Glossary

Atypical glossary

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Differences in the brain and behavior often described as inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. 

Allistic

Someone is not autistic.

Apraxia 

A difference caused by damage to the brain, causing difficulty with physical movement.

Atypical

Not common or not typical.

Auditory processing disorder (APD)

An auditory (sound) difference in which hearing is good but the brain’s interpretation of sound is different. 

The ears and brain have difficulty working together to understand sound.

Autism

Anyone diagnosed or self-diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), including Asperger’s syndrome.

Autistic

A person or people with autism. 

Some people prefer to be called autistic when they are diagnosed with autism, e.g., “I am autistic”.

Something may also be autistic if it is influenced by autism, e.g., “autistic burnout”.

Autistic burnout

Burnout is extreme emotional, mental, and even physical tiredness due to feeling stressed for a long time. 

Autistic burnout is a type of burnout that can happen to an autistic person. 

Many of the stresses in autistic burnout are caused by trying to live in a society which was designed for allistic people.

When someone experiences autistic burnout, they may lose many life skills and be unable to do daily tasks they can usually do, e.g., cooking, showering, or working.

Comorbidity

Morbidity is a fancy term for “illness”, “disease”, “syndrome” or “disability”. 

The term comorbidity is used when there is more than one morbidity. E.g., in someone with diabetes, heart disease and kidney failure are common comorbidities. 

For an autistic person, also having ADHD or OCD may be called a “comorbidity” by health care providers or researchers. 

Although the term is commonly used in science and health care, this doesn’t mean that a neurodiversity is a “disease” or an “illness”.

DSM-5

This is an abbreviation which stands for “The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition).

It is a book published by the American Psychiatric Association. It is used to guide the diagnosis of a mental health condition or neurodiversity.

Dyspraxia

A developmental coordination difference sometimes called developmental motor coordination disorder or developmental dyspraxia. 

In dyspraxia, brain messages are not properly sent to the body, leading to physical coordination difficulties.

Dyslexia

The brain’s interpretation of words and letters is difficult because the brain processes language differently.

Gifted

A child or group of children who demonstrate an advanced ability in one or more areas, such as creative, artistic, leadership, high IQ, mathematics, or more. 

Masking

All humans learn how to behave and communicate with others by watching others while they are growing up. E.g., learn to smile when saying hello, learn to make their voice sound angry or polite depending on the situation. 

For most people, this is easy to learn by the time they are in school. Many autistic people prefer to just be themselves without copying the behaviors that society says are ‘normal’.

When an autistic person masks, they camouflage their real selves, and ‘copy’ or ‘act’ like allistic people expect them to. E.g., making eye contact, using hand gestures, or changing the way their voice sounds.

In other words, they put on a ‘mask’ to make them appear different to their true selves. 

Masking doesn’t come naturally for autistic people. It isn’t easy and can lead the autistic person to feel stressed and exhausted. 

Masking can contribute to autistic burnout.

Neurodivergent

An individual whose brain works differently to most people. 

Neurodiverse

A group of people of neurodivergent people. 

It is okay for people’s brains to function differently, and there are many types of neurodiversities, e.g., autism, ADHD, OCD, Dyslexia, and gifted.

Neurodiversity

The natural variation in the way a human brain functions.

Neurological

Is talking about the nervous system in the body. 

The nervous system sends and receives messages between brain to the body through nerves. 

Neurotypical

A person or group of people who do not identify as neurodivergent or neurodiverse.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)

A type of anxiety characterized by frequent and bossy thoughts, images, or impulses which are unwanted.

Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD)

A pattern of behavior where someone frequently does not follow directions. Also commonly feels mad or angry.

Overstimulation / overwhelmed 

A fancy word for feeling that your senses, such as hearing, touch, taste, sight, and/or smell being swamped, flooded, and exhausted. 

When overstimulated, a person will feel stress, become tired, and even experience pain.

Sensory 

Sensory means it has something to do with one of the five senses – touch, smell, taste, hearing, and sight. 

In the neurodiverse community, sensory often refers to either extra sensitive or extra numb senses. 

Many neurodiversities have sensory issues or processing difficulties, e.g., unable to block out background noise, bumps in socks feel painful, or not recognizing that the body is cold or hungry.

Stimming

The technical term is “self-stimulation”, but most people call it stimming. 

It is when someone repeats a movement, sound, word, or activity to help deal with feelings. 

Anyone can stim, but it is more common in neurodiversities like autism.

Some examples of stimming are playing with fidgets, dancing, whistling, pacing back and forth, cracking knuckles, biting a pencil, walking, listening to a song on repeat, or pulling hair.

Twice exceptional

Sometimes called 2e, this term refers to a child who is intellectually gifted and also identifies as neurodivergent. E.g., an autistic kid with a high IQ.

Understimulation / underwhelmed

A type of boredom leading to lack of motivation and even depression.

Science glossary

Control

In research, control means a group of people or a standard which is considered “normal” or “unchanged”. 

The purpose of a control is so that you can compare something new against the control to see if there is a difference. 

For example, a group of people receive a new medication (intervention) compared to a group of people who receive an old medication or no medication (control).

Effect size

How much an outcome changes over time. For example, a new medication improved anxiety by 60% (effect size) compared to an old medication which improved anxiety by 40% (effect size).

Intervention

In research, if the researchers change something it is called an intervention. 

For example, giving a group of people a new medication (intervention) compared to an old or no medication (control).

Journal

In research, studies are published as articles in journals. Journals are sometimes called medical journals or scientific journals.

If something is published in a journal, it means that the research had to be done ethically, and that experts read and approved the article before publication.

Observational study

A type of research where the researchers monitor and “observe” a group of people and measure outcomes. 

In observational research, nothing is changed by the researchers, so there is no “intervention”. 

For example, measuring anxiety levels in autistic kids through grade school and seeing how anxiety levels change each year.

Outcome

In research, an outcome is what is measured by the researchers. 

There are many types of outcomes, including physical outcomes such as the diagnosis of a disease or cholesterol levels, or mental outcomes such as anxiety symptom severity.

Some outcomes are “self-reported”, meaning the participant answers questions based on what they think or feel. E.g., a participant answers a question about how stressed they feel.

Some outcomes are “objective” meaning they are measured by medicine, so that the thoughts and feelings of the participant doesn’t change the result. E.g., cholesterol levels. 

Participant

A person in a study whose outcomes measured by researchers.

Randomized controlled trial.

Sometimes simply called a “trial”, it is a type of research which is considered the very best design. 

Each participant is randomly placed in the intervention or control group. 

Research study

Sometimes simply called “study”, it is a process where the scientific method is applied to answer a question which is unknown.

Significant

In research, this means that the difference between results is statistically meaningful and real. It means the results are very unlikely to have happened by chance alone.

If something is “not significant” or there is “no significant difference”, it means a difference in research results may not be real and may just be due to chance.

Statistics

A type of mathematics which is used in research to organize and understand the results. 

Statistics tell us what the results are, if they are real, or if they occurred due to chance.

Strength-based

Strength-based therapy is a type of positive psychotherapy and counseling that focuses more on your internal strengths and resourcefulness, and less on weaknesses, failures, and shortcomings.

This focus sets up a positive mindset that helps you build on you best qualities, find your strengths, improve resilience and change worldview to one that is more positive.

A positive attitude, in turn, can help your expectations of yourself and others become more reasonable.