Autism hug

[Joel S. Berson]

At 1/14/2014 12:16 AM, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>I have an unneutered dog that has a lot of energy. When I mentioned
>to someone that I sometimes give him a big hug to calm him down, the
>response was "an autism hug?"
>
>It could have been autistic hug but neither show up on Google.

I have a faint recollection of seeing a TV news item some vague
number of months ago showing "autism hug" as a group hug of autistic
persons, perhaps with one or more Others.  But that doesn't help
much, particularly if the phrase can't be found on Google.  Not in
GBooks, anyway -- it seems GWeb is ignoring my enclosing quotation
marks, even though Advanced Search did recognize it as "Find pages
with this exact word or phrase".  So I can't eliminate "autism" + "hug".


>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8511100.stm says that people with
>fragile X syndrome who dislike hugs often have autism, though not necessarily.
>
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hug_machine talks about a hugging
>machine for autistics based on a squeeze chute for cattle that calms cows down.

Both apparently invented by Temple Grandin -- but if she invented the
"hug box" while in college, as the article says, it may have come
before the cattle chute.

I note that Wikipedia calls Grandin an "autistic activist".  While
that is true -- she is both autistic and an activist -- I think this
should be "autism activist".

Joel

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