My college psychology textbook says...

[wight]

um, not so much with the sciences, ambi. While not exactly inaccurate, introductory sciences material barely scratches the surface of topics and oversimplifies to the point of being misleading.

 

[scifinerd]

Might be interesting if someone brought this textbook to the attention of the American Psychiatric Association for some proper feedback.

You bring up a good thought. I’m going to look into that. I called cengage today since they’re the distributors of my textbook. The woman I spoke to on the phone agreed with me and is going to work on bringing this issue to the attention of the authors of this book.

 

[Fitzo]

Frankly I'm gobsmacked to think they are training psychologists with this BS in 2017.
How can autism be a disease when it is generally believed to be genetic and is known to run in families?
As for the statistics god knows where they plucked them from! EG Tony Attwood believes that the male to female ratio is probably closer to 2:1, at least in the case of Aspergers, and he said that in 2009!
At this rate it's going to take 50 years for psychologists to get up to speed!

 

[pax]

The publication date on my textbook is 2017.

Redirect Notice

 

[Colin7]

...a lot of stuff that I find to be rather questionable.

Hello everyone, I'm currently taking a psychology class at my university and I'm not not really happy with the information presented in my textbook. So I decided to highlight some of the stuff I find to be either inaccurate, misleading, and/or offensive. Below are some screen shots that I took of the pages. So please read them and share your opinions. I'm really curious about what everyone's thought's are because this is what is being taught to hundreds of college students. If this needs to change then I'm ready to do something about it. After all ignorance is a byproduct of misinformation, so if we want to wipe out ignorance I think a good start would be to stop teaching it.

(Please note there may be some spots that I forgot to highlight.)
View attachment 38599 View attachment 38600
...Well there you have it.

Since I'm asking for all your opinions I figure I'd share mine too. Firstly I don't like that it essentially portrays everyone on the spectrum as being the same. By that I mean that it seems to contain too many all inclusive statements (i.e. Children with autism...) rather than "Some" autistic children. Personally I feel that the way it portrays ASDs is not only wrong but also damaging to those of us on the spectrum. My other issue is the fact that it treats the autism spectrum as a disease, which I feel is really offensive. My last thing is I find it very misleading to call a meltdown a tantrum when they are in fact two very different things. I guess to summarize I feel that a lot of the information is untrue, inaccurate, and misleading.

What do all of you think about it?

Also please vote in my poll

Thanks for reading my post! (sorry it's so long)

(PS:I value everyone's thoughts/opinions so it's perfectly okay if yours differ from mine.)

How old is that textbook?

 

[Katleya]

@AGXStarseed has posted an article with a video that, undoubtedly, could benefit the authors of your book (& maybe your psychology professor).
'We are all different, and that’s wonderful' says creator of viral autism video

 

[Kari_Cookie]

From my point of view: I think text book is just an opinion, it could be right or wrong. Psychology is somehow a new subject. A great majority of human being prefer to cluster people they feel hard to understand. And they tended to do research to find rules to apply to those people, to find a easier way to apply those “rules” to people(like apply newton’s law of motion to real life problems). However, human being are more complicated as research samples. I think Aspergers is just a name to group people who don’t want or have hard time following some social rules. (Oops i’m labeling also) But I think for most of time research always move forward by making mistakes, and scientists change their views little by little. I guess it’s not completely bad thing that your professor picked this text book as long as he/she is having a open mind to talk about it. It could be a good thing.

 

[Judge]

From my point of view: I think text book is just an opinion, it could be right or wrong.

Good point. It instantly reminded me of my first year in college, when for Psych 101 the chosen textbook was about Transactional Analysis. "I'm Ok, You're OK". A source I found to be more subjective than clinical regarding human behavior. And that was more than 40 years ago.

An interesting analysis, but still ultimately just an opinion. As disturbing as it may sound, in this context it certainly does happen at the academic (freshman) level.

From a clinical perspective the text offends me. However from an academic perspective, she's right. It's just an opinion. Thus "business-as-usual" in academia. An intellectual dynamic which is probably not likely to change any time soon for freshman psych 101 classes. But I can only hope post-graduate med school students do not encounter such textbooks. That would surely make me cringe.

Well done, Kari.

 

[Crossbreed]

I think Aspergers is just a name to group people who don’t want or have hard time following some social rules.

It isn't willful. We just do not see those rules (in real time). It is probably closely related to not correctly reading facial expressions and body language. Dr. Lorna Wing referred to this as "lacking social instinct."

