The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum by Temple Grandin, Richard Panek Page B
Authors: Temple Grandin, Richard Panek
Tags: Non-Fiction
Ads: Link
nonverbal, then another means of expression, like typing or pointing, has to be used. In the most extreme cases, however, even that goal would be unrealistic. And unfortunately, wrist-supported writing produces unreliable information; the facilitator might be moving the hand without realizing it, as one would with the planchette on a Ouija board.
But overcoming the problems inherent in self-reporting is important. If the only self-reports about sensory issues that researchers have are from high-functioning adults, then the results are not representative. Sensory problems might be worse at lower levels of functioning; they might even be the
cause
of low levels of functioning. So a study that quotes only high-functioning autistics would present a wildly skewed view of the population. What’s more, by adulthood, a person can develop coping mechanisms that disguise the true severity of the sensory problems and might not reflect the reality of the same problem as experienced by a frightened child.
I’m hoping that some of the new technologies might allow for a higher incidence of self-reporting. Tablets, for example, have a tremendous advantage over plain old computers, even laptops: You don’t have to take your eyes off the screen. Usually typing is a two-step process. First you look at the keyboard, then you look at the screen to see what you’ve typed. That could be one step too many for someone with severe cognitive problems. Before tablets, a therapist would have to mount the keyboard of a desktop computer on a box so that it was right below where the print was appearing on the screen. In tablets, however, the keyboard is actually part of the screen, so eye movement from keyboard to the letter being typed is minimal. Cause and effect have a much clearer correlation. That difference could well be meaningful in terms of allowing people with extreme sensory problems to tell us what it’s like to be them.
In the meantime, we have to rely on two self-reports from nonverbal individuals who can type. They’re the only two who I can be sure are the authors of their words. I’ve examined both cases with an eye toward discovering what their sensory reality is like.
In his book
How Can I Talk If My Lips Don’t Move? Inside My Autistic Mind,
Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay describes his liberation from a locked-in autistic existence. It came in the form of a board filled with numbers and letters that his mother provided for him before he was four years old, in the early 1990s. With her help, he learned math and spelling. Eventually his mother tied a pen to his hand so that he could communicate through writing. Over the years Tito has published several books that describe how he experiences his reality in two parts: an “acting self” and a “thinking self.” I recently looked back over his writing, and I recalled the first time I met him. And I understood that although I didn’t realize it at the time, I had gotten to see both the acting self and the thinking self in very rapid succession.
I met Tito in a medical library in San Francisco. The lighting was low; if the library had any fluorescent lights, they had been turned off in anticipation of our visit. The room was silent, the atmosphere serene—free of distractions. The conversation involved just Tito, me, and his keyboard.
I showed him a painting of an astronaut riding a horse. I had deliberately chosen an image that he wouldn’t have seen before—in this case, an advertisement for a technology company that I found in an old issue of
Scientific American
I’d grabbed off a nearby shelf. I wanted to see how he expressed himself in words. He studied the picture, and then he turned to his keyboard.
Apollo 11 on a horse,
he typed rapidly.
Then he ran around the library flapping his arms.
When he returned to the keyboard, I showed him a picture of a cow.
We don’t eat those in India,
he typed. 5
Then he ran around the library flapping his arms.
I asked him another
But overcoming the problems inherent in self-reporting is important. If the only self-reports about sensory issues that researchers have are from high-functioning adults, then the results are not representative. Sensory problems might be worse at lower levels of functioning; they might even be the
cause
of low levels of functioning. So a study that quotes only high-functioning autistics would present a wildly skewed view of the population. What’s more, by adulthood, a person can develop coping mechanisms that disguise the true severity of the sensory problems and might not reflect the reality of the same problem as experienced by a frightened child.
I’m hoping that some of the new technologies might allow for a higher incidence of self-reporting. Tablets, for example, have a tremendous advantage over plain old computers, even laptops: You don’t have to take your eyes off the screen. Usually typing is a two-step process. First you look at the keyboard, then you look at the screen to see what you’ve typed. That could be one step too many for someone with severe cognitive problems. Before tablets, a therapist would have to mount the keyboard of a desktop computer on a box so that it was right below where the print was appearing on the screen. In tablets, however, the keyboard is actually part of the screen, so eye movement from keyboard to the letter being typed is minimal. Cause and effect have a much clearer correlation. That difference could well be meaningful in terms of allowing people with extreme sensory problems to tell us what it’s like to be them.
In the meantime, we have to rely on two self-reports from nonverbal individuals who can type. They’re the only two who I can be sure are the authors of their words. I’ve examined both cases with an eye toward discovering what their sensory reality is like.
In his book
How Can I Talk If My Lips Don’t Move? Inside My Autistic Mind,
Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay describes his liberation from a locked-in autistic existence. It came in the form of a board filled with numbers and letters that his mother provided for him before he was four years old, in the early 1990s. With her help, he learned math and spelling. Eventually his mother tied a pen to his hand so that he could communicate through writing. Over the years Tito has published several books that describe how he experiences his reality in two parts: an “acting self” and a “thinking self.” I recently looked back over his writing, and I recalled the first time I met him. And I understood that although I didn’t realize it at the time, I had gotten to see both the acting self and the thinking self in very rapid succession.
I met Tito in a medical library in San Francisco. The lighting was low; if the library had any fluorescent lights, they had been turned off in anticipation of our visit. The room was silent, the atmosphere serene—free of distractions. The conversation involved just Tito, me, and his keyboard.
I showed him a painting of an astronaut riding a horse. I had deliberately chosen an image that he wouldn’t have seen before—in this case, an advertisement for a technology company that I found in an old issue of
Scientific American
I’d grabbed off a nearby shelf. I wanted to see how he expressed himself in words. He studied the picture, and then he turned to his keyboard.
Apollo 11 on a horse,
he typed rapidly.
Then he ran around the library flapping his arms.
When he returned to the keyboard, I showed him a picture of a cow.
We don’t eat those in India,
he typed. 5
Then he ran around the library flapping his arms.
I asked him another
Similar Books
