The Myth: Somebody who avoids social interaction is “antisocial”.

This is mostly a semantic error, which is why I put it in tenth place. Many people refer to someone who is reluctant to participate in social situations as “antisocial”. In fact, these people are often pro-social, even unusually so.

Antisocial Personality Disorder is diagnosed in adults who consistently ignore the rights of others by behaving violently, lying, stealing, or generally acting recklessly with no concern for the safety of themselves or others. They are often extroverted and very much the opposite of the type of people who are so often called “antisocial”, who usually care very much about other people’s feelings. These people are usually just shy or have some form of autism, depression, social anxiety disorder, or avoidant personality disorder (AvPD). AvPD, which is diagnosed in people who avoid social interaction because of an intense fear of being rejected, is probably part of the reason for this confusion. The two personality disorders, after all, have pretty similar names, even if they are entirely different things.

Jayne Lutwyche, – is suing the BBC for disability discrimination. The 29 year old was a BBC producer for the religion and ethics department in 2012,the Daily Mail reports.

Miss Lutwyche has bipolar disorder, Asperger’s Syndrome, dyslexia and dyspraxia and insists that she told bosses about her disabilities before she started her job role. She was sacked 8 months later with bosses citing, ‘behavioural issues.’

At the Tribunal held this week Miss Lutwyche claims she was completely open about her disabilities when she was given a job at the corporation’s Salford Quays site.

Miss Lutwyche told the hearing:

The hearing was told problems came to a head during a meeting to discuss the 2012 Rethink Festival.

During the tribunal Miss Lutwyche admitted she can be ‘blunt‘ due to her disabilities and became confrontational during the meeting.

The tribunal continues.

The original article by Richard Spillettin the Mail Online can be read here

Read the full article at Autism Daily Newscast 

http://www.autismdailynewscast.com/bbc-producer-who-has-aspergers-syndrome-sacked-because-of-behavioural-issues/11278/snapshot/

Check out this excellent infographic about dyslexia from We Are Teachers!

Many of the students who are put into small group classes or special education resource rooms are diagnosed with learning disabilities. Dyslexia affects a large portion of those students. If we are to decrease the number of students who are “pulled out” from general education, we must understand what we are dealing with when we talk about dyslexia. Part of this infographic covers myths about dyslexia and reveals the facts that every educator and parent must know:

To read the facts about dyslexia click HERE to download a PDF from We Are Teachers.

According to Ron Davis, the disorientation of dyslexia may very well be a gift. The creator of the Davis Dyslexia Correction Center and the Davis Autism Approach, Davis says that people with dyslexia, unlike most of us, have a genetic ability to disorient themselves with no external stimuli. Their brains go into a disorientation mode on their own.

For example, if we are looking out a train window in a standing train, and another moving train goes by slowly, we may become disoriented and feel like we’re moving.

Read more at Psych Central 

Dyslexia is a common learning disorder that affects around 1 in 10 people in the U.S., where it is typically diagnosed around second grade but sometimes goes undiagnosed and unmanaged well into adulthood. And though it is technically a learning disorder, it actually occurs in people with normal vision and intelligence, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Now researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston Children's Hospital say that a type of MRI scan called diffusion-weighted imaging could help diagnose the disorder in kids before they even start to learn to read -- a discovery that could help teachers and experts intervene early to manage it.

The research, published August 14 in the Journal of Neuroscience, involved scanning the brains of 40 children who are part of a larger study assessing pre-reading skills. Researchers confirmed a correlation between the size and organization of the arcuate fasciculus and performance on tests of what is called phonological awareness, or the ability to identify and manipulate the sounds of language.

Read more at CNET 

After years of fumbling while reading the written word, Christian Boer, a graphic designer from the Netherlands, has developed a way to help tackle his dyslexia. The 30-year-old created a font called Dyslexie that has proved to decrease the number of errors made by dyslexics while reading. The font works by tweaking the appearance of certain letters of the alphabet that dyslexics commonly misconstrue, such as "d" and "b," to make them more recognizable. This month Boer released the font in English for U.S. users to purchase online.

Boer began designing the font in 2008 while studying at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. It eventually became his graduate school project. In December 2010 a fellow student conducted an independent study on the font as part of a master's thesis and discovered a significant reduction in reading errors by dyslexics when reading Dutch text typed in Dyslexie as opposed to the Arial font.

Boer's research could likewise have a big impact on English speakers, given theprevalence of dyslexia when reading that language, as compared with Italian, whose words are pronounced more closely to how they are spelled. In the U.S. one out of every five persons is dyslexic, according to theNational Institutes of Health.

Unlike other readers, dyslexics have a tendency to rotate, swap and mirror letters, making it difficult for them to comprehend what they’re reading. For years it was thought that dyslexia was a vision problem, but scientists now know that the condition stems from the brain. Scans of dyslexic brains show that there are structural differences—including in the thalamus, which serves an information way station—when compared with other brains. Some dyslexics even see letters as suspended 3-D animations that twist before their eyes. "I perceived letters floating like balloons in my head," Boer says. As a means to finally "tie down" these balloons, Boer dedicated his time and graphic design skills to come up with Dyslexie.

Whereas the majority of typography designers want their fonts to be aesthetically pleasing (think of the flowing serifs of Lucida Calligraphy or the chiseled lines of Arial), Boer was more concerned with reading comprehension. He estimates that the time he spent designing his font added up to 15 hours per letter. He even recruited dyslexic college pals for feedback.

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