Neurotypical

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Neurotypical or NT, an abbreviation of neurologically typical, is a neologism widely used in the autistic community as a label for non-autistic people, and othertimes in a more wide ranging way such as to refer to anyone who does not have any developmental disorders such as autism, developmental coordination disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The term has been adopted by both the neurodiversity movement and the scientific community.^[1][2]

In its original usage, it referred to anyone who is not autistic or a 'cousin' with an 'autistic-like' brain.^{[3][failed verification][unreliable source?]} The term was later narrowed to refer to those with strictly typical neurology, that is, without a learning disorder or neurodevelopmental disorder.

In recent times,^{[as of?]} people with any sort of mental disorder, whether congenital or acquired, have also sometimes been excluded from the neurotypical label.^{[dubious – discuss]} In this sense, the term is now contrasted to neuroatypical, an umbrella term inclusive of people with diverse mental and behavioral disorders, such as mood, anxiety, dissociative, psychotic, personality, and eating disorders. The conditions themselves, following the neurodiversity and social construction of disability models and in distance from the hegemonic medical model of disability (otherwise known in the neurodiversity community as the "pathology paradigm"), are often referred to as neurodivergences—that is, neurotypes that are divergent from a given social and medical norm. Neurotypical is, in short, not having a developmental disorder; since most people with mental illnesses are born with no developmental disorders, they are considered predominantly neurotypical from birth. Mental illness could be triggered by environmental causes or traumatic events in one's lifetime, whereas developmental disorders are present at birth and continue into adulthood.

Neurotypical, as a specific term for its original purpose within autistic communities, has been replaced by some with allistic, or "nypical",^[4] which has roughly the same meaning that "neurotypical" had originally.^[5] These terms refer to those who are not autistic and who do not possess another pervasive developmental disorder, even if they may be neurologically atypical in some other way, such as having dyslexia.

The National Autistic Society of the United Kingdom says of the term "neurotypical": "This term is only used within the autism community so may not be applicable in, for example, the popular press."^[6]

Criticism[]

"Critiques of the Neurodiversity Movement", a 2020 review, argued two basic observations:

• Many people who do not have an autism diagnosis have autistic traits. This was known by researchers as the "broad autism phenotype". So, there was no clear bimodal distribution separating people with and without autism. In reality there were not two distinct populations, one "neurotypical" and one "neurodivergent".^[7]
• "Neurotypical" was a dubious construct, because there was nobody who could be considered truly neurotypical. There was no such standard for the human brain.^[8]

References[]

• Russell, Ginny (2020). "Critiques of the Neurodiversity Movement" (PDF). In Kapp, Steven (ed.). Autistic community and the neurodiversity movement: stories from the frontline. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 287–303. doi:10.1007/978-981-13-8437-0_21. ISBN 978-981-13-8437-0. OCLC 1127055276. S2CID 210483688.

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