Progress Report

So far, I have been investigating my topic.

1. I checked out three reference books on autism spectrum disorders at the Elmhurst Public Library.

2. I searched for possible electronic sources on Wikipedia.

3. I spoke with Dr. William Hirstein in person about my topic. I will be meeting with him again next week and will be recording what he has to say about autistic students. He referred me to two books on the nature of autistic students' disabilities as well as gave me the results of a study that he did on the topic.

I have a lot of references, but not a lot of solid facts yet. However, I have learned that one of an autistic child's disabilities can be the "inability to read people's minds," meaning that he or she is sometimes unable to infer the real meaning of another person's communication. This could have wide social implications in my research, and is something that I am going to look into more.

I want, for next week, to get a transcript from NPR's "Schools Strive to Meet Needs of Autistic Students," as well as start organizing my references and gathering specific bits of data from each one.