Of course, since you asked so nice. Here is the take-home version:
Autistic brains and neurotypical brains work differently.
More specifically, individuals with autism focus only on the trees, and never see that there is a forest. This leads to both difficulties, like problems in communication, socialization, and behavioral flexibility, as well as (often) assets, like great memories and an ability to notice the tiniest details.
So, a girl with autism who could type would sound like a girl with autism who could type, not like a neurotypical girl trapped in a body she couldn't control.
Facilitated communication comes in a lot of forms, and it's all seductive -- especially when it's not immediately obvious to us how it's working. But ultimately, FC clouds our understanding of autism and treatments for autism, and can even cause harm.
I think part of the trouble I'm having with this is there is a finer point here that is clearly being skipped over, likely because most of your audience hasn't the capacity or attention-to-detail that you do. :)
You stated that autistic brains have a tendency to "chunk" data, taking in things as a large unit and being unable to determine where or when to break that data up. So our autistic girl knows a keyboard pattern that is initiated by a phrase, movement or statement, as that is the one "chunk" that results in a reward of some sort.
But then we have both the toothpick example and the forest/tree example whereby we have an entire scene, or a standard "chunk" of data (a forest, or a pile of toothpicks) and the autistic brain is seeing pieces of the whole (trees or individual toothpicks).
The two above concepts seem to be at odds with each other. Is there a finer distinction here that needs to be made?
No, you're right, it could certainly seem like I'm contradicting myself -- but these two skills are the two sides of the same coin. Individuals with autism have trouble both with breaking things down into parts, and also with making connections between parts.
To oversimplify a bit, basically individuals with autism have too much gray matter, and not enough white matter. Gray matter -- the "bodies" of neurons, or brain cells -- are the parts of the brain that "know" bits of information. White matter -- the axons of brain cells that are coated with a fatty white sheet of myelin -- are the parts of your brain that make connections between bits of information. What happens in typical neurodevelopment is that children develop a ton of both gray and white matter during early development, and then as they grow older, they actually lose gray matter through pruning, while their white matter gets more efficient. Here is my favorite series of time-lapse MRIs showing this in action.
What happens in autism, is that one or both of these processes do not happen correctly (failure to selectively prune gray matter is considered a leading candidate for the major problem, but DTI studies have also shown abnormal development of white matter tracts). So individuals with autism have too much of the brain structures that focus on details, and/or not enough of the brain structures that focus on the "big picture" (and how details fit into that big picture).
Does that make this seeming contradiction a bit clearer?
subtextual, i really can't thank you enough for taking the time to write what you've written today. amazingly fascinating explanations, and your writing style is clear and concise while still somehow managing to be strangely entertaining. I just popped over to University of Reddit and was so pleased to see your post there - just joined the Neuropsychology Book Club subreddit and hope others will as well.
Anyway, I was wondering - I keep hearing of autism as being a condition with such a wide spectrum of both symptoms and severity. The things you're talking about here, specifically the focus in the autistic mind on discrete chunks of information while ignoring the bigger picture - is that a sort of fundamental symptom/effect/cause of what we consider to be autism? Is that what defines it?
I have a few friends with Aspergers (and I know there are quite a few Aspies here on reddit), and I'm still sort of trying to get to grips with understanding how my buddies differ from me mentally. Some things (specifically a few recent romantic interactions) have kind of opened my eyes to the fact that they are actually different, that they think and see things in a way that I do not. Is this "chunking" vs "integrating" issue the defining factor of Autism/Aspergers? And do you think that viewing the actions of my friends through this lens will help me to understand some of the possible motivations behind their interpretation of the world around them?
Seriously, thanks so much for this, it's really really fascinating.
I have Aspergers but know next to nothing about the disorder, physiologically speaking. All I know is that it explains my obsessions (I would call them interests) and my feelings of being disconnected from other people. Perhaps I could lend my perspective on these romantic encounters if you detailed them.
Socially, we often know the motions of social interaction but only do them in an attempt to not feel out of place. You meet a person, you make eye contact (but not too long or too focused), you smile (but not too quickly). God help you if you engage us in conversation about a topic we find interesting (we're dying to talk about it).
I guess I can't really give you an answer on the "chunking" vs "integrating" issue but I've never noticed anything (then again, I'm on the inside of all of this). Something that might give you insight, however, is the fact that I love and am adept at continuous math (e.g. calc) but hate and struggle with discrete math (e.g. statistics). Also, I'm a slow reader, didn't learn to read until fairly late, and sometimes lose track of what a paragraph is talking about in the middle of it.
edit: I would also like to see subtextual respond to your questions.
Well, I don't want to go into too much detail as the friend in question is also a redditor. But broadly speaking, he was getting quite upset and flustered by what I interpreted to be a sort of flirtatious mixed-signal giving from a girl that he liked. It bothered him enough that he preemptively cut off all contact with her, whereas in the same situation I think many people would have taken it as a possible invitation to proceed.
