“If autism is a spectrum, where do you draw the line between autistic and non-autistic?”
“Spectrum” doesn’t actually mean a scale from autistic to not – it means the broad and colorful variety of ways that autism can appear in different people. Still, the question remains: Are some people “more autistic” or “less autistic”?
I’m a fan of Intense World Theory, which suggests that autistic traits are caused by taking in too much sensory info, and not being able to process all of it. If there’s a scale from “taking in no sensory info” to “taking in ALL the sensory info,” then autism would begin somewhere on that scale – the part where it starts causing problems, I suppose, even though it has benefits too.
A lot of autistics seem to support Intense World Theory, but I’m also starting to learn about other theories of autism – that is, ideas about what may be happening at the neurological level. Future posts! 🙂