| Relative Fear | |
|---|---|
 VHS cover | |
| Directed by | George Mihalka |
| Written by | Kurt Wimmer |
| Produced by | |
| Starring |
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| Cinematography | Rodney Gibbons |
| Edited by | Ion Webster |
| Music by | Marty Simon |
| Distributed by | |
Release date |
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Running time | 90-94 minutes |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
Relative Fear (also known as The Child and Le silence d'Adam) is a 1994 Canadian independent psychological horror film that references the 1956 film The Bad Seed . An autistic child is seemingly born to kill and does so.
In the book Representing Autism: Culture, Narrative, Fascination, Stuart Murray describes the film as "the worst kind of example of the prosthetic narrative, where the idea of disability simply becomes part of a genetic method". He states that there is "little recognizably autistic in anything Adam does" [1]
Hyperlexia is a syndrome characterized by a child's precocious ability to read. It was initially identified by Norman E. Silberberg and Margaret C. Silberberg (1967), who defined it as the precocious ability to read words without prior training in learning to read, typically before the age of five. They indicated that children with hyperlexia have a significantly higher word-decoding ability than their reading comprehension levels. Children with hyperlexia also present with an intense fascination for written material at a very early age.
The autism rights movement, also known as the autistic acceptance movement, is a social movement within the context of disability rights that emphasizes a neurodiversity paradigm, viewing the autism spectrum as a result of natural variations in the human brain rather than as a disease to be cured. The movement advocates for several goals, including greater acceptance of autistic traits and behaviors; services that focus on improving quality of life and well-being rather than on suppression and masking of autistic traits, or imitations of the behaviors of neurotypical (non-autistic) peers ; and the recognition of the autistic community as a minority group.
The Refrigerator mother theory, also known as Bettelheim's theory of autism, is a controversial psychological theory that the cause of autism is a lack of maternal (figurative) warmth. Evidence against the refrigerator mother theory began in the late 1970s, with twin studies suggesting a genetic etiology, as well as various environmental factors. Modern research generally agrees that there is a largely epigenetic etiology of autism spectrum disorders.
Autism Every Day is a 2006 documentary film sponsored by Autism Speaks, and produced by Lauren Thierry, Jim Watkins and Eric Solomon. It follows mothers with severely autistic children and consists mainly of interviews with the mothers.
Autism: The Musical is an independent documentary film directed by Tricia Regan. In April 2007, the film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. The film recounts six months of the lives of five children who are on the autism spectrum in Los Angeles, California as they write and rehearse for an original stage production.
Overcoming Autism: Finding the Answers, Strategies, and Hope That Can Transform a Child's Life is a book that novelist Claire Scovell LaZebnik co-wrote with therapist Lynn Koegel, of the UCSB Autism Research and Training Center, in 2004. Lynn writes about strategies for educating and working with children with autism, and Claire writes about her experience raising her autistic son. The book includes specific advice for teaching and raising children with autism, as well as personal anecdotes of families with autistic children.
Societal and cultural aspects of autism or sociology of autism come into play with recognition of autism, approaches to its support services and therapies, and how autism affects the definition of personhood. The autistic community is divided primarily into two camps; the neurodiversity movement and the Pathology paradigm. The pathology paradigm advocates for supporting research into therapies, treatments, and/or a cure to help minimize or remove autistic traits, seeing treatment as vital to help individuals with autism, while the neurodiversity movement believes autism should be seen as a different way of being and advocates against treatments, therapies or a cure, seeing it as trying to exterminate autistic people and their individuality. Both are controversial in autism communities and advocacy which has led to significant infighting between these two camps. While the dominant paradigm is the pathology paradigm and is followed largely by autism research and scientific communities, the neurodiversity movement is highly popular within autism advocacy and autism rights organizations.
When Do We Eat? is a 2005 American comedy film directed by Salvador Litvak and starring Michael Lerner, Lesley Ann Warren, Jack Klugman, Shiri Appleby, Mili Avital, Ben Feldman, and Adam Lamberg.
Temple Grandin is a 2010 American biographical drama television film directed by Mick Jackson and starring Claire Danes as Temple Grandin, an autistic woman whose innovations revolutionized practices for the humane handling of livestock on cattle ranches and slaughterhouses. It is based on Grandin's memoirs Emergence and Thinking in Pictures. The film premiered on HBO on February 6, 2010, and won several awards including five Primetime Emmy Awards, and Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild prizes for Danes.
The autism spectrum is a range of neurodevelopmental conditions generally characterized by difficulties in social interactions and communication, repetitive behaviors, intense interests, and unusual responses to sensory stimuli. It is commonly referred to as autism or, in the context of a professional diagnosis, as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but the latter term remains controversial among neurodiversity advocates, neurodiversity researchers, and many autistic people due to the use of the word disorder and due to questions about its utility outside of diagnostic contexts.
Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) or autism spectrum conditions (ASCs) describe a range of conditions classified as neurodevelopmental disorders in the DSM-5, used by the American Psychiatric Association. As with many neurodivergent people and conditions, the popular image of autistic people and autism itself is often based on inaccurate media representations. Additionally, media about autism may promote pseudoscience such as vaccine denial or facilitated communication.
Diagnosis, treatment, and experiences of autism varies globally. Although the diagnosis of autism is rising in post-industrial nations, diagnosis rates are much lower in developing nations.
Discrimination against autistic people is the discrimination and persecution that autistic people have been subjected to. Discrimination against autistic people is a form of ableism.
Matthew Belmonte is a reader in psychology at Nottingham Trent University who researches the behavior and neurophysiology of autistic individuals. He has studied the behavioral aspects of autism by providing subjects with videogames that measure several perceptual properties. Belmonte has received a $700,000 National Science Foundation grant to study this aspect, and uses MRI and EEG technology to measure brain activity of autistic and non-autistic individuals. He has an older brother with autism, and both have a fascination with order and regularity. In his essay 'Life Without Order: Literature, Psychology, and Autism', Belmonte stated that he was inspired to pursue a career in science because of his need for a single right answer.
Nonverbal autism is a subset of autism where the person does not learn how to speak. It is estimated that 25% to 50% of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) never develop spoken language beyond a few words or utterances.
Loving Lampposts is a 2010 documentary film directed by Todd Drezner, exploring the neurodiversity movement and the principle of autism acceptance through a series of interviews and candid footage. Drezner is the father of an autistic child whose attachment to and fascination with lampposts gave the film its title.
Loop is a 2020 American computer-animated drama short film directed and written by Erica Milsom with the story being written by Adam Burke, Matthias De Clercq and Milsom, produced by Pixar Animation Studios, and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. It is the sixth short film in Pixar's SparkShorts program and focuses on a non-verbal autistic girl and a chatty boy, learning to understand each other. The short was released on Disney+ on January 10, 2020.
Dinah Karen Crawshay Murray was a writer, educator and campaigner for autistic people. She collaborated in developing the theory of monotropism as a way of explaining autism in terms of a tendency to focus intensely on a subject.
Current research indicates that autistic people have higher rates of LGBT identities and feelings than the general population. A variety of explanations for this have been proposed; The Lancet's "Commission on the future of care and clinical research in autism" commented that it "might be part of a different concept of self, less reliance on or reference to social norms, or part of a neurodiverse lived experience of the world." While autistic people are more likely to be non-heterosexual than the general population, the majority of autistic people are heterosexual.
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