A willful rejection of social rules could be indicative of sociopathy. Inability to recognize them points more to neuropathology or neuro-diversity.

 

[Kari_Cookie]

From my point of view: I think text book is just an opinion, it could be right or wrong. Psychology is somehow a new subject. A great majority of human being prefer to cluster people they feel hard to understand. And they tended to do research to find rules to apply to those people, to find a easier way to apply those “rules” to people(like apply newton’s law of motion to real life problems). However, human being are more complicated as research samples. I think Aspergers is just a name to group people who don’t want or have hard time following some social rules. (Oops i’m labeling also) But I think for most of time research always move forward by making mistakes, and scientists change their views little by little. I guess it’s not completely bad thing that your professor picked this text book as long as he/she is having a open mind to talk about it. It could be a good thing.

I think most text books are out dated…either professors are too lazy to change text book, or they couldn’t find better books. I guess for research people, they are more likely to use recent published thesis than text books.

 

[Judge]

I think most text books are out dated…either professors are too lazy to change text book, or they couldn’t find better books. I guess for research people, they are more likely to use recent published thesis than text books.

It's also a fiscal concern on multiple levels. Tax revenue, corporate endowments...all the sources educational institutions get their funding is tightly controlled in this era. And also those "institutional" relationships between publishers, government bureaucrats and academic administrators who make bu$iness deals which may have little or no bearing on the quality of the text in question. Especially at the undergraduate level where the system sometimes seems downright intolerant of freshmen and sophomores on general principle.

In other words, new ideas often relate to new money in academia. Sad, but true. So many variables to consider with funding and all the business agreements that go with them.

 

[dragoncat16]

I think most text books are out dated…either professors are too lazy to change text book, or they couldn’t find better books. I guess for research people, they are more likely to use recent published thesis than text books.

Publishers release new editions of textbooks way more frequently than they need to, so that students will have to buy new textbooks instead of buying used ones. The differences from edition to edition often amount to nothing more than fixing a typo or two. If only they would actually check to make sure the info is accurate and up to date.

 

[clg114]

So, that's where the NT's get all of those weird ideas. School!!!

 

[Kari_Cookie]

Publishers release new editions of textbooks way more frequently than they need to, so that students will have to buy new textbooks instead of buying used ones. The differences from edition to edition often amount to nothing more than fixing a typo or two. If only they would actually check to make sure the info is accurate and up to date.

Also add/change some practice questions, or just switch chapter numbers...

 

[kay]

Does anybody else remember the obese and slightly damp looking rat on a scale in psychology text books? Is it still in there?

 

[Butterfly88]

Wow, that's pretty bad. If you bought your textbook online I'd write a negative review of it mentioning what it says about autism, that way maybe professors will see it and choose another textbook for their classes.

 

[AdultAspie69]

The statement I noticed: "About one half of children with autism exhibit subnormal IQ"

I find this rather offensive. As a kid, I remember hearing people asking my family members if they think I understand whatever they were talking about. I didn't speak until I was 3 or 4, that didn't mean I didn't understand anything.
I personally think they should revise the textbook.

 

[pjcnet]

There's a fair bit I'm not happy with, but the quote, "moreover a recent research suggests that a small minority experience a full recovery in adulthood" really got my attention. I think a full recovery in adulthood is very unlikely and I have certainly never heard of an aspie fully recovering, it's a lifetime condition. I suspect the research guinea pigs were either misdiagnosed in the first place and were never truly an aspie, or more likely have learned to control their aspie traits and act like an NT so well that they're no longer noticeable to most NTs, but they're still an aspie and always will be. It can improve however, when a very young child I was thought to be severely autistic and most people couldn't understand me talk until I was 7, I however suddenly improved and mainly only have higher functioning traits as an adult. Both my brothers however who were also thought to be severely autistic didn't recover and in their 40s still can't count to 5, read / white or do most other things expected of a "normal" person.

 

[Judge]

It is disturbing to see the Neurotypical world so adept at misinterpreting the ability of older people on the spectrum become more skilled at masking their autistic traits and behaviors with time and experience.

After all, that's all we are doing. Pretending to be what we neurologically are not, and can never truly be. When we go home to be ourselves, the process exhausts us emotionally and physically. THAT is our reality.

It's just an act, guys. Not any kind of miraculous neurological "transformation".

 

[ZebraAutismo]

This is one of the worst text books i've read. No effort hm. We need to educate the people.