Results 1 to 5 of 5

Thread: Viewing the World With Autism

  1. #1
    Member DomesticatedFeminist's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2009
    Location
    buffalo
    Posts
    4,925

    Viewing the World With Autism

    I found this interesting article on NPR's website. It's with Temple Grandin, a women who has autism and is now a vet. She has written books about living with autism and how to deal with it. This women is so fascinating.
    The article is really long.. if you'd rather listen here's the link
    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=5165123
    January 20, 2006

    Animal scientist Temple Grandin says autism helps her see things as animals do. Grandin talks about her work designing humane slaughter systems for animals, and her unique way of looking at the world.
    January 20, 2006

    Animal scientist Temple Grandin says autism helps her see things as animals do. Grandin talks about her work designing humane slaughter systems for animals, and her unique way of looking at the world.

    Copyright © 2009 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

    FLATOW: I'm Ira Flatow this is TALK OF THE NATION SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR News.

    (Soundbite of music)

    FLATOW: You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. For the rest of the hour, a look inside the often mysterious world of autism through the eyes of someone who has made a career out of overcoming the roadblocks the illness put in her way.

    Temple Grandin doesn't see the world like most of us do. She does, she would say, see the world more like most animals: a place of fear without emotion where your thoughts come to you in pictures rather than in words.

    Temple Grandin is autistic. Her writings about her struggles with autism, her fear, her anxiety, the overwhelming sensation of smell and sound, provide an intriguing glimpse into the world of autistic people.

    Because of her autism Dr. Grandin says she can understand how animals see the world in a way that most humans cannot. She has written about her experiences with autism and her observations of animals in many books.

    You may remember her Thinking in Pictures. Well, her latest book is Animals In Translation. She now joins us.

    Let me formally introduce her. Temple Grandin is an Associate Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior is co-authored with Katherine Johnson. She joins us from studies of KPBS in San Diego.

    Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Dr. Grandin.

    Dr. TEMPLE GRANDIN (Colorado State University):

    It's good to be here.

    FLATOW: How has your book been received?

    Dr. GRANDIN: Well, there's been a lot of interest in it. I was really happy to say that we're making some of the bestseller lists.

    But let's get into talking about how autism is similar animal behavior. The thing is I don't think in a language and animals don't think in a language. It's sensory based thinking, thinking in pictures, thinking in smells, thinking in touches. It's putting these sensory based memories into categories. That's the basis of how an animal would think. One thing I want to say is, animals do have emotion. But fear tends to be one of the most primal emotions.

    FLATOW: So you don't read animals minds, don't want our listeners to confuse that?

    Dr. GRANDIN: No. And I always get asked all the time about animal communicators and I really don't want to get into a discussing whether ESP exists or not. Let's just stick with, you know, the other more concrete things.

    FLATOW: Mm hmm. Yeah.

    Dr. GRANDIN: Because that's how I think.

    FLATOW: Yeah.

    Dr. GRANDIN: I think in most cases, a lot of these animal communicators are very good animal behavior people. And a lot of them are visual thinkers and their picking up very subtle body cues from the animal.

    You know, it's crouching down a little bit, it's moving around little bit differently. They're just very good at reading animal behavior. And I think in most cases that can explain some of their successes.

    FLATOW: And why do you think your autism allows you to understand how animals think?

    Dr. GRANDIN: Well to understand animal thinking you've got to get away from a language. See my mind works like Google for images. You put in a key word; it brings up pictures. See language for me narrates the pictures in my mind. When I work on designing livestock equipment I can test run that equipment in my head like 3-D virtual reality. In fact, when I was in college I used to think that everybody was able to do that. And language just sort of, you know, gives an opinion. Like, oh, that's a good idea or oh, I just figured out how to design that.

    Language is not actually used in the actual designing process that is all done in pictures.

    FLATOW: Mm hmm. When did you first discover that you could do this? That you could understand how animals think?
    CONTINUE..
    “Two percent of the people think; three percent of the people think they think; and ninety-five percent of the people would rather die than think.”

  2. #2
    Member DomesticatedFeminist's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2009
    Location
    buffalo
    Posts
    4,925
    Dr. GRANDIN: Well, the thing is, I thought everybody thought in pictures. When I was in high school and college, I thought everybody could think in pictures. And my first inkling to my thinking was even different was when I was in college and I read an article about you know, some scientist said that the caveman could not have designed tools until they had language.

    And then when I did Thinking in Pictures I started interviewing people in detail about how they thought. And that really gave me insight into how my thinking was different. And that some people think much more in words. And then I'm thinking, well, that has to be how an animal would think. There's no other way an animal could possibly think.

    FLATOW: And so you've been able to design a device that animals will readily use as where other people have failed? Because you can think …

    Dr. GRANDIN: Well, back…

    FLATOW: …how they think?

    Dr. GRANDIN: The first thing I thought about is how they see. I mean, I'd read in my physiology books that, when I was in college, that cattle had 360-degree vision. And I was out in the feed yards in Arizona back in the 1970s. And, you know, some of the cows would just walk up the shoots to get their vaccinations. Other cattle would refuse to go through the shoots.

    So I got down in the shoots to take pictures of what the cattle were seeing. And people thought that was just kind of crazy. And I found that they were afraid of shadows. They were afraid of a reflection off the bumper of a truck. They were afraid of seeing people up ahead. And if you remove these visual-based details, then the cattle would walk right up the shoot. In the beginning when I first started doing that, I mean people just couldn't even see why I was doing it.

