Anti‐ableist language is fully compatible with high‐quality autism research: Response to S inger et al. (2023)

Abstract Over the past two decades, there have been increasing discussions around which terms should be used to talk about autism. Whilst these discussions have largely revolved around the suitability of identity‐first language and person‐first language, more recently this debate has broadened to encompass other autism‐related terminology (e.g., ‘high‐functioning’). To date, academic studies have not investigated the language preferences of autistic individuals outside of the United Kingdom or Australia, nor have they compared levels of endorsement across countries. Hence, the current study adopted a mixed‐methods approach, employing both quantitative and qualitative techniques, to explore the linguistic preferences of 654 English‐speaking autistic adults across the globe. Despite variation in levels of endorsement between countries, we found that the most popular terms were similar—the terms ‘Autism’, ‘Autistic person’, ‘Is autistic’, ‘Neurological/Brain Difference’, ‘Differences’, ‘Challenges’, ‘Difficulties’, ‘Neurotypical people’, and ‘Neurotypicals’ were consistently favored across countries. Despite relative consensus across groups, both our quantitative and qualitative data demonstrate that there is no universally accepted way to talk about autism. Our thematic analysis revealed the reasons underlying participants’ preferences, generating six core themes, and illuminated an important guiding principle—to respect personal preferences. These findings have significant implications for informing practice, research and language policy worldwide.

Introduction While not all autism research is ableism, autism researchers can be ableist, including by talking about autistic people in sub-human terms (dehumanization), treating autistic people like objects (objectification), and making othering statements which set autistic people apart from non-autistic people, and below in status (stigmatization). Method This mixed-method study aimed to investigate how autism researchers construct autistic people and autism research, and to investigate whether including autistic people more in research relates to lower ableism in narratives about autistic people. We used a survey with autism researchers ( N = 195) asking five open-ended questions about autism and autism research, as well as demographics, career length, contact with autistic people (familial and non-familial) and degree to which researchers involve autistic people in their research. We used content analysis to categorize narratives used by autism researchers and cues for ableism (dehumanization, objectification, and stigmatization). We then used binary-logistic regression to identify whether narrative or higher inclusion of autistic people predicted fewer ableist cues, controlling for career length and connections to autistic people. Results and discussion Using medicalized narratives of autism predicted higher odds of ableist cues compared to employing social model or neutral embodiment narratives. Greater inclusion of autistic people in research predicted significantly lower odds of ableist cues, while controlling for other contact with autistic people and career length. Next, we used reflexive thematic analysis to analyze researcher’s perceptions of autistic people and autism research. Narratives reflected core ideological disagreements of the field, such as whether researchers consider autism to be an intrinsic barrier to a good life, and whether researchers prioritize research which tackles “autism” versus barriers to societal inclusion for autistic people. Instrumentality (a form of objectification) was key to whether researchers considered a person to have social value with emphasis revolving around intellectual ability and independence. Lastly, language seemed to act as a tool of normalization of violence. Researchers relied on an amorphous idea of “autism” when talking about prevention or eradication, potentially because it sounds more palatable than talking about preventing “autistic people,” despite autism only existing within the context of autistic people.