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DIFFERENT DRUMMERS: One student rocks back and forth vigorously in anthropology class, staring off into space. One brings a map of Hawaii to physics class and studies it intently every day. Another gets up from her library chair every five minutes to twirl clockwise three times.
They are among the people described in the introduction to Aquamarine Blue 5: Personal Stories of College Students With Autism, out this month from Swallow Press, an imprint of Ohio University Press. The autobiographical accounts were collected by Dawn Prince- Hughes, an adjunct professor of anthropology at Western Washington University, who has a high-functioning form of autism, Asperger's syndrome, herself.
A primate researcher who won acclaim for her book Gorillas Among Us: A Primate
Ethnographer's Book of Days (University of Arizona Press, 2001), Ms. Prince-Hughes's interest in autism is professional as well as personal. There is an emerging "autistic culture," she argues, which has become possible only in the age of the Internet. Online chat groups forge connections among people who avoid direct eye contact and have trouble following social cues.
Many autistic people also are acutely aware of sounds or textures -- the buzzing of fluorescent lights, the porousness of a wooden desk -- that other people don't even notice. They may seem to adhere slavishly to meaningless routines and rituals....