ABSTRACT
Puzzle pieces have become ubiquitous symbols for autism. However, puzzle-piece imagery stirs debate between those who support and those who object to its use because they believe puzzle-piece imagery evokes negative associations. Our study empirically investigated whether puzzle pieces evoke negative associations in the general public. Participants' ( N = 400) implicit negative associations were measured with an Implicit Association Task, which is a speeded categorization task, and participants' explicit associations were measured with an Explicit Association Task, which is a standard task for assessing consumers' explicit associations with brands (and images of those brands). Puzzle pieces, both those used as autism logos and those used more generically, evoked negative implicit associations ( t(399) = -5.357, p < 0.001) and negative explicit associations ( z = 4.693, p < 0.001, d = 0.491). Participants explicitly associated puzzle pieces, even generic puzzle pieces, with incompleteness, imperfection, and oddity. Our results bear public policy implications. If an organization's intention for using puzzle-piece imagery is to evoke negative associations, our results suggest the organization's use of puzzle-piece imagery is apt. However, if the organization's intention is to evoke positive associations, our results suggest that puzzle-piece imagery should probably be avoided.
Subject(s)
Attitude to Health , Autistic Disorder/psychology , Emblems and Insignia , Social Stigma , Adult , Female , Humans , MaleABSTRACT
When members of the public envision the disability of autism, they most likely envision a child, rather than an adult. In this empirically based essay, three authors, one of whom is an autistic self-advocate, analyzed the role played by parents, charitable organizations, the popular media, and the news industry in infantilizing autism. Parents portrayed the face of autism to be that of a child 95% of the time on the homepages of regional and local support organizations. Nine of the top 12 autism charitable organizations restricted descriptions of autism to child-referential discourse. Characters depicted as autistic were children in 90% of fictional books and 68% of narrative films and television programs. The news industry featured autistic children four times as often as they featured autistic adults in contemporary news articles. The cyclical interaction between parent-driven autism societies, autism fundraising charities, popular media, and contemporary news silences adult self-advocates by denying their very existence. Society's overwhelming proclivity for depicting autism as a disability of childhood poses a formidable barrier to the dignity and well-being of autistic people of all ages.
