The thinking of Tempel Grandin..Autistic Dr. of Animal Sceince and Inventior

[Guest guest]

Printed in Paramus Post today..........

 

Autistic expert feels bond with animals

By Leigh Fenly Wednesday, March 15 2006, 12:32 AM

 

 

Temple Grandin spends a lot of time flat on her back in the mud. From

that vantage point, she can spot trouble lurking in stockyards and

feeding lots from a cow's point of reference. It's not a view, she

says, that is so far from her own.

 

Grandin may be the world's most famous person with autism, and she is

most certainly the world's premiere force of change for cattle at the

point of slaughter. Half the cattle processing facilities in the U.S.

and Canada now use the humane techniques she has developed over the

last decade. Grandin, 58, who has a doctorate in animal science,

teaches at Colorado State University and travels the country

diagnosing hissing air, dangling chains, mismatched stair steads -

details that make cattle afraid and skittish.

 

 

" Being autistic has helped me understand how they feel, " Grandin says

of cows, " because I know what it is like to feel my heart race when a

car horn honks in the middle of the night. "

 

In her new book, " Animals in Translation, " Grandin reveals in an

engaging, conversational tone her insights into the brains of

animals, autistics and " normals. " Each, she shows, has its own

special genius.

 

Q: When did you realize your brain works differently from others?

 

A: Well, it was a long, slow, gradual realization. When I was a young

child I thought everyone thought in pictures. I didn't have any

inkling until I was in college and I read an article that said cave

man would not have been able to develop tools until he developed

language. The idea was that language was essential for developing

tools.

 

I thought that was a lot of rubbish. I design a lot of things, and

I'm not at all good at language. When I'm designing, I get a full-

motion video in my brain of what I am drawing. I thought everyone

could do that.

 

I started asking people to visualize a church steeple. I asked that

question to hundreds of people. Most people get a generalized picture

in their brains. But I get only specifics - the church next door, the

one at the end of the street. I see the whole thing. It's like

watching a movie. I figured out that there's a whole continuum of

visual thinking and that I'm at the very end of that continuum.

 

Q: You've written that autistics see vast amounts of detail, which is

what makes you successful. On the other hand, " normals " suffer from

what you call " abstractification. "

 

A: " Abstractification " is when people, especially in policy-making

positions, get separated from what's happening on the ground. The

response to Hurricane Katrina is a perfect example. What happens is

that you get so much into the abstract theory you forget what's

happening on the ground.

 

When I'm in a stockyard, I go through the video library in my head,

and I see different things and see how I can compare it to, say, this

other stockyard in Arizona. But when I read things - some abstract

thing in philosophy - I don't understand it at all.

 

Q: What do the brain's frontal lobes have to do with it?

 

A: Human beings have huge frontal lobes that are responsible for

bringing all the information together and they are what enable humans

to have pure abstract thoughts. I don't have that. If I don't have a

picture, I have no thoughts.

 

If I'm thinking about anything new, I do it in pictures. Animals can

do the same things. A dog will think, these are people who are good

to me and these are people who are bad to me. They can put these into

categories. Their thinking is sensory-based with no language.

 

Q: You write that you are mystified that some people can feel two

emotions at the same time, a love-hate relationship, for instance.

What social clues do you pick up?

 

A: Tone of voice is very important to me. It's the only subtle social

signal that I get.

 

Q: Are there trends in the treatment of autism that concern you?

 

A: The most important thing, and everyone will agree, is that a child

get lots and lots of hours of one-to-one interaction with a grown-up,

so the autistic brain is kept connected to the world. I got that as a

child. I had sit-down meals where I had to behave. I had a nanny who

spent hours and hours with me.

 

One of the problems in this field is that people are looking for a

single, magic thing. I take a more eclectic view: Little brains need

to be kept connected to the world.

 

Q: You say that some animals are like autistic savants, possessing

super talents.

 

A: Take carrier pigeons. How do they do it? If you put a carrier

pigeon in a box and take him somewhere, he will remember smells along

the way and follow back the smells. If you put him in a smell-proof

box, he gets lost.

 

Another savant thing is when squirrels hide nuts. After they've

hidden a nut, they look up and snap a picture in their brain of the

surroundings. (When they're ready to retrieve it), they walk around

until they match the picture they are seeing, with what they saw

(when they buried it).

 

In a similar way, I am thinking with a part of the brain that would

be unconscious in other people. I think with Freud's subconscious. It

comes up like rude pop-up ads.

 

Q: What do you make of a new study in which dogs were trained to

detect lung and breast cancer by smelling the breath of cancer

patients?

 

A: Dogs have incredibly sensitive noses. What this says is that

cancer must have a distinctive smell.

 

Q: Why is it that the worst thing you can do to a dog is make it feel

fear?

 

A: Fear is the primal emotion, the thing that makes animals similar

to autistics. Fear is my primary emotion. Until I began taking

antidepressants 20 years ago, I was just absolutely freaking out all

the time. I was hypervigilant all the time. I was like cattle, the

way they are always looking around for something that's going to eat

them.

 

A fearful dog is going to be miserable and likely will bite something

if he is very fearful. The way some people get post-traumatic stress

disorder, you can get a similar thing in some animals.

 

Q: Is what you understand intuitively something you can teach your

students?

 

A: Yes, there's a lot I can teach my students. I have a whole slide

show to show what animals are afraid of. I have a lot of this on my

Web site - www.grandin.com - that is dedicated to teaching these

concepts.

------------

NPR's Driveway moments CD has a great interview with Tempel. Very

enlightening.......bob

P.S. check out her website mentioned at the end of the article :

www.grandin.com

Being There without the " I'm so Enlightened " crap.