of contradictory definitions, both professional and public. Sledgehamming (talk) 10:00, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Closure of the merge discussion

I cannot find where the merge discussion was closed. The closest I've found is the main proponent of not merging stating that they will no longer participate, but someone leaving doesn't mean that their objections become moot. Is there a specific point where consensus was determined? If not, we need to request that an uninvolved editor close the discussion. I'll also state that the merge should not be performed prior to an appropriate closure, so it can't be performed until after then. Which, I'll be honest, will take a long time, but it's not like there aren't many other issues to address anyway. --Xurizuri (talk) 13:27, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

@Xurizuri: Hi, Wretchskull's objections were answered pretty thoroughly. I'm all for getting an uninvolved editor involved though. Oolong (talk) 18:12, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

I think the only major outstanding issue specifically relating to the merge proposal is how to deal with the fact that to the extent we can believe the lead to autism at all, most of its content should probably be moved to classic autism rather than this article, or else trimmed down as excessive detail in an article about an obsolete diagnostic category. Oolong (talk) 18:15, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't think a formal request for closure is really necessary. As Oolong pointed out, Wretchskull's objections were addressed thoroughly and they are no longer opposing consensus. There have been no other editors clearly disagreeing with the merge, and it has been posted on many relevant projects and noticeboards to solicit input. I'd be comfortable saying an informal consensus is clear here. But if you think a formal request for closure is important then feel free to go ahead of course, it won't do any harm. Averixus (talk) 11:46, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Use of the word "child"

On this page, the word "child" is used when describing autistic individuals, even when age is irrelevant within the context. This is likely to perpetuate the infantilization of the autistic community, and the misconception that adults can't have autism.

I propose that age neutral language be used wherever age is not relevant.

Jenjiboo (talk) 22:11, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

I see no spots in the article where child is not needed. Everywhere in the article child is used when talking about children with autism and diagnosing children with autism. if you could clarify as to where you want to see a change let us know, i Ctrl F 'd the article to see all the uses of the word child and there are not places as to where it seems out of place.

Strangers Dancing (talk) 23:24, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

use of the word "disorder"

hello,

I am not pleased with one of the opening paragraphs. It states that the view of autism as a natural variation is "promoted by the autism rights movement" which is a bit misleading because the autism rights community is not unified on this issue. I find many autistics, myself included, find this view to be ableist and serves to drive a wedge between those with differing levels of support needs. I think both sides of the argument should be stated. Moreover, I don't think it's something that needs to be in the opening section either. Damien.Otis.x (talk) 18:46, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

For the sake of clarity, it appears as though Damien.Otis.x is referring to the third paragraph of the lead.

What I'm struggling to see though is why you feel as though the sentence on the autism rights movement is unbalanced? It seems OK to me, as the conflict you appear to be alluding to is mentioned briefly in the final sentence of the paragraph. Could you perhaps expand upon what you've written here to help myself and others understand what it is you think is wrong with the sentence, and how it could be addressed please? Sideswipe9th (talk) 19:13, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

I think this page has become increasingly used by partisan editors to wage a culture war against each other

I just had to get that off my chest, I have been watching this page for a while and I am increasingly worrying that this page due to the political and cultural warfare of how society views the condition, the page in my view is becoming less of a article based on giving first and foremost the scientific mainstream consensus of the condition agreed on by most autism researchers and its understanding by such people, and is instead, now more of a battle ground for people of niche vocal minorities of a clear political bias, who are trying to control the narrative and to input their own slant over others they oppose regarding their understandings of autism. For example I have noticed big edits by people such as Oolong (with no ill intent to him and as I see as a genuinely well meaning individual) who has a clear conflict of interest (no matter how well intended) due to their clear dedication to their political worldview of the ARM regarding said condition as one of their means of their main means of self-identity. And wanting to input the movement to such a large extent in the article rather than as the niche, and relatively recent group that it really is. To me, this seems like it risks a slippery slope to just becoming a slanted essay by ARM advocates (or opponents of them) and their ideology as being a significant aspect of modern autism science as opposed to the common consensus from most autism professionals. With the ARM for example actually being more so a scientifically unpopular group of various individuals such as those with high-functioning autism trying to oppose many "mainstream" autism doctors and researchers often being identified as being apart of the "pathology" paradigm. I don't know what we can do to fix or if my argument was even coherent or productive to this page, but I still think it has to be said if we want to improve the quality of this page and prevent the problems I already stated and clearly it needs change if we want to protect the reliability of our efforts to be as unbiased and to be as honest as possible by not falling into fallacies such as the false-equivalence bias.

([[User talk:|talk]]) 6:04, 06 May 2022 (UTC)

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