The neurodiversity and sensory processing fields contain fundamental conflicts about what autism is, what help looks like, and who gets to decide. This wiki presents them honestly, with evidence for each position and a clear statement of where this wiki stands.
Behaviour modification and sensory processing
ABA and sensory processing — Applied Behaviour Analysis has historically treated stimming as a behaviour to extinguish. The neurobiological evidence shows stimming is self-regulation. The autistic community reports harm. Some practitioners are reforming; whether this is genuine or cosmetic remains debated. Now includes the transatlantic gulf: why ABA is standard in North America but resisted across Europe, and what each side’s evidence actually shows.
Positive Behaviour Support and sensory needs — presented as a gentler alternative to ABA, but critiqued for the same underlying logic: modifying disabled people’s behaviour to meet others’ goals.
The accommodation-exposure tension
The accommodation-exposure question — when should environments change, and when should the person expand their tolerance? The defaults reveal which model of disability is operating.
Frameworks under scrutiny
Polyvagal theory and the Safe and Sound Protocol — enormously popular among therapists but scientifically contested. The anatomical claims don’t hold up. The autism framing pathologises.
Zones of Regulation — the most widely adopted regulation framework in schools. Does not meet evidence-based practice standards. Carries a documented risk of promoting masking.
GFCF diets and biomedical claims — the most widely adopted biomedical intervention. The evidence does not support it. This page explains the theory, the evidence, and why families adopt it anyway.
Systemic questions
Diagnostic pathways — the system is in crisis. Waiting lists measured in years, geographic lotteries, assessment processes experienced as adversarial. Whether the current clinical model can hold, or whether something fundamentally different is needed.
The evidence problem in sensory interventions — why the evidence base is weaker than people assume, and whether conventional research methods are the right fit for highly individualised interventions.
Models of disability — medical, social, neurodiversity, capabilities, human rights, and now the Foucauldian critique: diagnostic systems as technologies of normalisation. Where you stand on this determines what you think “help” means.
AI and neurodivergent minds — AI systems normalise by default. Dangers include hiring bias, emotion detection, and surveillance. Potentials exist in communication and adaptive environments, conditional on who designs them.
The wiki’s position
Umwelten is not neutral. It is neurodiversity-affirming, evidence-transparent, and honest about uncertainty. It takes positions — accommodation as the default, stimming as regulation, deficit framing as unsupported — and it owns those positions rather than hiding behind false objectivity. The About explains the principles; the Models of disability page provides the theoretical grounding.
Being neurodiversity-affirming does not mean being uncritical. It means being critical of the right things: not of neurodivergent people for being different, but of systems, institutions, and frameworks that treat difference as disorder.