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March 14, 2008

An Evening with Temple Grandin

Last night Elaine and I went to see Temple Grandin talk at Las Positas College in Livermore. My main gripe with the talk was that it was held in the stupidest possible place for a talk: a gym, with a gym sound system. I could understand maybe half of every word Grandin said, which was pretty hard work. Next time try for an actual auditorium, guys.

Technorati Tags: brains

Grandin talked a great deal about what it was like to be autistic, and how she and other autistic people think. For one thing, she tends not to think in words, but in pictures: when trying to understand things, she is assembling collections of images and relating them to each other. Verbal language is not easy for her and is not how she thinks.

And she's also focusing on details, which she will assemble to create a bigger picture. Indeed, in response to a question, she explained that as she ages and accumulates more information, her ability to put things together gets better, because she has more information to work from in creating those bigger pictures. She reads a lot about a lot of different things.

Normal people tend to filter a lot of those details out of their minds: when she pictures a church steeple, she sees several very specific steeples. When a normal person pictures a church steeple they see a diagrammatic representation of a non-specific steeple. Autistic people are not very good are generalizations like that.

In addition, Grandin noted that her thinking is very associative, not linear. When somebody mentions a church steeple she will picture specific steeples and then move on to things those pictures remind her of in quick succession. And her brain works such that verbal problems have to be processed as visual problems, so there is a translation delay in her thinking when working directly with words. (She noted that her slide shows drive verbal people crazy because they are so associative and visual.)

Normal people, she noted, look around a lot. Autistic people tend to focus, and they tend to focus on things rather than people. Autistic people do not multitask.

She told us she groups autistic people into three groups:
1. Visual thinkers, who think in pictures, and are bad at very abstract things like algebra. This is how Grandin classes herself, and when she originally wrote her book Thinking in Pictures she thought this was the only way autistic people came.
2. Music and Math, or pattern thinkers. These people are very good at patterns and analysis.
3. Verbal Logicians, who are storehouses of data and factoids. These people are very bad at drawing because they cannot think visually.

One point Grandin made several times was that special education should be working with the autistic kids' talents, rather than hammering on their deficiencies. When an audience member asked about how to get her autistic kid to do school work in other areas than rockets, she suggested that he be told to read books about rockets, do math for rocketry, draw pictures of rockets. Take his interest and use that as a lever to make him do the kind of work he was not interested in.

In addition, she emphasized the importance of apprenticeships and career-focused learning for autistic kids. "Happy aspies have careers," she said, and they need structure and training to help them hold onto those careers. Indeed, a lot of strict social training is necessary so they learn what the rules are for being good citizens.

In talking about the structural differences between autistic brains and normal brains, she talked about the white matter in the brain, the interconnective tissue. Autism is basically a problem in the structure of that white matter: there's much more of it in certain areas and not enough in other areas. She also said that autistic people have immature lower brain areas and use their frontal cortex less than normal people.

There are some basic differences that come out of this: research has shown that language capacity covers up other areas of the brain, particularly visual and musical thinking. So when a lot of connective tissue is going to those visual areas of the brain they are overriding language.

In addition, Grandin explained that she has no subconscious: her cognitive processes all happen in her conscious mind. One of the beginnings of cognition is the "orienting response," the moment of orienting to a stimulus in order to make a decision about what to do with it. For normal people that happens subconsciously, but for her that is a conscious decision, which can be distracting.

Other distractions are hypersensitivities. High pitched sounds (like from PA systems, TVs, other electronic equipment) can be overwhelming, and auditory detail will be reduced so just hearing somebody talk is hard work. Flickering lights (fluourescents, TV screens, CRT monitors) can seem much more flickery.

Some suggestions she had for temper tantrums/issues in autistic kids:

- don't let them get overtired
- make sure they're not over-stimulated (rose coloured glasses help, incandescent lights, hats)
- make sure there is no medical problem (constipation, infection, toothache)
- get them lots of exercise
- try special diets (try for three months to be sure it's working, but no more if it doesn't)
- if you do use medication, use much much lower doses than normal; if a little bit is good, a lot will not be much better
- give strict rules and guidance for social behaviour

One question was about physical tics, and she said that tics should be left alone as long as they are not harmful, but there should be limits on when they can do them. So kids with tics should have a time when they can specifically go off and perform their tic, and times when they are absolutely not allowed to do it (like at the dinner table). The thing is, tics are calming for the kids, and in some cases they can help with auditory processing, so you definitely do not want to try to make them control the tic all the time if it is not harmful to anybody.

Lastly, one question that came up was about whether she thought autism was good or bad. Grandin noted that very social people tend to sit around being very social, while autistic/aspergers people tend to invent things and create things. So in many ways our culture is dependent on the spectrum for its technology. Removing it from the gene pool would be very complicated and would not be good for us. (Let's leave aside for the moment what on earth that guy was thinking to ask somebody if she thought her genetic stock should be removed from the gene pool. Kind of like asking a Jew if they thought the Holocaust was a good idea. Sheesh.)

Posted by ayse on 03/14/08 at 2:27 PM