Autism

22 terms

ADOS

Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule—a standardized assessment tool used to diagnose autism. A clinician observes you doing specific tasks and scores your responses against neurotypical expectations, often missing masked presentations, cultural differences, and adult adaptations.

Alexithymia

The inability to identify and describe your own emotions. You feel things intensely but can't name them—like having a complex emotional storm inside but only being able to say "I feel bad." Affects 50-85% of autistic people.

Allistic

A person who is not autistic. Created by the autistic community to name the specific neurology of non-autistic people, rather than treating it as a default "normal."

AuDHD

Being both autistic and having ADHD simultaneously. Not just having two separate conditions—a unique neurotype where autism and ADHD interact, creating experiences that can't be understood by looking at either condition alone. Like running two different operating systems that both want control of the same computer.

Autistic Burnout

Complete physical, mental, and sensory collapse from the cumulative cost of existing in a neurotypical world. Skills disappear, speech vanishes, and previously automatic tasks become impossible—not tiredness but neurological system failure.

Autistic Meltdown

An involuntary neurological response to overwhelming stress where an autistic person temporarily loses emotional and behavioral control. Not a tantrum or manipulation, but the nervous system's emergency release valve when overload becomes unbearable.

Autistic Shutdown

A temporary loss of skills and abilities when an autistic person's nervous system becomes overwhelmed. During shutdown, speaking, moving, or responding becomes extremely difficult or impossible, even though the person remains aware.

Demand Avoidance

When your nervous system treats everyday requests like threats, triggering fight-flight-freeze responses to even gentle suggestions. Not defiance or oppositional behavior—a neurological response where the brain's threat detection system perceives any loss of autonomy as danger, making you unable (not unwilling) to comply with demands, even ones you genuinely want to follow.

Double Empathy Problem

The mutual difficulty autistic and non-autistic people have understanding each other's communication styles and perspectives. Not a one-sided autistic deficit, but a two-way translation problem between different neurological cultures.

Dyschronometria

Difficulty accurately perceiving and estimating the passage of time - a common neurodivergent experience where minutes can feel like hours or hours like minutes, affecting daily planning, task completion, and social interactions.

Echolalia

The repetition of words, phrases, or sounds heard from others or oneself—a natural form of communication and processing particularly common in autistic people, serving functions from language learning to emotional regulation and social connection.

Executive Dysfunction

Difficulties with the brain's management system for planning, organizing, initiating, and completing tasks. Like having all the pieces but struggling to assemble them in the right order at the right time.

Hyperfixation

Intense, consuming focus on specific interests, activities, topics, or even people, characterized by an overwhelming need to engage with the fixation to the exclusion of other activities.

Hyperlexia

Advanced reading ability that emerges earlier than expected, often accompanied by intense fascination with letters, numbers, and written language - commonly seen in autistic children who may decode text fluently while still developing comprehension and verbal communication skills.

Infodumping

Enthusiastically sharing extensive knowledge about a passionate interest, often rapidly and in great detail. A natural neurodivergent communication style that expresses joy, builds connection, and shares expertise.

Monotropism

The theory that autistic minds naturally focus like a laser on one thing at a time, rather than spreading attention thinly across many things. This intense single-channel processing creates both superpowers (deep expertise) and vulnerabilities (difficulty switching tasks).

Non-verbal Communication

Communication that occurs without spoken words, including gestures, facial expressions, body language, written text, visual symbols, sign language, and alternative communication methods.

Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA)

An autism profile where everyday demands—even enjoyable ones—trigger intense anxiety and nervous system threat responses, driving a need for autonomy and control that looks like defiance but is actually survival mode.

Savant

Exceptional ability in a specific area that stands out dramatically compared to other areas of functioning. Most commonly associated with autism, where extraordinary skill coexists with support needs—but often misunderstood and stereotyped in media as the only way autism looks.