February 24, 2012

• Our own little world

  I recently finished a book by Temple Grandin called Animals in Translation. I had heard of the book, was familiar with it’s topics (I am from farm and ranch country, so of course I was) but I had never actually read it. Fascinating! It is just as much about Autism as it is animal husbandry, and her simple, obvious statements made so many things make more sense to me. I wonder sometimes how the most brilliant genius is so simple, and why we miss it. 

  One of her points is that people believe autistic people live in their own world, because they struggle to communicate and to react to the world in a way that we feel is normal. She pointed out the normal people (those without autism) have so many filters that we do not see the world as it is, only as we expect it to be. People classify and category everything in their world to make it sensible. We have an enormous database of facts that we can base assumptions on that we draw on with everything we do and encounter. For example, as a child I knew that when I had to wear a dress, we were going to church. Therefore – dresses equal church and people who wore dresses were church people. If I didn’t like church, I also didn’t like women that wore dresses. This is a very simple example and very elementary. Obviously as I grew older, I was able to make new categories of why people wore dresses and remove my association and prejudice. Humans rely on their databases of information to help them make decisions without even realizing it, which also helps explain why some are racist, anti-religion, or hate odd things like cab drivers. We all unconsciously rely on our databases of knowledge and experiences and can only move beyond that by adding more knowledge and experiences. 

  Autistic people share some things with animals when it comes to sensory input. Normal people see, hear and sense only what is important, relevant and expected. Animals and autistic people do not have that filter, and see,feel, sense and hear everything coming at them with little ability to block it out. The books talks extensively about things like contrast – the lights and darks of shadows, of bright colors verses earthy tones, of sounds that we never hear because we are filtering it out. The author explains that though “normal” people believe autistic people are trapped inside their own world, that it is actually “normal” people that view the world only as we want to view it. 

  There were two examples I want to briefly sum up - 

  1. A group of people were watching a basketball game. They were instructed to count how many scores were made in a 30 second span. During that span, a woman dressed as a gorilla came into view and danced. After the 30 seconds were up, only half the people knew there was a gorilla in their midst. 

  2. Airline pilots (seasoned veterans) were running a simulator test for landing. There was a plane in the middle of their runway on the simulator. More than half the pilots landed on top of the other plane. They didn’t see it because they filtered it out, it had never happened in their experience so they didn’t see it as valuable stimulus and simply NEVER saw it.

  This book was fantastic, and though I don’t envy autistic people for their perception, I am amazed by it. I wonder now how many things I never notice, never see. How much of the world am I missing out on? 

  We are the ones in our own little world.

   

   

  • 4:39 pm
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