An ethnography about autism & technology

I usually avoid citing press releases, preferring to go to the original sources and run those sources through my evidentiary grinders. In this case, I’m making an exception. I’ll explain why I violating my standard procedures after introducing the subject of the post.

Meryl Alper, a professor at Northeastern University who has reported dozens of papers on diverse topics, but especially about children with disabilities, their communication, and their use of technology, published a book entitled, Kids Across the Spectrums with MIT Press. Here’s the description from the press release:

In spite of widespread assumptions that young people on the autism spectrum have a “natural” attraction to technology — a premise that leads to significant speculation about how media helps or harms them — relatively little research actually exists about their everyday tech use. It’s a gap Meryl Alper, a researcher exploring the social and cultural implications of communication technologies, addresses in her new book “Kids Across the Spectrums,” an ethnographic study of the digital lives of autistic young people.

Based on nearly a decade of in-depth qualitative research conducted in the homes of more than 60 neurodivergent children from an array of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds, Alper challenges the prevailing myths and stereotypes that have perpetuated misconceptions about autistic youth and their relationship with technology. What Alper found is that what autistic youth do with technology is not radically different from their nonautistic peers. The experiences that children on the autism spectrum have with technology are less explained by their diagnoses alone, she writes in the book’s introduction, and more by the intersections of their disability with other aspects of their identity and the modern conditions of childhood: “They differentially face significant social and health inequalities, including limited recreational programs, poor neighborhood safety, and challenges receiving appropriate therapeutic services.” These disparities, Alper argues, “spill directly over into autistic children’s media habits.”

Why would I consider Professor Alper’s book?

1. A good ethnographic examination of a topic can be very informative. It can help promote better understanding of phenomena, spawn additional valuable research, and much more. As much as I recommend strong empirical methods (e.g., true experiments), those recommendations should not be construed as disrespect for qualitative methods such as ethnographies. I haven’t reviewed the research methods, so I can’t vouch for it presenting trustworthy findings, but I’m surely willing to consider that it might.

2. I’m a sucker for research that pops bubbles about disabilities, especially autism. I fear that autism often seems to me to be a slate onto which people scribble speculations that may be without foundation. At least according to this press release, Professor Alper appears to explode some myths. Yay!

3. Personally, I find that technology is too often over-hyped. If this book dampens some unfounded enthusiasm for it, that will be valuable.

See the MIT Press press release, Shattering Stereotypes About Autism and Technology. If you’ve already decided that you want to read it, simply go directly to the MIT Press store page for Kids Across the Spectrum and download the free PDF. (I get no kickback for mentioning it.)

If you take the book for a spin, please let us know what you found valuable and what was not so good.

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