    FLATOW: Yeah, you write in your book about how you've noticed that animals do not like to stand with their legs crossed or feet together. And that some of the pens were forcing them to do that and you designed that out of it.

    Dr. GRANDIN: Well, that's getting into the restrainer systems that I designed in the 1990s. I designed a system holding a cattle in the meat plant, where they straddle a conveyor. And if you get things set up right they just walk in really quietly.

    And you've got to get the lighting right. They're afraid of the dark. If the lights were going, blasting in their eyes like the sun or there's a reflection on a shinny piece of metal moving, they're going to be afraid of that. And you get rid of those things their afraid of then their going to walk right in.

    You know, the things that scare a prey/species animal like cattle are a whole lot of little visual details that people just don't tend to notice. And one of the big problems they used to have is the people just wanted to get out there and yell and scream and push and shove and you know more and more prods. Rather than remove the things that the cattle were afraid of.

    FLATOW: You also talk about animals having special talents. Like special talents autistic people may have.

    Dr. GRANDIN: Well some autistic people have savant skills. All autistic people do not have savant skills. Autism is a very variable disorder varying all the way from Einstein, emollient scientist, just a little bit of the trait, many scientist and engineers, down to somebody that's going to remain nonverbal.

    There is a small segment of people with autism that have savant skills, where they can memorize entire maps of whole entire city. They can do calendar calculations. And this is similar to some of the skills that animals have.

    Take bird migration for example. You know a Canada goose only has to be shown the route once and then he remembers the way. And this is sensory based memory. Because if you take a carrier pigeon and you take it somewhere and let it go and then it comes back home again. It remembers the things it sees and smells along the way.

    FLATOW: Yeah.

    Dr. GRANDIN: But if you put him in a smell-proof, vision-proof box, he's not going to find his way back home.
    Continue
    “Two percent of the people think; three percent of the people think they think; and ninety-five percent of the people would rather die than think.”

  3. #3
    Member DomesticatedFeminist's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2009
    Location
    buffalo
    Posts
    4,925
    FLATOW: Right. What about the special powers we think animals have. For example sensory powers, they can predict or when an earthquake is coming. We hear stories during the Tsunami that the animals knew enough to get out of the way in advance.

    Dr. GRANDIN: Well, I think their hearing, you know, low frequency sounds you know as the tidal wave was coming in. I mean their just, animals have very sensitive hearing. And they're hearing those sounds and they're trying to move away from them basically.

    FLATOW: 1-800-989-8255, 1-800-989-TALK. Mike Inifik(ph) in New York, hi, welcome.

    MIKE (Caller): Hi, hi Ira, hi Dr. Grandin, very nice to get a chance to talk to you. First time I was aware of your existence is when you were on Terry Gross's program. And I was thinking holy mackerel, this persons mind works a lot the way mine does. And I read an article about Asperger's syndrome came out of the New York Times. And a friend of mine showed it to me and said this describes me all over.

    So I got a bit curious about it and I read the Curious Incidents of the Dog in The Night Time, which is a semi autobiographical account. And I became interested in it and I found a fascinating web site. And I'm wondering if you're aware of it, it's by some one named Andrew Lahman L-A-H-M-A-N and maybe two N's and it's called Origins of Autism. It's either originsofautism.com, or dot org.

    And in this he presents the hypothesis that autism is in fact an adaptation, not a disorder. That it can go wrong, but when it goes right it enables people to be more predisposed to have certain kinds of occupations. It's a predisposition not a predetermination. Any person can get any king of occupation. But that autistic people tend to be particularly predisposed to do better at certain occupations that include science, inventing, music, dancing, the visual arts and things like this.

    While people who aren't autistic tend to do better at more practical jobs, not that each can't do the other's jobs. But they do better with the job their body and brain is more adapted to. And he argued that this adaptation evolved at the time that the Bonobos separated from the chimp. He argues that the Bonobo separated from the regular chimp and then the Bonobo predicated into the Bonobos of today.
    Ok I will stop posting the article because I'm not sure how many people will even read the whole thing. The link I provided has a radio transcript.
    “Two percent of the people think; three percent of the people think they think; and ninety-five percent of the people would rather die than think.”

  4. #4
    Member DomesticatedFeminist's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2009
    Location
    buffalo
    Posts
    4,925

    found an interesting site..

    Here is a link to a page that has part of dr. temple grandin's book "thinking in pictures"
    http://www.grandin.com/inc/visual.thinking.html
    “Two percent of the people think; three percent of the people think they think; and ninety-five percent of the people would rather die than think.”

  5. #5
    Member FTWNY's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2010
    Location
    Hamburg New York
    Posts
    90
    The movie that Claire Danes just made about her was really good. My wife and I both enjoyed it. Thanks for posting!
    Firearms Training of Western New York
    http://www.ftwny.com
    info@ftwny.com

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Similar Threads

  1. Here is my world...
    By Riven37 in forum Morning Breakfast - Breaking News
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: April 19th, 2009, 12:40 PM
  2. 2008 World AIDS Day
    By Steiny in forum USA Politics and Our Economy - President Joe Biden
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: December 1st, 2008, 11:22 AM
  3. The New World Order Always Knew We Would Resist.
    By gonerail in forum Morning Breakfast - Breaking News
    Replies: 2
    Last Post: February 29th, 2008, 03:55 PM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •