Henny Kupferstein, Ph.D.

Another quality citation of my landmark study!

Source: Praslova, L. Fair Foundations: Ensuring Epistemic Justice in Neurodiversity Research and Practice. Frontiers in Psychology, 17, 1826790.

✨ AI-generated podcast 🔗 Listen here: https://monica.im/ai-podcast/share?id=94385b48-e64b-4bcc-9d73-27b9a99372a5

062922 - Savant Girl on Fire
11” x 14”
Acrylic on Canvas

I had a moment of awakening when I was assigned in my music therapy field placement to work with a young adult who got paralyzed from the neck down when she fell down the stairs in high school on her way to band practice. On the iPad, she spelled her favorite artists, and I sang This Girl is on Fire while she gripped a mallet and matched the beat in open fifths on tone bells. I got a call from the activities director the next day telling me that her parents wept when they found out that she was offered a communication opportunity and that she was making music again.

The title “Savant on Fire” expresses my lived experience as a diagnosed savant confused about why people call me disabled. ‘Henny, what’s the difference between a savant and a prodigy?’ Well, they both have an extreme talent from an early age without any training. However, a prodigy is a typically developed individual with an emerging gift, while a savant’s gift is superimposed onto a profound disability. Research shows that these expressive abilities are not mere copycat, but contain meta parcels of deeply rooted neurological creativity.

062922 - Savant Girl on Fire - Canvas Print 11 x 14 in 062922 - Savant Girl on Fire 11” x 14” Acrylic on Canvas I had a moment of awakening when I was assigned in my music therapy field placement to work with a young adult who got paralyzed from the neck down when she fell down the stairs in high school on her way to band practice. On the iPad, she ...

What about the officers who are under seven and a half years?

A few misunderstood seconds can change a police encounter. Alex Mann has spent more than seven years trying to make those moments safer.

Alex is autistic and has now visited 539 police departments across five states, sharing his lived experience directly with officers. He explains that avoiding eye contact, stimming, needing longer to respond, or becoming overwhelmed by lights, noise and several people approaching at once can sometimes be mistaken for defiance or suspicious behavior.

His advice is practical: slow down, speak calmly, allow processing time, consider sensory needs and remember that every autistic person is different. Alex’s own disability disclosure card even helped inspire Pennsylvania State Police to develop cards that people can print or save to their phones.

His message to officers is simple: “Be kind. Be patient.”

One autistic voice. 539 departments. A mission that could help someone be understood when it matters most. ❤️

📰 : Autism New Jersey, Pennsylvania State Police and DownBeach.

I read a review from a parent whose nonspeaking child began communicating through this app. By asking questions and providing time for responses, the app helped the child build a character and contribute to its narrative. It seems to facilitate collaborative storytelling through verbal input. Would anyone like to try it with their child?

California SDP people, is your Financial Management Service just a P.O. Box with a Google Voice number?

CONSUMER ALERT: If your FMS interferes with your benefits, payments, authorized services, or access to medically necessary supports, you may discover that you have no straightforward remedy against that vendor—particularly if you never verified the legal person or business actually behind the FMS.

This post explains how to find out who is really receiving the POS money associated with your services, how to fact-check the vendor's identity, how to request the underlying records, and why this due diligence is essential before something goes wrong.

Read at : https://thelantermanact.com/2026/08/12/california-sdp-people-is-your-financial-management-service-just-a-p-o-box-with-a-google-voice-number/

Contains a script and template.

California SDP people, is your Financial Management Service just a P.O. Box with a Google Voice number? CONSUMER ALERT: If your FMS interferes with your benefits, payments, authorized services, or access to medically necessary supports, you may discover that you have no straightforward remedy against…

Dear Professor O’Reilly,

I am concerned by the scientific framing of this Magellan Scholar project. Access to infant ECG data through a psychology laboratory is not access to a validated diagnostic biomarker for autism. Physiological data may support exploratory research into autonomic correlates. They do not establish diagnostic validity, specificity, or clinical utility. Machine learning does not resolve that inferential gap. What is the model actually detecting? Autism? Autonomic arousal? Stress? Sensory overload? A classifier can predict a label. It cannot establish that the measured signal is a biomarker for that label.

The ethical problem is equally significant. Physiological arousal should not be casually translated into anticipated autistic “behavior.” A wearable that predicts distress for caregivers or clinicians risks becoming infrastructure for behavioral surveillance. There is a more humane engineering objective. Give autistic people information about their own sensory load. Identify excessive noise, light, heat, cognitive demand, or other environmental stressors. Give the autistic person control of those data. Design technology to prevent distress rather than predict conduct for third-party intervention.

This is why interdisciplinary faculty mentorship matters. An undergraduate computer science student should not be expected to independently resolve questions of construct validity, psychometrics, developmental psychology, disability ethics, or clinical interpretation. That responsibility belongs to the faculty supervising the work. USC should teach its scholars the difference between a dataset versus a biomarker, classification versus diagnosis, physiological arousal versus behavior, statistical prediction versus clinical validity. The central question should come before the algorithm: Does this technology increase autistic agency, or does it increase someone else's capacity to monitor, predict, then modify autistic people?

Can a heartbeat help detect autism earlier? For most children, autism is not diagnosed until they're between three and five years old, when behavioral differences become more noticeable. But what if doctors could identify signs of autism much earlier -- even during infancy?

Autistic adults who are ABA survivors are not functional. Instead of renting a car and driving to their work engagement location, they choose to solicit an attorney to fight for their pity party.

The old fashioned work ethic was knocked out of the young autistics in ABA. They were treated like patients in a “therapy” program, while being rewarded only for preprogrammed compliance goals.

Touch the A, A is apple! High five! Good job!

If your disability makes it impossible to drive, travel with a support person. If you don’t have a credit card for a car rental, then your “work presentation” is an exploitation of your autisticness and not your professional skills that are sought by the general market.

K is on her way to full burnout and will need psychiatric treatment in the next six months.

I’ve been stuck at the GSP airport since for nearly 10 hours.
My morning flight to Chicago was cancelled due to weather.

We rebooked with United Airlines for a 4:30 pm flight…and they wouldn’t let us on the plane because, get this:

Someone internal at United Airlines DELETED our entire reservation and gave our seats away…
despite the fact we already had boarding passes.

It is possible I will end up needing an attorney as result of what United Airlines did.

At this time, I don’t know if I’ll make it to Chicago for my 8 am presentation tomorrow.

I have no words. This is the most insane travel experience I’ve ever had.

📣 RESEARCH PARTICIPANTS NEEDED

My Autistic colleague is recruiting participants for a thesis study examining how people perceive responses to children’s behavior.

Participants will read descriptions of children’s behaviors and responses to those behaviors, then answer a few questions about what they’ve read.

✅ 18 or older
🇺🇸 Live in the United States
⏱️ About 5–7 minutes
💻 Online survey

The study has been approved by the Human Subjects Review Council of Central Washington University.

Please consider participating—and please share this post with your networks. Recruiting a broad pool of participants matters.

👉 Read more and participate:
https://msrepresent.com/2026/08/11/research-participants-needed-perceptions-of-responses-to-childrens-behavior/

Please support meaningful Autistic-led research by sharing!

Research Participants Needed: Perceptions of Responses to Children’s Behavior My Autistic colleague is looking for research participants for a thesis study investigating how people perceive responses to the behaviors of children. Participants will be presented with descripti…