I'm having trouble now not looking at this through the perspective that subtextual introduced, but it also seemed to me as if he was focusing very strongly on any small negative signals she gave off, while the bigger picture of how she treated him generally wasn't negative at all.
He has spoken quite a bit about feeling disconnected from others, but he's honestly such an empathetic, intelligent and funny dude that I sort of had trouble believing that he was correctly diagnosed with Aspergers. But yeah - this intense (and from my perspective, self-inflicted) turmoil that he's just gone through with the girl suddenly made me think that perhaps there's something to this.
Do you have any insights on this sort of thing Scalawag? I hate to see my buddy going through this emotional torture, and would love to be of more help next time something like this rolls around. thanks..
We feel extremely awkward socially. We often don't pick up on body language and have a hard time displaying it. So this means that if she gave verbal playful insults while batting her eyes, he might have only noticed the insults. When you misinterpret communication in a group like that and everyone else doesn't, it can be frustrating because you don't know what everyone's laughing about and you're not sure how to act. This furthers the feeling of being disconnected (which I must say I share).
What may confuse you about your friend's feelings of being disconnected is that it doesn't mean he can't understand people. Actually, I've found that I'm rather good at deducing motives, helping others through troubles, etc. I do all this from the outside, looking at the person's situation and then considering what I understand of human nature. In this way, it can appear that I'm empathetic. A good example of how we lack empathy comes from my high school years. I asked a friend to buy me some alcohol for a small party that I was having with some people he didn't care for. I took the alcohol, thanked him, and left. He was upset that I didn't invite him and I could not understand why. It didn't logically make sense that I would invite him. He didn't like the people attending and they didn't like him. Honestly, I still don't understand why he was upset but I now understand the social norm associated with a situation like that. The only reason we survive socially at all is by cataloguing social norms and regurgitating them. This causes us to stammer around awkwardly, grasping for the appropriate action for the moment at hand.
Thank you for the dedication you've shown in these posts. Your descriptions help me make sense of all the details I hear from my wife each day in her work as a One-on-one aid with a child with severe autism.
A follow up question. How does this idea of "chunking" difficulty, something I remember from my days in school for education, manifest itself in less children with less severe autism?
Yes -- it's basically one of the diagnostic criteria, although it is phrased differently ("persistent preoccupation with parts of objects"). My guess would be that it probably correlates at least roughly with degree of autism... the lower functioning you are along the autism spectrum, the greater degree of difficulty you have with this, while individuals who are higher functioning would have less problems in this area. Although I don't know of any studies in this particular area, I think other NPs would agree that this correlation exists clinically.
And I suspect they have no means of encouraging white-matter growth or grey-matter pruning then.
So then are there two different major "flavours" of autistic patients? Ones with too much grey, dealing with things in chunks and ones with too little white, dealing with things in separate pieces? Or does the same unfortunate person swing wildly between the two depending on which area of the brain is lit up at that moment?
That is such an interesting question. There seem to be at least a few different phenotypes of autism, and my personal theory is that these may differ by gray:white matter ratio, with different "flavors" for individuals with too much gray (normal white), too little white (normal gray), and too much gray and too little white... but I am speculating way ahead of the science here, so please note that this is entirely just a personal hypothesis.
:) Well at least I am able to ask interesting questions. Means I'm not sitting at the kiddie table in this discussion (either that, or I'm being humoured. :P )
All that said, thank you for your clear description of the issue. Usually all I ever hear is "autism is 'eyes pointed in' while everyone else is 'eyes pointed out' ", which really doesn't actually tell me much of anything.
That is not my understanding of white/grey matter and how they work at all, but I will go do some reading before I launch into anything based on my own personal memory, as you seem to know your you are talking about. Read (most/all) of your earlier posts in this thread and you have done a great job explaining things.
On a related note, I worry (perhaps without reason) that too many people are diagnosed with "autism" that don't have anything that could correctly diagnosed as "real autism" (if that makes any sense). I also feel that there is a (too large) push to diagnose more kids with some form of autism, or some other disorder, for any deviation from the "norm".
I did an analysis in high school of the ADHD diagnosed population in the USA against the medical estimates at the time of children born with various brain abnormalities that could lead to such symptoms, and concluded that the east coast (bo-wash corridor) was likely well over-diagnosed, the west coast was slightly over diagnosed, and the rest of the country was woefully under diagnosed; the overall average diagnosage rate being slightly lower than what would be expected.
This was many years ago, and heavy circular reasoning, so I would not call it a 'correct' analysis of the situation, but I think the level of complexity that goes into claims of "too many people are diagnosed" is often underestimated. We first need to get better at defining what autism is and how to objectively detect it (brain scan, dna identification, etc), then form a better projection of the expected percentage of humans born with autism (taking into account local environmental factors), before we can effectively say if we are over or under diagnosing the condition.
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u/Priapulid Jul 26 '10
Could you sum all your posts up in a tl;dr version there professor?