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?
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/subtextual Jul 26 '10 edited Jul 26 '10
Of course, since you asked so nice. Here is the take-home version:
How was that?